Moving Our Stuff, Finding a Home for It All

Whenever I think about moving, I always think about the Seinfeld episode where Jerry befriends Keith Hernandez of the Mets, and is confronted with that age old dilemma…what’s the line about helping friends move? Jerry’s so flattered by being befriended by the famous athlete that he almost says yes. Then Keith begins to tell him exactly what he’s gotten into..”There are some heavy pieces of furniture, and about five staircases,” he says. Jerry regrets ever saying yes.

And then it’s the stuff. And that’s where George Carlin comes in, who riffed so well on everybody’s stuff. He called it something else, but we have so much of it, that heck, what do you do with it all. This all came to mind today when Mary got to the stage of renting a truck and it was, gulp, time to move her stuff into my stuff. We were about to officially blend our households.

And that’s when the boxes began to pile up in my mind. Visiting her house, now empty of practical furniture but full of the scattered remains of packing, it was chaos. Now I could understand why she was so flummoxed when she returned home last night. It was a case of stuff gone wild. Old stuff, valuable stuff, sentimental and not valuable stuff. It was all there and it all had to go.

I tried to lobby her a bit…I convinced her that leaving a snow shovel was just courtesy for her new tenants, same with the wooden case that holds the trash and recycling bins. I tried hard to have her leave whatever she could, but then…when it was all said and done, the truck was packed tight. But the only thing that’s now a challenge is that my garage is packed full of stuff.

But we’ll find a place for all of the stuff, and we’ll donate that god-awful treadmill to some needy out of shape person who finds it on Craig’s List. And soon, her stuff will all fit in, and all will be ok. The best part was my good friend, Bill, who came to help, along with my stalwart son-in-law, Francisco, and Mary’s brother John. Friends and relatives come through, and it makes me feel a lot better about living with double the stuff to have had their help.