Today’s No Impact Challenge is about transportation, which makes me think of yesterday’s adventure to our storage unit. What irony.

We have a storage unit because we when we moved we had a 2 month lapse. We got some of those mobile storage pods, and then never manifested the original plan so our stuff continued to be stored, supposedly 20 minutes away. As we were driving yesterday, to retrieve our winter gear (so as to not consumer more clothes), my sewing machine and some fabric (to do some projects in lieu of purchasing), and other “stuff”, we discovered that our units had been moved more than an hour away.

Scarcity washed over me … about time, energy – mine and petroleum, relationship with our contact at the storage place, baby’s discomfort in the car… I felt such strong anger – at everyone, including myself. My husband keeps saying he could never see our stuff again and he’d be fine, but not me. I miss our stuff. A whole room of arts and crafts, repurposed paper and ribbon, things I used to beautify and create, was locked up and I wanted some of it back. Including my pants.

We actually turned around, but then turned around again and kept going. All my ambivalence born in scarcity lead to indecision. I now wish we had turned around and went to the ocean, dipped the baby’s raw bum in the water, enjoyed sitting in the sand, and felt into the longing for our stuff. The pleasure I felt while splunkering through our units for the items on my missing-most list had a twang of homesick – the part of me that misses another era of life. While I am glad I found my sewing machine, and disappointed not to find my box of pants, I realize that my husband is right, we can certainly live without all of it. We have been already.