How Long Would it Take to Pack Your Belongings?

Moving is never far from my consciousness because we have done it so often and especially now since we are moving again (Lord willing, to Lowville, NY where there is a husband wife family doctor team that Glenn will be working with and where the hospital has- praise the Lord!!- agreed to cover housing and the scholarship!!) at the end of March.

Today at lunch I was reading to the kids from George Muller: The Guardian of Bristol's Orphans (I would highly recommend this series of biographies. We would like to buy the whole set one day.) and we were reading about how George and Mary Müller moved from Teignmouth to Bristol. They decided they were moving and George started visiting everyone in the congregation the next day.  I was struck by the next two sentences: "Two days and many tears later, George Müller had told everyone at Ebenezer Chapel that he was moving to Bristol. It took less than an hour to pack their few belongings, and with sad hearts, on May 25, 1832, the Müllers boarded a stagecoach for Bristol." (emphasis mine)

LESS THAN AN HOUR???? My first thought was, "Oh my. I have too much stuff!" Part of the reason that we are staying home for Christmas this year is that we are moving at the end of March and we need to start packing because this is the most time off that we have before our move and we are all so busy while school is in session and I really don't want to give up school time to pack and have to do school farther into the summer.

Picture from when we packed up to move to this apartment from the previous apartment we lived in in Syracuse. It is encouraging to note we no longer some of the stuff in this picture but we have collected more in the almost 19 months we've lived here.

I think that instead of packing I am going to be spending a lot of time purging over break. That is not easy for a horder like me but having less stuff will free me up to be able to move when God asks me to move, like the Müllers did, and not be overwhelmed by all this stuff when I am living anywhere. My friend Liz moved across the country this fall with her husband and 4 kids in just her 12 passenger van and a pull behind uhaul trailer. She is an inspiration to me. We usually use one of those moving vans and stuff our van full and then have to go back to where we used to live to fill our van one more time. I don't want to do have to go back for more this time which means we need to make some decisions. While making dinner tonight I was listening to the Simple Mom podcast and she had some good ideas and was talking with the author of this article "When Less Really Is More" which inspired me. I really want to do this with my family over the next two weeks so that, though it will definitely take more than an hour to pack up in March, it won't, Lord willing, take as long because we don't have as much stuff.

So... how about you? How long would it take YOU to pack up your belongings?