The Pain of Packing

I am the worst person at packing in the history of packing. Seriously. I hate it. Everything about it is dull and I like to do nothing more than put it off for about as long as humanly possible. This completely conflicts with my organised, OCD nature but for some reason I just can't hack it. 

When I was living back with my parents I had it fairly easy. Family holidays meant that the elf (aka Mumma Rust) would come along and suggest what to take, quantities and even an up to date weather forecast for the trip. Packing back then was a breeze. My clothes were magically washed and ironed and folded for me into the case (the latter was mostly due to my poor attempts at 'folding' neatly.) But that is a thing of the past. 

I can still remember the first time I took a trip without my family and had to pack for myself. My best friend and I took a weekend trip to Edinburgh and back. I naturally left packing until about half an hour before she was due to come over and my packing attempt was poor, so poor in fact that I only had one thing in my suitcase- sun cream. This was quickly removed by my best friend who reminded me that it was October and that I probably wouldn't be needing that. She soon packed the whole case- neatly folding and organising all of our clothes so they fitted in the one case perfectly. 

This time however I don't have an organised and sensible friend to save me. In fact, this time round I have to be the organised and sensible one, after all I do live with a man. A man who is so unconcerned with our trip to Wales for his fathers wedding that he has not organised one aspect of this trip. I have made the many lists of food we need to buy, things we have to pack and sorted out the piles of clothes to be washed, dried and ironed in time for our holiday. In fact right now as I write this he is sat in sweatpants, a t-shirt and is modelling alarming bed hair whilst playing Xbox. He has been for a fair few hours now. I may kill him.

That being said someone had to be the grown up here and I started the dreaded packing some time ago, shutting myself away in our bedroom with a cup of tea and some upbeat music to fool me into thinking this would be 'fun'. It didn't start off well, in fact I stared at an empty suitcase while sipping tea and singing along to Little Mix for quite some time...

However I soon realised that I couldn't possibly take an empty suitcase to Wales for five days and soon started rummaging through my wardrobe in an attempt to get some sort of outfit going. The wedding outfit was the first thing to be put in the suitcase but I hardly saw that as an achievement given I had been mentally planning that for a good two weeks. I then started selecting tops and jeans and mixing them together. That's the part I hate. Trying to work out what things will go together that won't mean you have to take your entire wardrobe with you. I sussed out the clothes pretty quickly but it was the shoes and outdoor wear that really halted all, if any progress. How many hundreds of layers would I need and how many different jackets would I end up taking?

Who knows. I stopped caring at that point and decided that rather than face the reality that I was indeed an adult and would probably end up organising Richard's clothes too, I'd rather get another cup of tea and watch Richard crash into a bazillion things on his Xbox than face that.

Wish me luck in Wales...