How to Reduce Four-Plus Years Into a Box, a Suitcase, and a Carry-On in 12 Easy Steps

Photo by charlieontheradio

You've got 26 days left in Colombia; here's what you do:

1. Rip all bootleg, copied, burned, and otherwise unoriginal CDs to your computer. No need to carry home all that plastic (and the joy of this is rediscovering old tunes and artists who hadn't crooned from your speakers in a while...some good ol' Donny Hathaway, anyone?).


2. Give towels and your $50 DVD player to the sweet old lady you live with. Or to the sweet old lady next door. Or to the sweet old lady who cleans the floors at your job. Either way, there's always a sweet old lady somewhere to give something to. She can get the tube socks, too ($10 a bag at the flea market).


3. Donate Before the Mayflower (681 pages) and The Brazil Reader (544 pages) to some inquisitive English students; they'll be grateful for the cultural insight and you'll be grateful for the lightened luggage. If you really need those books again, that's what Amazon.com is for. Do NOT donate first editions or autographed copies of anything.


4. Give plastic CD and DVD cases to the art teacher who can do something creative with the images; a collage, montage, melange, or some other artsy-fartsy but interesting crap. She can also get the old in-flight magazines and back issues of Men's Health and Ebony (the Obama issues should get packed in the box, along with the CD carrying case that holds the actual DVDs).


5. Give I'm-too-sexy white crew-neck and V-neck t-shirts to friends at the gym, who are the only people your size in the country anyway; you can always get more at Target. They can have the tubs of Hydroxycut Hardcore, too, especially since the gubment said not to take it.


6. On that note, if it ain't been worn more than twice in the last four years, there's somebody else who'll wear it tomorrow.


7. Give old curriculum circulars and blank grade sheets to your students during final exams to make paper airplanes and turn the classroom into Hartsfield-Jackson.


8. Sell the roller-blades. If you ain't learnt by nah...


9. Re-write the scribblings on every other page of the six composition books you've had for years into one small notebook. Or better yet, throw them shits away. Along with all the peer-edited copies of your thesis fiction project that you've kept for the interminably-impending re-write.


10. You might have to make a Sophie's choice about the porn collection.


11. Get back to me on the shoebox full of ticket stubs, museum guides, mini-maps, boarding passes, and the Cuba Offers You government tourist guide. There has to be some kind of use for all this memorabilia. And you know the Prince poster gets rolled up and packed (stuff some dress socks in that mug to retain the shape, then break out the iron when you get home!).


12. Place regrets, fears, doubts, and other assorted baggage out by the curb.
    

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