Packing is a Bitch : is soith é pacáil

I finally - after trying to do so for over a week - finished packing all my stuff in my Ernakulam flat and moved to Alleppey / Alappuzha on Friday the 5th of March. I am still struggling with the inventory in Alappuzha.

The final 20% of your packing takes up 80% of your time and effort.

It's hard to decide what to leave and what to take with you. The flat I was staying in in Ernakulam belongs to my friends who are doctors abroad and they would be cool with anything I did. I could have taken anything I wanted or left anything behind. And yet I couldn't make up my mind in time. So I did what all great planners with OCD do in times of crisis … I just winged it. As the deadline for departure departed making a nice whoosh sound, I just piled everything left behind into the remaining bags without any discrimination, categorisation or sorting of any sort and dumped it all into the car. Not the most pleasant or orderly way to go about doing these things but sometimes thinking twice before you act prevents actions from happening.

I had wanted to sort and categorise everything hierarchically somewhat as follows. There is a lot of redundancy as somethings can fit in more than one category and at various levels of hierarchy. This is a constantly evolving and restructuring tree.

  1. Things I need to possess or retain
    1. Things I must keep or retain
      1. Those I need to keep in Alappuzha
      2. Those I need to take with me to Ireland
      3. Those I need to entrust with others or in a reliable location
        1. Those I need to get work done with or out of
        2. Those others need to get work done with or out of
        3. Those I just need kept safe with no functionality
    2. Rent out
      1. Money
        1. Fixed Deposits
        2. Other Investments
      2. Objects
    3. Improvements in my storage system for all things tangible and intangible
  2. Things I need to let go or stop acquiring
    1. Sellable items - Only bother about reducing clutter or the money gained from the sale
      1. My Car (In perfect working condition but unusable due to the new rules on vehicles older than 15 years by the Indian Government)
      2. My Bike (same reasons as the car)
      3. Electronic Junk
    2. Gift away things - Giving to people I care about or items I care about to people who will use them well
    3. Charity - Giving to causes or strangers I don't know personally
    4. Non-performing Assets : These are loans to others that I am never going to recover or benefit from in any significant way. These include
      1. Tangible objects 
        1. Machines
        2. Tools
        3. Books
        4. Commodities
        5. Electronic Junk
        6. Money
      2. Intangibles
        1. Favours
        2. Access & Memberships
        3. Advice (maybe even this very blog, article or list))
    5. People who are toxic (including many who might read this post)
    6. Useless Software - You are not the curator of an ancient code museum
    7. Useless Media - How does one let go of memories ? What is life but memory ?
      1. Need to someday scan and sort and categorise all old photos (-both physical and digital ones)
  3. Things I must acquire
    1. What I need for Ireland
    2. What I need for Alappuzha
    3. What I need for Elsewhere
    4. What I need for life
      1. Insurance Policies
      2. Good Health
    5. Space : "The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials" - Lin Yutang
      1. Physical space from selling or gifting or non-required things
      2. Mind-space from getting rid of toxic people "
      3. Digital / Hard disk / Cloud Storage space from rationalising my digital assets
    6. An acceptance that some people cannot be improved, redeemed or held-on to. Maybe it is nostalgia or loyalty. Maybe it is fear of the future (for them and/or me). Maybe it is my own selfish self-interest. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

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