My life, in boxes
Rethinking the DOOM box habit
In the first 40 years of my life, I estimate that I have moved at least 30 times. Over a dozen of those moves were when I was a kid- 7 major, 7 minor. This was the norm of a military brat. It started with the culling of toys, often done when my siblings and I were not around. Then we had to pick what we wanted to take with us to our new home. It had to be something small. Our bikes were always too big, and would go into the ‘hold baggage’, a small shipment of items meant for setting up the household. This would have our seasonal clothes, kitchen items, linens, and other housekeeping things. Our bigger things would come in the ‘household goods’ shipment, like our TV, furniture, pictures, books, etc. And some of it would remain in long-term storage, especially if the country we were going to could not accommodate it. That included large appliances, sectional sofas, big beds, etc. These things were carefully wrapped, packed and put into large wooden crates on a flatbed truck. When we left Japan for Arkansas, our family stuff filled five of these crates. A lot of it were things that our family bought while overseas.
My father would leave a month or two before the move, so my mother was in charge of this operation. After the culling, she’d make a list of what would go where and make sure we stayed out of the way. I remember her taping little tags to things before we left Texas to move to Okinawa. Then the movers would swarm in, first for the household goods and storage items, then for the hold baggage, which would be flown in and waiting for us at our destination. We’d end up in an empty house eating sandwiches before going to a motel to wait for our departure date. Upon arrival, we’d find ourselves in a hotel or temporary housing waiting for our place to be ready. Then we would get our hold baggage, set up the house, and receive our household goods several weeks later. Generally, the entire process of moving and getting settled took between 3 and 6 months, depending on where we were headed and what the housing situation was. Once our stuff arrived, all the boxes were emptied and we were settled in within 3 weeks or so.
Later, when I joined the USAF, these scenarios were repeated on a smaller scale for me. Since I was low-ranking and unmarried, my weight allowance was low, and did not permit furniture. In fact, with the exception of a few folding bookshelves, I did not own a stick of furniture until 1996. The Air Force or the landlord supplied it, and I lived with it. When I left the USAF, I was given an allowance of 8,000 pounds of personal belongings to ship home. I had about 6,000 pounds, 2,500 of it books. Even then, my personal library was substantial.
Everyone who has ever moved has dealt with boxes of things- some quickly unpacked and put away, others not. I am no exception. Some of my stuff was carefully packed and marked so I could tell the movers where they would go, others were a reflection of the exhausted phase of the move where I just tossed things into boxes and marked them as miscellaneous. These would land in the back of a room or closet, waiting for an idle day for me to unpack them. These became the dreaded DOOM boxes.
What is a DOOM box? “DOOM” stands for ‘didn’t organize, only moved’. These are things that aren’t trash, but have value of some sort, even if it’s for a yard sale or flea market booth. They are often uncategorized things, orphaned items that need a place to go. Many of them fall into the sticky ‘perfectly good’ category that made them follow you from pillar to post or closet to closet. You didn’t really need these things, but they were too nice to toss, and you might need them someday.
’Perfectly good’ and ‘Someday’ are tyrannical concepts, creating an accretion place for all sorts of things like swag, books, papers, magazines, shirts, samples, half-hearted gifts, clothes, tchotchkes and other sticky things. Sort of useful, sort of not, not quite re-giftable, too good to trash or give away because I might need it someday. These things inhabit the DOOM box. Essentially, it is an orderly, clean, portable hoard.
When I moved to my last house, I was convinced by most of my friends that it was going to be my forever home. The house was on the small side, which was all I could afford. I managed to shoehorn my massive library into it. I lived there for 12 years, making incremental improvements and slowly chipping away at the mighty stacks of boxes of books and papers. My 3rd bedroom became an oubliette, along with the shed outside. I resolved that when I retired, I would wrestle this stuff into a manageable state and reclaim that third bedroom. I did other purges- of my wardrobe, my pantry, my kitchen, but I never seemed to make any kind of substantial dent in that wall of boxes. When I attempted to do it, the size of the job and the bottlenecks it contained would cause me to shut down from cognitive overload. My brain would go gooey, and I would crash for a nap, sometimes multiple times a day. I ferried boxes of books to my flea market booth, the library, and to charity shops. I hauled big bags of shredable papers to the shredder. It became a Sisyphean task.
Then I found my current house. Suddenly, I had a possible solution to my problem- more room to contend with bottlenecks, storage and sorting areas, and room for the library with tons of built-ins. One minor problem: there were still many things left from the previous owners, Perfectly Good things that had to be dealt with. I decided to purchase them, mostly sight unseen, and made my move.
Most people move into homes that are empty. Empty rooms, empty closets, empty garage, empty attic. My new house was not empty. I chose to purchase the items that were left because there were items of furniture that I did not have, like a dining room table, china cabinets, chairs, sofas, lights, and other small furnishings. That was fine- I needed those. Then I opened the cabinets and closets. They were not empty. Many of them held items for entertaining- table linens, holiday items, remnants of china sets, glassware, etc. The attic and two large closets were packed with Christmas items. I had to remove a lot of things from the kitchen cabinets and drawers in order to have room for my own things. In a way, I was moving twice- removing things from the new house to make room for things from my old house. The flow of things became complex- from houses to assorted destinations to houses and into closets, boxes, the garage and the bonus room.
It took months. And because I was suffering from cognitive overload and autistic burnout, it took longer because of the incredible fatigue, nap attacks and inability to make simple decisions. Still, little by little, I managed to crawl out from the rain shadow of my move and get somewhat settled. Or at least settled enough to have overnight guests without them dealing with an obstacle course of boxes. And as the summer marked my first year in my home I got a second wind and even more boxes of things were dealt with.
I still have pictures to hang, curtain rods to put up, and half an attic and garage to empty. And there is still a line of boxes in one hallway, and a bunch of half-filled and empty boxes in the bonus room. But the formal living room and dining room are box-free, as is the kitchen and breakfast room. The den is looking good, as are the bathrooms. But there are boxes waiting to be unpacked in the front and guest bedroom, as well as my study. And while the number of boxes in my own bedroom has decreased substantially, it’s still there. I still haven’t found my gravy separator or my Takahashi kitties, but I know they’re in this place somewhere. When I find them, and put them where they belong, it will be a major thing. I will celebrate.
Doom boxes become doom shelves (to scan and organize later), and doom drawers become ‘so that’s where my sifter went’. Other boxes await inventory, pricing and tagging for my flea market booths, or a trip to Goodwill or Our House.
I will not delude myself with the hope of totally eliminating every Doom box- but if I can reduce their number and know where things are, that will be progress right there. Sometimes I have to toss things into a box to sort later. That’s life. If they’re in a closet or the garage, or the attic, that’s fine. At least I can have the illusion of living in an orderly-ish home. I am learning to deal with the excess by retooling the ‘perfectly good’ trap into ‘perfectly good… for someone else’. This allows me to like something, enjoy it, then give it away or sell it for someone else to enjoy. I take good care of my things so whoever gets them will get something that is well cared for, clean, and useful.
My ultimate goal is this: having a home where at least 85 to 90% of my belongings are optimized to and for who I am and what I want in life. I sincerely hope that I will not need to move again, but if that happens, I hope to have a handle on it. There will still be DOOM boxes, but the number will be very few.