If you don't want to read my moving ramblings, better come back in a month

Packing is tough. Especially when part of you wants to grab three pair of underwear, the remote controls and your cats. . . leaving the rest behind.

Moving makes me want to have a fresh start; a start sans vacuum cleaners, boxes of sympathy cards and partially used bottles of lotion. I don't want to bring our dusty clutter to the new place. I want it to be clean, clear and vast, nothing but a pillow to lay my head on and a towel to dry my hair. (Well, and maybe a box of butter cookies to sustain me.)

Seriously, where does all of this stuff come from and do we need it? I started this whole packing thing with the credo: "Everything will be touched, everything will be considered. Nothing goes that we don't love with the very essence of our being, want and need." However, I know before long it will be transformed to: "Throw it in a box, we'll deal with it later."

And in a month, when I am hunting for some, let's say, lotion, I'll come across the box that contains the signature book from my grandmother's funeral (what is the socially acceptable thing to do with this?), a dried up inkpen and partially eaten box of Whoppers and wonder why I hauled this across town and dumped it in my basement.

I'm still on my OCD packing track. All of the boxes are labeled on the top and all four sides. (I'd scribble on the bottoms too if only I could think of that before I fill them.) I'm still boxing stuff up very methodically, keeping like things together and using my own twisted organizational logic. Items are wrapped, re-wrapped, fitted into boxes just "so."

"Special things" are placed carefully in a box that I will be solely responsible for. ("Special things" translates to the tacky stuff that's survived each of my previous moves and has therefore become endearing and no longer tacky.)

I know, however, that come July, it will be mayhem: socks will be mingled with cooking utensils. Yarn will be lumped in with Lenny Kravitz's Greatest Hits.

I say let's leave it all for the new owners as a house warming gift with a card that reads: "Here's all our junk. Have a happy life. If you find a remote control or a cat, send it over to us at. . . "