My Moving History in a Nut Shell
By Janet Yaninek
Originally, I’m from California but have lived in Nigeria, France, Benin, Holland, Virginia, and for the last 12 years, Indiana. In the last 40 years, I have moved residences 20 times. I’ve moved from one apartment to another, from one city to another, from one state to another, from one country to another, and one continent to another. Every move was different; every move was nerve wracking. But each time, I thought of all my grandparents who made the their journey in the late 1800’s from Italy to American to begin a new life.
With their family possessions neatly tucked in one trunk, they took the long voyage to America. They spoke very little English, had almost no formal education but brought with them valuable life skills. One grandfather was a cooper for a famous winery in California and later became a contractor; another grandfather was a famous crab fisherman in San Francisco and my grandmothers were both famous for their culinary skills.
I learned valuable lessons from my grandparents. They brought with them just the things they needed to America; the things that represented their family, their heritage. They were focused on their exciting life ahead and not on what they were giving up or leaving behind.
Yes, there was trepidation about leaving behind their families but they made the journey nonetheless. It was a defining, very exciting moment in their life and much more than a physical journey; it was an emotional, cultural, and psychological voyage of discovery. It was an adventure into a new frame of mind.
I faced each move with less fear and more determination; I became more selective about what to pack and less concerned about what I couldn’t take with me; and most important, I tried not to sweat the small stuff.
The nice thing about moving often – there’s little time to accumulate non-essentials. We constantly pared down, constantly assessed our personal needs, did more with less, and above all, tried to be flexible.
For many years, we were living what is referred to in the world of Professional Organizing as ‘Right-sized’…that delicate balance between what things we really need to be happy and what things we think we really need.
As the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and humorist, Art Buchwald, once said, “The best things in life aren’t things.”
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