Kristin and Matt get organized

Right now I'm downloading the new Hanson album (going to see them in concert next month with Sonja and Shana in Hyannis!!!) and watching the movie Away We Go (which is fantastic and so much better than I expected) and generally being lazy because this entire Saturday was spent in organization land. It was a really nice, albeit hot, summer day and we spent all of it packing up our winter clothes, repacking the boxes and bags of shower gifts in my parents' garage, reorganizing Matt's clothing in my brothers' old room, and almost finishing our wedding favors. We bought plastic storage bins at Wal*Mart and DAMN they were expensive! Who knew simple plastic containers would be so pricey? And we're going to need many more, unfortunately.

Anyway, we did a lot of organizing so that when it comes time to move into our house (which hopefully will still be July 12 as long as our seller over there actually does what we need him to do), things will be easier to find and unpack. We already packed up our winter clothes and coats and labeled the bins so those can go right into the basement. From there we divided kitchen stuff and other room-specific items into their own bins so that when we unpack, everything can easily go where it needs to go. Because the move is probably (hopefully) going to be before the wedding, the easier we can make the process, the better. It'll also make it really easy to see what we still need to buy for the house and it will give us a chance to sort of begin to get settled in so when we come home from our honeymoon, we won't have a trillion boxes to contend with (again, hopefully).

It's really bizarre packing up my childhood bedroom and getting ready to move my life into a new house, but at the same time it's really exciting to have this new start. Everything seems to be changing at once-- we traded my car in today so my brother could get a safer car, and I then inherited my dad's car. So I symbolically said goodbye to my teenage years today when my car left because, really, that was the first car I ever drove and it always took care of me and transported me to many, many great places (like college for 4 years, my friends' houses, Cape Cod, the beach, etc). Love you, old car! But now I have a new car (well, new to me), a new house, a new almost-husband, a new neighborhood, almost a new last name! A new role as wife! It's strange, but that's life, right?

Side note-- packing is such a huge pain in the butt that I don't plan on doing it again for a VERY long time. Like ever. The nice thing is that it gives me a chance to weed through all my possessions and take inventory. Do I really need all those binders full of 10th grade tests and homework assignments? Or 700 pajama t-shirts? I don't think so. Purging feels great and I'm sure it'll make moving less insane, but it really sucks too. And Matt tried many different tactics today to get me to give up some of my books ("Maybe we can leave some here for our future kids? Maybe we can leave some in boxes in the basement? I mean, some of these seem like one-time-reads? You could sell a few on one of those book-selling websites?) and I had to gently remind him that I'm a writer and I kind of get emotionally attached to my books and they're really the only thing I collect, so they're all coming to live with us. I might donate a few... but I told him not to get his hopes up.

Anyway... tomorrow we're transporting antique furniture from my great-uncle's apartment in Pawtucket (he passed away a few weeks ago) and putting it in my parents' garage with the rest of our stuff. Should be interesting... we have a family friend helping us, so hopefully it'll be a piece of cake and won't take all day. It's Father's Day, after all! So that's our weekend... our last "unscheduled" weekend until the wedding. Crazy! With only 49 days to go, we're starting to feel the crunch. And at the end of next week, I go to my residency for 8 days. Bring it on, thesis semester, wedding, house, and big move! Bring it! I'm ready (I think...).