A taster glass from a local brewery. A book about blockchain technology. Two steel cups and a pint glass with "Wisconsin Public Radio" logos on them. A camping air mattress. A leather ottoman. A single Fiestaware bowl plate. A box of USB charging cables. A pair of old boots. A ceramic owl.
As you get closer and closer to the last day before you finally move from one home to the next, the remaining objects in your home seem to drift into entropy. The vital "don't-pack-it-until-the-last-minute" items co-mingle with items that have been hovering near the "maybe donate this?" pile for weeks.
In short, moving is chaos. Particularly for your stuff.
And as you sweat lifting box after box and struggling to make space in each load (never spread a move out over multiple weeks, yeesh) you start to reflect on how stuff is imbued with meaning in the first place. The ottoman, once an essential compliment to your favorite armchair, stuffed with camera gear and other technological treasures, makes its way to the curb, getting damp in a slow, lonely rain. The camp bed from all those camping trips never taken becomes your primary piece of living room furniture. The taster glass might not make the trip, since it missed its passage on the Great Barware Box Ark to the the storage unit and it has no convenient transport. The Fiestaware plate — dubbed the only vessel your princely, aging Boston terrier is willing to eat from — will be carefully packed and transported in the car among only the most essential items.
Stuff is weird because its worth to us is largely determined by purpose, but purpose is so very, entirely subjective. Something can be critically important today, serve as a memory tomorrow, and can seem like junk a month later.
It's fitting that as my moving day arrives, TTBOOK would re-air our show all about our complicated relationship with stuff. Thinking about my very expensive washing machine container in an extremely tight housing market has been giving me heartburn lately, but Adam Minter's advice about giving anything that's still useful away — because it does someone else who can use it more good than it does you "just-in-case"-ing away in your basement — has made it a whole lot easier to let go of stuff I've been hanging on to.
If anyone needs an ottoman, mine is sitting on the curb, only lightly damp. Stores camera gear fine! Free or best offer.
— Mark