In preparation for my relocation, I am relocating a lot of my stuff—either to the trash compactor or to the half-price bookstore. While I feel some natural attachment to the items I own, it is amazing what you’re willing to let go of when you ask yourself, “Do I want to haul this 600 miles over the mountains?” So, farewell to my VHS fansubs of the fifth season of Sailor Moon! Adios to my college linguistics textbook! And good-bye to the majority of my CD collection!

When I was a kid, I would sometimes go through my dad’s record collection which took up two shelves of the living room bookcase. The vinyl discs were somewhat fascinating, and it was interesting to think of a time when this was the only way to purchase recordings of music. Looking at my hundreds of CD cases, I realized they are the 1990′s equivalent of my dad’s record collection. I haven’t used any of the discs since I ripped them to MP3 several years ago. When you put about 200 of them in a box, they get rather heavy. So I’ve decided to let go of most of them, excluding any CDs with interesting packaging or by artists I particularly like.

As you can see in the photo above, I had them stored in a plastic storage tub. I bought several of these tubs after I returned home from a bridal shower one weekend to discover the toilet in the empty apartment above me had overflowed, thus ruining my entire Sandman comic collection. I’ve been paranoid about unexpected flooding ever since, and prefer to store things in waterproof containers in case the worse happens. It’s rather nice to be rid of the items. I don’t have to worry about losing them to water damage. Instead, I’m letting them go on my own terms.

I wasn’t even exhausted. I took a couple breaks, watched some Face the Nation (politicians suck), and I was surprised by how fast the whole process went. That’s one of the things about weight loss and being fit: it makes getting through life a lot easier. If I’d tried to move all my furniture 3 years ago, it would have worn me out. Simple little things like carrying in the groceries or parking a spot far away from the mall are not a big deal to me now. I like that it’s not a big deal.

I also like my new furniture arrangement. I feel a need to change things up every couple of years. I’d gotten so sick of the way my office was arranged. Now every time I step into the room I get a nice little high seeing everything organized the way I want it. I don’t know precisely what psychological affect furniture arrangement has on the human mind, but I know when my house is neat and tidy my mind feels more neat and tidy too. It’s easier to get things done than when I’m living in a messy environment.

Of course now I’ve started thinking about getting new curtains and a new entertainment center. Hmmmm, this new state of mind might start getting expensive.

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Speaking of nutritional standards, after I wrote about the Indiana State fair banning trans-fats, I realized I didn’t know whether my margarine contained any or not. I usually just scan the yellow price stickers at Kroger and throw the cheapest box in my cart without checking. I pulled the shiny, gold cardboard package out from behind my 12-pack of sodas to scan the ingredients list and – horrors! – discovered the words “partially hydrogenated corn oil” near the top of the list. There were trans-fats in my refrigerator! Trans-fats next to my cottage cheese! How had I let this happen? Thankfully, I usually only use the margarine when I make whole-wheat bread every couple weeks, so the damages to my circulatory system are minimal.

When I went grocery shopping this weekend, I pushed my cart with the wobbly wheel in front of the butter section. I grabbed margarine and vegetable oil spreads and read the backs of their boxes like I was skimming book synopses at Barnes & Noble. It took me at least three minutes to find a product that did not have the words “partially hydrogenated” in the list of ingredients. I usually buy sticks of margarine, but none of the stick products met my criteria. I had to grab a tub of Promise spread, which was one of only two products I found that did not contain trans-fats. There were one or two other brands that claimed not to have trans-fats on the label, yet the ingredient list contained those dreaded words “partially hydrogenated” so I discarded them. Liars.

If I have to spend more time than a standard TV commercial break in the butter section searching for healthy food, no wonder Americans are getting so fat. A couple months ago I tried finding natural peanut butter that didn’t have sugar added to it and gave up after a minute because I couldn’t be bothered with a game of hide n’ seek at 9:00 in the morning.

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Speaking of laziness, I’ve noticed that sometimes I eyeball the amount of olive oil to use in recipes when I’m sautéing meats and vegetables because I don’t want to wash oil off of my measuring spoon afterwards. Sometimes a recipe calls for a whisk and I’ll just use a spoon because I don’t want to be bothered with the difficulty of cleaning between the wires on my whisk afterwards. Which begs the question, why do I even have a whisk if I’m never going to use it?

The real answer to this problem might be to call maintenance and demand a dishwasher that actually cleans the dishes instead of coating them with soapy residue. However, that would require people to come into my apartment while I’m not there, which creeps me out, particularly after I noticed my air filter was recently changed and no one told me about it. Which means I should probably just get over it and demand the new dishwasher since maintenance people could be coming into my apartment everyday to have cocktail parties and I would never know about it.