Living Out of The Box

It is always a bit of a task when I return to Minnesota to ready things for my adventures. With all my personal stuff in two small storage units and me on jet lag I always seem like I am playing a game of hide and seek or peek a boo with items, clothes, keys, and lists.

Each Spring, when I open my storage unit and see my stuff neatly packed in boxes, trailer easy to pull out, and all my footlockers full of gear labeled and inventoried it makes me happy. I am neat, organized, work in a rational logical way.  It should be easy to just pack and go.

The problem comes from after three years of stuff being in storage and several downsizing exercises. The boxes and footlockers don’t always contain the same items they did when I originally packed them.  The silent boxes sitting in the corners of the storage unit marked “LAST BOX PACKED, BEWARE, CHAOS WITHIN!!!”    Sneer at me every time I have opened the large doors of the unit the last few years.

Sometimes I have been brave enough to peek into one of those last boxes only to close the lid very quickly as the chaos slaps me in the face for disturbing it’s peaceful rest. I leave the box to rest filled with guilt that I have opened the lid to shine light within the depths.

Yesterday, I was brave. I whipped the box lids off.  Started sorting through the items and piling them into keep, throw, and giveaway piles.  Boxes were then crushed so as not to give me a reason to reload them with stuff that wanted to returned to the darkness of the unit.

Here is a small list of items I found

nail clippers, 8 pair! – I think they had sex and multiplied while in the storage unit.

nail files, 15 different types! – No, I never was a professional nail saloon owner and it makes me wonder if this really is my storage unit.  I don’t care that much about my nails.

Two curling irons, two hair dryers, 5 hair brushes, two rather large jars of hair ties of every shape and color.

A rodeo belt buckle from Germany I won when I was a barrel racer for the American Rodeo Club.

A small plaque from my home town for the year I was  honored for my military service, year 1991.

Assorted bath items.

You guessed it, the bathroom.

I do wonder how the plaque got into this box?  Maybe at the time I organized plaque as plaque (tooth) and threw it into that pile, or maybe it was one of the last things I didn’t know what to do with it and tossed it into the box.

The belt buckle is another mystery.  Why?  How?  REALLY?!!