Accumulating Stuff

I just came back from a lovely 2-weeks vacation to France (Lyon and the South), Croatia and Slovenia, but lost my camera there and unfortunately cannot share some pictures...

I'm glad to be back in D.C., but I now have to face impending deadlines and stresses I conveniently forgot about during my leave. One of my two roommates is getting married in September, and understandably, she will be leaving our apartment in August.

I am planning to buy a house in the next few months, and thus must:

1- Sort out my finances

2- Reapply for pre-approval

3- Find a house

4- Go through the buying process

5- Move

Oddly enough, the moving part has me the most worried. I am finding myself confronted by two opposing problems:

1-Not enough stuff

Roommate-who's-getting married is, little-by-little, moving her stuff out of our house, and into her fiancé's. And suddenly, we have no more blender. And vegetable peeler. And vanilla essence. And a small strainer.

And though I joked with her that she had more cooking utensils than Julia Child, I'm suddenly realizing that I DO need a blender, vegetable peeler, vanilla essense, and a small strainer.

2-Too much stuff

I'm trying not to put off the inevitably painful task of sorting through my closets and packing up some boxes. These are some of the items that are crowding up my closet:

-various garden tools and plant foods (I never garden)

-tons of Congolese Kuba cloths (I have no more space on my walls to hang them)

-liquors and other strong alcohols (I always end up serving wine with dinner)

-natural cleaning products (they don't work very well so I've switched to industrial-strength ones)

-waxing kits (I generally end up going to a salon to get my legs professionally done).

My room looks spotless, thanks to my huge closets. But I never open them in public, and the amount of stuff they hide will make moving monstruously difficult.

Sigh.