A Series of Homes

Yesterday Brian and I went looking at a apartments to move into in a few weeks. We found several good options in our price range so we don't feel stressed at all. Dreading packing and moving and unpacking, my wheels got turning and I realized I haven't stayed in a home for more than a year since high school. 

5th grade through 12th grade I lived with my parents in Roswell, GA. Seven whole years of the same old home, same room, same bed, same everything. 

Each year of college I lived in a different dorm room. Each year they got progressively better and my roommate and I were naïvely like, "This is the best room in the world!!!!"

For one semester in college I actually lived with a random insane family in East Nashville while I completed an internship. The family was welcoming, safe, and  nice but SO weird. Like they didn't own a microwave or any TV's, and they only took baths not showers, and they made their own dish soap. The walls and ceilings were all painted deep purple and bright green, and the hallways were cover in childhood art by their now-adult children. But they were so nice and they only charged me like $350 a month. 

After college I spent a year in a very janky apartment with my friend Sara while I went to grad school. It was the cheapest safe-ish apartment within ten miles of work and school so we went for it. I should write more about our weird experiences in that complex. Here's a good little story: our downstairs neighbor had a five year old boy who liked to take baths in a large bucket outdoors. 

After grad school I got my first job in Atlanta and I lived in a cute little condo in Midtown. I quit that job after a few months and moved back to my parents house. 

I spent about five months at my parents' house, then they sold their house and we all moved into a rental house in the next town over. 

Then my parents moved out (October 2015) and moved into their own new house. Then Brian moved in with me (November 2015) and it feels like a whole different home. 

I've never kept my stuff in one place for over a year since high school. You'd think it'd force me to be a little less of a pack rat and let go of stuff I don't need. But actually I haven't been learning that lesson until now, as I'm preparing to move from a house to an apartment. I've always been able to keep plenty of "keepsake boxes" full of memories stuffed in the basement at my parents' house. Yearbooks, awards, trinkets... I never needed to go through it and purge. Til now! I'm only going to take ONE box of yearbooks, ONE small box of random keepsakes, and ONE small box of craft supplies. I'm simultaneously looking forward to it and dreading it.