Opening boxes

Opening boxes yields benefits, especially when you open dozens of boxes into which someone else has packed your stuff.

How does such a dreaded task benefit you? Let me count the ways.

1) You find things you haven’t seen in years. You discover items that months of active closet cleaning did not reveal.

Happily, you welcome beloved belongings previously given up as lost. Happily, you toss items you thought you trashed long ago, wishing only that you had not paid to cart them several hundred miles. A bit sadly, you dispose of three unopened packages of 10-year-old wallpaper border that matched the yellow gingham bed linens you just gave away.

2) You find things you didn’t know you had. If your spouse has a mechanical bent, you find tools you didn’t know existed.

3) You see your stuff in a new light. Knowing a stranger has not only eyeballed, but handled, every item you pull from every box, you realize two men who interacted with you for two days know more about your family than you know about yourselves.

You begin to see your stuff through their eyes. You begin to see your life through their eyes. How embarrassing! How enlightening!

4) You get physical exercise. Packing tape doesn’t yield to wimps. Lifting boxes, getting into those boxes, lifting things out of boxes, unwrapping breakables from reams of paper, flattening boxes and carting them to the street, moving items from room to room, then moving them again, and again – you create your own cardio and body-building program. Your abs thank you.

5) You get mental exercise. In fact, your creativity may soar. You may find yourself writing profound song lyrics such as these, sung to the tune of “Somewhere” from the movie, West Side Story:

“There’s a place for you,
Somewhere a place for you,
Place for storing with space to spare.
There’s a place
Somewhere.”

Releasing creativity to its full potential, you admit the place for some things lies in someone else’s home. When you find yourself holding an item and humming, “There’s a time for you, Someday a time for you,” walk quickly to the giveaway box and insert the item before you can reconsider. As in the movie West Side Story, someday usually means “not in this lifetime.”

Soaring creativity also depends on your reminding yourself, “This is a new place and a new season.” Your human default setting will try to recreate the old – to put stuff where it fit or worked or occupied space in the last season. Change that setting.

You now live in a place with differently configured space. You may still want to put the dining room table in the dining room. However, tastefully scrambling your stuff can go a long way toward creating a dramatic home makeover. What’s more, changes can make things more functional. Previously, you put certain items in certain places out of habit, even though the locations did not help you accomplish things the most efficient way.

Now, think before you set. As you open that box, while you unwrap each item, don’t mentally place it in the most familiar setting. Let your mind flow through the house – rooms, closets, drawers – and see if that item fits best in the same place as before or a new place altogether.

Galatians 6, the Message, urges: “Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” Indeed, whatever dreaded jobs you’re tackling, “Live creatively, friends.”

If that sounds impossible to you, utterly out of reach, hold God’s hand and he’ll take you there.

© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.

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Real lyrics to “Somewhere” can be found at http://www.westsidestory.com/site/level2/lyrics/somewhere.html

Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed.
Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.