"Clutter holds us back, like a giant weight, and creates blockages in our lives and spirits ..."Since receiving our most recent Notice to Vacate, not quite four weeks ago, we've been on a massive campaign to (further) reduce our belongings. Culling is a bit of a theme here and featured for the past several years in our annual newsletter.
There was a lot of "releasing" prior to our December 2012 interstate relocation (to the extent that Nick got to know many of the volunteers at one of the op-shops en route to his workplace) but even those efforts are nothing compared to our current determination!
At the end of 2012, all our furniture and belongings were housed in two storage units, conveniently located side-by-side. We enlisted the aid of a removalist company to shift the larger items.
The same company had assisted during two prior moves. In 2009 we needed them for 15 man-hours but a year later we required only 12 man-hours. Another two years down the track and we had reduced even further to just 8 man-hours!
We'll be using different removalists when it comes time to leave this home but our family aim is for everything to fit into just one storage unit - praps even with room to spare!
I'm not entirely sure how optimistic or achievable that goal is but we are definitely tackling things differently this time.
It's our 7th move in 10 years and I processed the shock/grief of another upheaval far more quickly than previously. I started culling the day after receiving the Notice and have been able to maintain that motivation. Erin is on-board also and to date we've sent 20 boxes to various local op-shops as well as becoming regulars at the post office due to all our eBay and other sales. I've lost count of how much has been recycled and binned - but what we've released far outweighs that which has been packed (in 21 boxes).
I expect most of us are familiar with the fact that moving is recognised as a major stressful event, close to death and divorce. I've actually been going over our previous moves. Just about all of them involved other acute stress, aside from the move itself - which is possibly why this one feels a little easier. Definitely not easy but not quite as hard, in spite of high levels of uncertainty (which are set to continue for a while yet).
Of course if our accumulated clutter is holding us back, by the time we're ready to go we'll have released so much blockage that we could end up anywhere!
