You know that drawer (or three) in the bathroom where you toss everything because "it's still good" or "I might use that?"  Now imagine sorting through all the half-full travel sized shampoos, tubes of moisturizer that were going to transform your face, the jumbo refill bottle of hand soap you'd forgotten about and whittling it all down to what will fit in one milk crate.  That's right, we instituted the trunk-of-the-car crate system last night.  But before explaining its brilliant design, I think I need to back up to what precipitates our need for it.

For some time I've been perfecting an idea of my dream lifestyle.  It would include spending ample time with friends and family, lots of writing, encountering different settings and the people who live in them, finding opportunites to be of service to others, being in love.  Instead of associating my mortgage with "a cute vintage bungalow," it had started to feel more like an obligation, one that had to be kept up and fed monthly.  I was loving life in Charlotte--sunny weather, great folks, a flexible schedule.  I stayed up as late as I wanted, made great friends, attended great parties, even wrote a novel!  But when I asked myself the old, "If I could pick any life I wanted...?"   I would go, roam, see what comes.  When my boyfriend came up with the same answer, there was only one question left to ask, "When?" 

Which brings us to the milk crates.  We can fit five in the trunk of our Solara convertible with one skinny cooler.  We've divided them up: books, toiletries, shoes/misc., and one each for clothes.  Anything that doesn't fit was given a new home (hence, the yard sale madness).  As we knock on the doors of all our relatives and old friends this summer, we'll first pop the trunk, grab a few provisions and head in with a duffle bag.  Since we pull out on Saturday, Fred decided we should begin testing our theory.  We packed the crates and are living out of them for the next two days, giving ourselves the chance to recognize if any essentials didn't make it in.  We're taking the perspecitve that this summer's crate living is a warm-up, a stretching exercise in living on less.  We'll hone the skill.  We have to be pros by fall when our hop to Central America will require further purging: the trunk down to two backpacks!