Sacramento's changing rental market finally got me to move from a small 800-square-foot apartment where I've lived for five years. And while the move was only a short distance, the experience was long in revelations about the way we live our lives.

The old place was convenient – close to the Sacramento River and the American River Parkway, to light rail, to the state Capitol, to downtown and midtown entertainment and restaurants. We liked it, but it had become overpriced for the current market.

Where others were offering free utilities and parking, this place was charging for both – and had recently added "pet rent" and fees for things that used to be free.

So my husband and I found a new place – only a couple of blocks away.

As we packed everything into boxes, we were amazed at how much stuff we had accumulated in just five years – along with all the things we had moved from place-to-place over the years. Many of these items we had kept for no reason except that they represented some part of our lives.

I had a red external-frame Kelty backpack that I had brought to college in 1976. Then when I went to Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, I stenciled my name on it, and the faded letters were still visible. The front pockets had small holes where mice had eaten through the fabric on a trip to South Africa. I used this pack most often to carry 80 pounds of food supplies – weight I doubt I could hoist today – from the capital of Swaziland to my site in the "bush veld."

On this move, I did finally throw it away. But not before taking a photo of it.

Then there was an empty bottle of "slivowicz," a plum brandy, sitting in a kitchen cabinet. This drink is a glorified homebrew, and the bottle features a label with Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. My husband got it on a trip to Bosnia. That, too, finally went to the trash bin.

We went through photo albums – unable to pack them without first looking through them. Our first year in California (2004) was packed with exploration. And some big rookie errors that we laughed over.

For our first camping trip that May, we headed to Grouse Ridge in the mountains. We expected to "car camp" at a campground a good drive uphill. We weren't expecting snow, so when we came to snow patches that our car couldn't get across, we simply abandoned the car and rigged up our stuff to carry to the ridge (we hadn't prepared for backpacking). We camped on top of eight feet of snow.

But we had the place to ourselves and marveled at the scale and beauty of the landscape.

We chuckled looking at photos of our first hike of the "Training Hill Loop" at the Auburn State Recreation Area. We had a bad map and got lost, so we decided we'd walk down shoulderless, curvy Highway 49 to get to our car. Not recommended.

Then there are the things we'd forgotten we had. We rediscovered our wok, which we hadn't used once in five years, and vowed to relearn stir-fry cooking. We remembered our tofu-everything period (we haven't eaten tofu since) – and had another good laugh.

I found a stamp collection that I'd started as a 10-year-old and stopped in 1972. My grandparents let me take stamps from family letters starting from the 1920s, and I got new stamps as the U.S. Postal Service issued them. What a storehouse of American history that album is.

Even though we have moved, we're still in the same ZIP code and will be able to frequent all our same haunts. But the move does still offer us a new life. We're not just going to a new living space. The move provides an opportunity to rearrange ourselves, not just our things. We're looking forward to it.