The monster without a name

We’ve been here about six weeks now and I’m just now finishing up the process of unpacking all of our 46 boxes of crap. Of course, some crap is getting repackaged, because we don’t yet have places to put everything. But we have plenty of room to store boxes, so I guess it all works out.

The last things I’ve been unpacking have been books, mainly because it seems that half of our boxes were filled with books (to the grumblings of our movers, who just couldn’t fathom that anyone would have so many books), and partially because we haven’t had enough bookshelf space. My husband finished building the last bookshelf over the weekend and while there still isn’t enough space, it is doable (we’ll add lots more bookshelves downstairs once we plan our living/dining area). I can’t stand not to unpack all the books so I am double shelving them, which I hate to do, but what can you do? I can’t not unpack them all.

The good thing about unpacking books is you finally find those books you could never find while they were all mashed together on the shelves. I realize it would probably behoove us to alphabetize by author someday, but I’m a bit too lazy for that. Plus we add too many books to the collection on a regular basis not to make it annoying.

The bad thing about unpacking books is that you create a ginormous pile of books that you want to reread. Now, rereading books in itself isn’t a bad thing, I do it quite often, and there are some books I have read multiple times. But finding a good balance between reading books you’ve already read and reading new books is difficult, mainly because there are a seemingly limitless number of books I want to read and a limit to how much life I have left. And then what if I go blind for some reason? All this makes reading quite a stressful pastime. Sometimes I think I’d be better off without a brain.

While I can celebrate the end of our boxes, there is a monster I dare not think of lurking in the downstairs closet. This monster is composed entirely of boxes, mostly from when I first moved to Greece, that have been sitting up here getting dusty for five years. It is all crap we didn’t want to keep moving around with us, and some additional crap we dumped up here over the years. I don’t know if I have the strength to tackle this beast, but alas, it must be done, because I want our downstairs closet back. Plus I will have the joy of discovering how much of my grandmother’s china has been broken in transit. Again, it is all stuff that will have to remain stored for now, but I’ll rebox it and some things will go in permanent storage while other things will wait until we have more places to put stuff. We’re taking bets on how long it will take me to do all this, since I have a habit of working very slowly. I’m hoping for the end of the year. We’ll see.