There are eras in life which culture and history have pre-labeled for us; infancy, adolescence, and middle-age, for example. There are also the labels which we use in our own mind to rope off portions of the continuous stream of our life into palatable and easy to process chunks. As a personal example of this, I will always think of the years from '92 to '96 as "The Band Years" since those years will always carry memories of band practices, the unending and fruitless search for singers, loud and cramped basement rooms packed with gear worth more than the vehicles the individual band members drove. There is a girl's name semi-associated with a one or two year span of my younger life due to the impact our relationship had on my life at that time.

When, many years from now, I look back on the current era of my life, I think the label my mind will apply will be "The Purging Years". The past two to three years have had one constant in them, me lightening the amount of stuff that I own. This is not a steady constant as I have had times of acquisition followed by times of purging, but the average trend has been downward.

The prime culprit in this pattern, the man at whose feet I lay all blame for this, is that Australian guy from the cable TV show Clean Sweep. His impassioned exhortations to the pack rats--whose homes had been taken over by junk to such a point that they or their neighbors felt the need to call in a reality/makeover show to deal with the situation--had a great impact on me. Packratism is stitched through the center of my soul less like a damning red thread and more like webs of steel cable, and seeing these people come to terms with the idea that they did not need most of the stuff that was cluttering up their lives was inspiring.

It was not as easy as it looked. That first item, that first thing to get rid of was always the hardest. Once that happened, the next thing and the next thing and the next thing come a lot easier, but getting rid of that first thing can be like pulling teeth or getting your little sister to give your favorite cassette tape back, the one you let her borrow but which she thinks you gave her.

I piled clothes into garbage bags and movies and books into old cardboard boxes. I put some old mementos, ones that I was holding onto for vague sentimental reasons but not using or displaying, into the boxes with the books. My sister claimed the lion's share of my meager vinyl collection. It took two trips with the bed of my little truck stuffed to the top to haul all of the stuff to the thrift store.

Since then I have gone through several more rounds of purging, getting rid of a large chunk of my movie collection and paring down my wardrobe even farther. Recently, as I referenced in an earlier post, I even got around to doing a semi-serious purge of my books.

The recent resurgence of the purging cycle is due to my impending move. In July my sister will be getting married, and since I don't want to be around to experience the newlyweds basking the glow of their newlywed status, I will be moving out in June. I am getting rid of everything that is not worth the effort of moving and trying, in the process, to minimalize my life a bit. I'm even considering getting rid of both of my desktops and just using a laptop. The problem with that idea is that the only laptop I would consider would be a MacBook Pro, and I'm a bit skittish about making the switch.

My apartment search has centered on the Homewood and Southside areas. To help the reader understand my conundrum related to finding an apartment, I present these two typo-riddled diagrams. The first expresses how I think the process should work, and the second expresses how the process will likely work.

Diagram 1.a

Diagram 1.b

Both areas have their pros and cons (Homewood has several great running/walking tracks, but I have more friends in Southside) and I have actually found a few places in each that might fit my budget. If anyone who has done any apartment hunting lately, and knows of any good 1BR places in those areas that are reasonably priced (sub-$600 is a necessity, sub-$500 would be absolutely grand), just shoot me an email (see the contact link at the top of this page) or leave a comment below.