My family recently moved from a three-bedroom house to a two-bedroom apartment.Our home is being renovated and we needed to relocate temporarily. We finally got the Wifi set up I am writing this surrounded by boxes that still need to be unpacked.

We left this behind yesterday:

… and entered the world of this:

The girls were pretty excited to unwrap everything.

“It’s just like Christmas!” they shrieked. I tried very hard to see it through their eyes, I really did, but it was hard to stay positive amid the dust and the packing paper. I learned a very valuable lesson yesterday: I packed too much stuff.  For weeks we’ve been sorting and purging our goods and getting rid of our old stuff, but it’s looking like I didn’t pare things down enough at all. More than half of our belongings went into storage. Our wedding china, camping gear, and some other valuables went to my in-laws basement, but I didn’t manage to edit it all down to “apartment size.”

The storage drawer underneath our apartment oven can’t hold all of our cookie sheets. The fruit drawer in the fridge only holds a half-dozen apples. I still don’t know where I’m going to put all of my office supplies. This is going to take some adjustment.

I had an epiphany as I unpacked a second pie plate. I don’t even bake that much, why on earth did I bring two? (I actually have four.) I also have three colanders.  Two sets of measuring cups. As I unravel the paper around each item I think to myself: how many of these things do we need, really need? Can we make do with only four glasses? Four bowls? Four plates?

What do you think? Are you the kind of person who has one colander? Or three?