Packing, Moving, Downsizing

After deciding to travel we made a list of long and short term goals. One of our short term goals was to move from our apartment to Jessica's Mom's house in one month and on to my parent's home the next month. Each move required a progressive downsizing from the previous. We went from a one bedroom apartment to one bedroom storing the rest of our stuff at each of our parents' homes. That we accomplished with ease. The next goal proved more difficult.

We were to go from one room to one suitcase as we transitioned from Jessica's Mom's house to my parents house. This seemed reasonable to me. Even though all the junk, I mean that literally not figuratively, we have is 'community property', I still categorize things as his or hers. Every couple does, weather they admit it or not. No guy is going to say those are my tampons, pink platters or fake flowers. And no woman is going to claim 10w-30 motor oil as hers.
As far as I could see I only had about a suitcase worth of stuff anyways, my work was done. The rest of it was her junk. This would make for an easy transition. All I had to do was get Jessica to pack up her junk and we would be off. Jessica educated me otherwise and I got to work packing pink platters and fake flowers using the tampons as packing material. Not really, after she told me how much we had invested in dishes I bought bubble wrap to pack them with and wrote fragile ten times on each box, even though I was the only one moving them.

Our goal was to be down to a suitcase but we only made it down to two truck loads; not bad. The following quote make me feel a little better about our minor accomplishment:
"It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it".

Arnold Toynbee

Two suitcases was a bit too ambitious. Two truck loads was realistic.