On my realization of overabundance

My biggest mission this week has been to completely pack my apartment into boxes so that it's prepared for my big move this weekend.  It started innocently enough.  I've got about ten boxes and a few suitcases.  I thought to myself. That should be enough.  I started packing my family room, all of the odds and ends lying around, the candles, the decorations, the office supplies, the books (so many books) and suddenly the boxes had disappeared.  Okay.  Guess I'll go beg for a few more boxes at the grocery store. So I did that, and proceeded to use them to pack my belongings in my bedroom...and only my belongings in my bedroom.  Really?  I'm out of boxes again? I thought.

Conveniently we had just done some major reorganization at work and I was able to grab some leftover boxes there.  I pounced on them like Simba on Zazu. Those babies were mine before they were even empty. So I brought them home and started to pack my bathroom and my utility closet which is really just full of the random stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere else.  I started packing my kitchen with the remaining boxes... only to run out again.

That leads me to now.  Sitting on my couch, glaring at the massive mountain of packed boxes which have single-handedly usurped the majority of the space in my living room, and planning for tomorrow when I will, again, go to the grocery store to beg for more boxes so that I can finish packing my kitchen.  Pathetic.

And after all of this running around to find boxes, creative manipulation of items within boxes for space conservation, hours spent putting everything into boxes, I'm left with a question:

Where on earth did all of this stuff come from!?

How did I end up with a giant mountain of belongings in my living room?  Do I really use all of this stuff?  Do I even need all of this stuff?

The answer to that last question is a resounding NO.  I absolutely do not need all of this stuff.  In fact, no one needs all of this stuff.  There's no reason a single person living alone should have this much stuff when she moves.  But I know I'm not alone. I know that I don't really have more belongings to my name than other person like me.  I know that it's pretty typical to have this many boxes.  But I guess that's where the problem is for me. Most people live this way--with extra stuff.  Most people are as materialistic as I apparently am. Most people are as dependent on their belongings as I am.

Moving sucks.  But moving sucks even more when you realize that your mountain of boxes is just one of millions of box mountains in the world.  Most people have box mountains,

but some people don't have any boxes at all.

Keep on thinking,
Josie