The Joys of Moving

It's been a slightly stressful few weeks because the New DeLews are preparing to move apartments! Yes, the time has come to say goodbye to the Whipple- our lovely first year of marriage apartment located 0.6 miles from the El with drafty windows (that's a 15 minute walk in below zero hellish weather). At some point I'll write an Ode to the Whipple, but right now I'm so eager to live a measly 0.18 miles from the El- yes people, the Medill is drastically closer! For anyone who has moved before, you know that with moving comes a bit of stress. The past 2 weekends we have spent a good amount of time painting the Medill, which led to some strong marital discussions, I mean, agreements regarding the accent color of our bedroom wall. We took a long trip to Ikea during rush hour to find the perfect curtain that will hide the faux brick wall. And yet, we haven't really begun to pack. This will be the first time we pack up our stuff together as a married couple. It's kind of exciting, kind of unnerving. Why, you ask? Well as in many things in the New DeLews' marriage, Mark and I have different styles of packing. I'm talking about very different styles.

Emily's Packing Style Example A: Last night at like 10:30pm I wisely tried to start packing by rustling through a large bin that I have strategically placed next to my dresser. This bin contains all those things that I desperately need- old hair clips, random pieces of fabric that I used to wear in my wannabe-hippie stage (wait, I'm still in that stage!), 4 pairs of scratched sunglasses, and a sundry of malaria and typhoid pills. Like I said, I need these things. As I was sitting on the hardwood floor, digging through this bin, I realized that I hadn't used anything in this bin since my last move- a year ago. But what do you do? I haven't used the turquoise hair flower for 3 years and I had completely forgotten about it, but now that I rediscovered it, I may want some hair flair this summer. Much to Mark's dismay, back into the bin it went.

Mark's Packing Style Example A: Generally Mark keeps his dresser area relatively neat. As he likes to say 'it's easier and better to maintain a general sense of organization and neatness'. So already, Mark is one step ahead of me- he doesn't have a strategically placed bin! He's also been adamant about not buying anything over the past few weeks. Like when we were at Target, 'I don't want to buy anymore ziploc sandwich bags. I don't want to pack them.' So Mark's style is to decrease any extra stuff in order to ease our moving work load. Thus the reason he told me to throw out the hair flower.

All this to say, I'm starting to realize that we'll need an extra dose of grace with each other over the next few weeks. The truth is, we're having such a fun time getting ready to move and we like any excuse to hang out with each other. But we've got to make the plunge into this thing called packing, and decide to appreciate and learn from our differences. And that, my friends, is one of the coolest things about being married!