Material girl

I’ve found a place to rent in San José—a townhouse in an “apartment community”. More like a freakin’ apartment megalopolis, but having walked into the model and observed how the leasing agents interact with current residents, I’m pretty confident I can live there with some degree of comfort for the ten month term of the lease I signed.

(I have to say that it wasn’t that easy finding a place in the Silicon Valley. Evidently there are so many people seeking rentals that landlords and property managers can be pretty cavalier in their dealings with prospective tenants. More than one apartment complex wouldn’t even show you the units coming available until they were vacated. This works against someone relocating from another area. It would seem that people do rent accommodations sight unseen.)

So now I have the challenge of trimming down my possessions from 2000sf to about 1300sf. (Actually, from more than 2000, because I currently have a garage. While it’s not crammed with things, its walls are lined with cartons, many of them from clearing out “clutter” for staging my place for sale.) Even though I’ve already gone through an exercise and had the Salvation army pick up two bookcases &about 15 cartons of stuff I felt I could live without

I’ve decided that this paring down isn’t a bad thing at all. I know for a fact I still have many, many things in closets and cabinets for which I’ve had no use for years. Clothes, dishes, linens. And stuff weighs you down. If you have 2000sf of possessions, you have to find a place with 2000sf of space to put them in.

I’ve already cleared out my books, and I’m down to 12 bookcases. However, I know I can put about seven or eight of them in storage, along with most of the volumes. I did this when I spent three years overseas; I can pick carefully and live out the next year with ones I’m ready to read.

Besides—I’ve already scoped out the local libraries in the San José area.

Of course, going through the sorting exercise is probably going to bugger the staging. That’ll be a bit of a trick. But I’m actually looking forward to seeing how much of this excess baggage I can leave behind me.

It’s time for unburdening. And leaving Seattle behind is the perfect occasion for doing it.