Epic office move!

My building is finally going to be renovated! Twenty-two years worth of books, files, and office supplies had to be sorted, recycled or packed in two days this week for the move from our building (which will be gutted and remodeled) to "swing space" in another building for 18 months. I'm so happy for the remodel because the outside of our building is quite grand, but the innards were either too hot or too cold, and there was no adequate way to regulate temperatures in classrooms without excessive noise.

So over the last few days, I packed rolling bookshelves and large plastic boxes on dollies with books, the files I did not recycle, and the assorted stuff one has in an office. I found about a million paper clips and pennies. I have no idea how many books I have, but I do know that I recycled the equivalent of two four-drawer file cabinets and ten file boxes worth of paper. About half of the furniture will go to the ReUse Center. I probably kept enough paper files to fill one of the file cabinets and four boxes. The act of sorting and tossing all these files into the huge recycling bin was a kind of "this is your life" in fast-motion: here were the articles I had painstakingly sought and copied in libraries, the drafts of talks, the student papers that had never been picked up, the class material that I had never managed to file. So much is now digitized or available online that it is no longer necessary to keep all of this. yet, so much is still not available online that I did keep what seemed useful or important. And I couldn't bring myself to toss out the files for all my graduate classes--for sentimental value.

I experienced a rush of contradictory feelings while I was sorting through this paper trail of my professional life: pleasure at finding useful and interesting things I'd forgotten I had, disappointment at the projects that never made it past the research phase, a mix of tenderness and exasperation at my previous selves as they appear in the notes in the margins or scrawled labels. I resisted the temptation to read every file as I opened it: keep or toss? I can read it after I unpack and refile, reshelve, reorganize all these things in the new space.

This video is a fairly accurate representation of the process, but I went on to clear my bookshelves and box everything up.


Starting tomorrow and through Wednesday, the movers will roll these things across the street to the building where we will be for the next eighteen months. My temporary office has a window (yay) but is painted a hideous shade of sickly blue. I am slightly panicky about this because color affects my mood in a big way, butI will see how it looks once all the furniture is in, and art is on the walls. I figure I can live with it if I decorate. I'm quite happy to be located in a suite of offices that share a common space that we can furnish as a lounge, and that my suite-mates are all my favorite colleagues (our administrative assistant was very savvy about allocating the space!). We have already agreed to share a couch, table, some chairs, a microwave, coffee-maker, etc. I can imagine a very congenial atmosphere. I will no longer have an office next door to the person who has been the most unpleasant to me over the last two decades, and will no longer have to close the door to keep out the noise of busy hallway traffic.

The packing itself was a physical challenge for my fibromyalgia, and I'm dealing with a huge flare-up, but it will pass. This process feels good. I had been meaning to do a kind of clean-up like this for years, and the moved forced it to happen.
Julie Morgenstern, whose organizing ideas are the best I've read, talks about her process for getting rid of stuff and changing your life! SHED your stuff, change your life.
S-Separate the Treasures: what could I not imagine living without?
H-Heave the rest: purge, recycle, get rid of it.
E-Embrace your Identity From Within (wall of panic: who am I without all my stuff?)
D-Drive yourself forward: move toward the new life. by trying something entirely new.