Packing Prep: Do I Really Need This?

Less than a month to go now! I haven't entirely solidified moving plans yet, but it looks like my brother and I are going to make the drive, and then my parents will fly in to meet up with us. My mom continues to be way over-invested in the sort of bed frame that I buy. I mentioned that I was thinking a daybed might work well in the small bedroom (so that I'd have room for a desk in there too), and now she's told me that she's done daybed "research", whatever that could possibly mean, and that stores x, y, and z have wide selections of them and do I want to go look at them right now? No. I do not.

In other news, this week I've been setting up appointments I've put off for a while, getting some car repair done, and have been contemplating what I really actually absolutely need to bring with me. I'm just taking my own car up, no u-hauls or other supplementary mobile storage units, so room is fairly limited. I started typing out an overly-specific packing list, though I think a better approach may be to figure out the big stuff that's definitely going up with me and that will take up the most room, and then figure out what can fit around these huge, important items. 

As fast as I'm going through books this summer, I know I'm not going to have much time for personal reading once classes get started and shouldn't really keep that many with me. But I still want need their presence. More than almost anything else, having my books with me makes a place feel like home to me. And I know from past experience that if I don't have enough around me, or if my shelves seem a little emptier than they should be, I'm all too eager to go to the used bookstore and fill them. However, I can ship these up, so it's not much of a transportation issue as it is a storage one, since the bedroom I'm moving into is quite small. I'm thinking that I should limit myself to 50ish and hope my new roommates aren't bothered if a new bookshelf appears in the living room. :)

I'm also determined to bring my digital piano up, despite it being big and clunky and it taking up way more than its share of car space. When I stressed out in undergrad, having a piano to noodle around on for a few minutes/hours was one of the best ways to unwind, and I think that'll be doubly important in this upcoming year. Plus, I wouldn't want to deprive my future roomies of my mediocre renditions of songs from the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack. So, that's definitely going, and I'll have to figure out how to pack around that. 

Thankfully, all my other stuff is fairly limited. I didn't accumulate a lot of clothing in college I'd feel bad leaving behind, mostly just student-group t-shirts that I should probably drop off at Goodwill anyway. And I'm not bringing much in the way of linens, since I'm getting a different-sized bed. I am leaving behind my TV and DVDs at my parents' for now, which will probably be a good move; if I need to get my Breaking Bad fix on a bigger screen, I can make some new friends who also share good taste in TV programs. No furniture, aside from a metal desk chair I'm a bit in love with, is coming with me.

I'm really looking forward to shedding a lot of the unnecessary stuff I've accumulated in college and beyond. The trick is going to be keeping everything minimal and organized.

relevant link: Unclutterer