I’m sure my friends are loving the title of this post. If you have ever participated in one of my surprisingly frequent moves in any way, you understand that I am thisclosethisclose to being on Hoarders. I am extremely sentimental about my stuff. I find it mostly interesting, entertaining, and I like my stuff. But I am aware that over the last few years it has gotten out of hand, and I think Matt definitely thinks it’s gotten out of hand, and I should stop. But I guess it didn’t really get bad until this summer when we began to prepare our house for moving. It was bad. Really bad. We started packing up all this stuff, and then it was suggested we move it to a storage unit. Which I happen to already have. So we drove the stuff up, opened up my unit and it was…horrific. For both of us to realize that the storage unit was already full of a good amount of my crap from when I had moved back from Wilmington, and stuff from when I had moved from Chapel Hill to Wilmington, and I am wondering if it’s possible there’s stuff in there from my move from NYC to Chapel Hill. But we packed up half our house, and moved it into storage and put our house on the market and sold it, and then moved into a tiny apartment, where we realized our stuff that had been left unpacked was STILL TOO MUCH STUFF. So we moved some of that stuff up to storage too. And still there are boxes are around that need to be DEALT WITH. Much easier said than done. But I think what brought it home for me this week was losing my thank you notes. I wrote thank you notes from Christmas, and I have misplaced them all. This comes from a total lack of organization. That comes from having so much stuff we are disorganized, overwhelmed and I am unable to find anything. In a 900 sq ft apartment there resides a pile of thank yous that need to be mailed. Then, my friend Sarah Kahn posted a blogpost from this site called raptitude.com. Link: http://www.raptitude.com/2011/01/i-dont-want-stuff-any-more-only-things/ He writes this beautiful, poetic diatribe about getting rid of stuff, about being able to really enjoy his things because he got rid of his stuff. Matt’s sister-in-law is also really good at getting rid of stuff. It is a talent I have yet to obtain. I always believe that part of it is genetic or something. There are people who are just born more minimally than others. Tell me about your favorite toys. If you only had ONE true favorite, and that was the only memento you kept from your childhood, you are good at this. I have a friend who came to college with her really beat up cabbage patch doll- I mean really beat up, I think her brothers had taken a hammer to the head or something, and that was it. She also lives in a tiny apartment (and will laugh when she reads this post) with a husband and a baby. When I say tiny I’m going to be generous and say 500 sq ft. Also, I used to follow Apartment Therapy religiously. Without taking much action. So anyway, being in this apartment, surrounded by boxes, I am now determined to be better at this. So, every day, I’m picking out things that i don’t really use or even really want, and I am putting them in a box, or in my chair at my desk. Box = giveaway, Chair = ebay. Maybe someone else can get some use out of them. How do you handle your stuff?

That’s not really what this blog post is about. I mean, it is about the New Year, but not about a New You. I just saw that in an ad for a fitness center and thought it would make a catchy title for this post. So every year at this time I try really hard to think about what I have done in the last year, and what I am going to do this year. Just like 90% of other Americans. Let’s start with last year: 1. Disney Marathon, Tarheel 10 miler, and GOTR Reindeer Romp. City of Oaks was supposed to be in there but I had pneumonia (Matt did it for both of us :-)) 2. Junior League volunteering 3. Volunteered as a coach for GOTR. 4. Librarianism 5. We put our house on the market. 6. We sold our house. 7. We actually freakin’ closed on our house (FHA loans are NOT FUN.) 8. I turned 30. I couldn’t find my resolutions from last year, so I have nothing to compare them to. Remind me to put them on the blog from now on, since I have no doubt that the internet is infinite space and time. Now, for the year 2013. There are some really exciting things in store. Wow, that didn’t sound exciting at all. Here are some resolutions for this year: 1. No marathons. I know how insane that sounds ,considering I haven’t missed a year in five years. But this year, no marathoning. 2. Plan a trip to a country I’ve never been to (probably to actually happen in 2014 but whatever, it takes a while for me to get a trip together) 3. Purchase a new house (we are in desperate need of this oen) 4. Really focus on writing (I feel like I say that every year) 5. Take my vitamins (I feel like I say that one every year too) 6. Spend more time with Matt. So, important announcements: I HAVE A NEW JOB. I am finally leaving my current school and starting a new job. It came out of the blue, and I wasn’t actively looking but was planning on starting to look in the spring. This came up and I went ahead and took it. My school was not so happy but tomorrow morning I will be starting a new chapter at a new school. What I want out of this is to really grow as a librarian. I think it’s really important to switch up what you’re doing and when you stop growing in a current position to fix it or move on. I made a tough choice but made the right choice for our family. That was a really grown up statement. I’m not sure how to take it right now.

So, in case you were wondering- we sold our house!! Yay! Cheers for us! We actually sold it a while ago, but I think we were in such shock over actually signing paperwork that I have been unable to process and talk about it. Towards the end of September we were kind of settling into a routine of our house being show ready, of having to wait a while to sell our home, about the market bouncing around the way it does, blah, blah blah. Then someone came along who wanted our house and we were “YAY!” then I said “OH MY GOD! WHAT HAVE WE DONE?” and M. said “See? I told you this would happen?” I guess I was thinking that the buying end of a house would be much simpler than the selling end. I thought we would walk into a home, I would clap, M. would nod his head and suggest an area for his drumkit and recording equipment, we would sign the paperwork, close on two houses in one day and be in. Yea, no. We started looking seriously. And it turns out that there is not as much going on as I thought in the buying world. I have looked at a ton of houses. I mean, a TON of houses. For example, last weekend I went and looked at 10. Saw one maybe, but nothing special. Which leads me into the point of this blog: 1. I understand that things can be fixed. I was raised by a contractor who believes in reusing and recycling. In every way. 2. What should we be looking for in a home? I was hunting down location, followed by house. 3. What elements can I ignore? Pink tile in a 1950s bathroom? Can I embrace that? 4. Yard. How much yard does one actually need? What do people do with their yards? I understand Captain Obvious stuff- place for kids to play, vegetable garden, entertaining friends on said deck. Because obviously there is a deck. Is my list too detailed? Or is it not detailed enough? I’m beginning to wonder if I have become jaded by what I have seen. I have become so practiced at walking into a stranger’s front door and immediately judging their whole life. I shake my head at kitschy decorations, laugh openly at terrible wallpaper, and shake my head at layouts. Really shake my head at some layouts. It makes me want to spend more time discussing the subject with home architects. How many stairs are a good idea? Should a kitchen be close to a dining room or no? I have many questions for architects designing in the Raleigh area from 1950- present day. If you are one of these architects and happen to be reading this, I just want you to feel free to contact me. And Garage Space. Oh. My. LORD GARAGE SPACE. I mean, can there be a bigger question? I think that if I’m living in a suburban town (like Raleigh) I should be able to request a special space to park my car and my outdoor junk. Yea, I called it junk. It’s the American Way. What I always return to and marvel at, is that when I was living in New York, I would go into these two bedroom apartments for a party or gathering with friends and marvel at how huge it was. I thought it was amazing if there was a wall to divide your kitchen from your bedroom. When I first moved up there, I was only 22, and living in a tiny studio in the West Village. I bought this microwave off CL, and went to pick it up. The girl let me into her apartment, and it was this gorgeous 1 bedroom in Chelsea with exposed brick and a refrigerator that was only a little smaller than a normal human refrigerator and she had a sofa and a bed. She was probably in her late twenties/early thirties, but I just imagined that would be me one day. Now I find myself wondering if the laundry room is big enough. Oh, the ironies of growing up.