The Purge
It absolutely amazes me how much stuff we have accumulated over the past 7+ years. I feel like a human squirrel, stashing my possessions in every nook and cranny. Stocking up for the winter. Except apparently I'm a touch forgetful... or have a tendency toward hoarding.
Our house seemed so clean and orderly (well, some of the time anyway). And in comparison to a lot of people I think it was, but still, the amount of stuff that we crammed into our relatively small house is astounding.
It's not until you're forced to sift through it all, choosing the most useful, important, special things to bring across the country (scratch that, across the continent) that you realize just how ridiculous you've been. Or just how little a lot of the stuff actually means to you.
For more than a year now I've been trying to weed out the unnecessary stuff - the clutter. But the reality was that I wasn't alone in the process. I was of course, living with Matt, who, let's just say, was not quite as motivated. Still, I thought that I had done a pretty decent job of clearing out my stuff.
Alas, it's quite a different story when you're moving 3,000 miles away into an apartment 1/2 the size. That reality provides a new lens through which you view all of your belongings. Suddenly those items that you had no intention of getting rid of are out the door (literally I couldn't get them out the door fast enough!).
It's been a process... long, yet short, hard but easier than I thought, and exhausting yet oddly energizing. And the theory is that now we're left with only the stuff that we need, love and can't live without. I guess we'll see how we did when we unpack and settle into our new home...
Our house seemed so clean and orderly (well, some of the time anyway). And in comparison to a lot of people I think it was, but still, the amount of stuff that we crammed into our relatively small house is astounding.
It's not until you're forced to sift through it all, choosing the most useful, important, special things to bring across the country (scratch that, across the continent) that you realize just how ridiculous you've been. Or just how little a lot of the stuff actually means to you.
For more than a year now I've been trying to weed out the unnecessary stuff - the clutter. But the reality was that I wasn't alone in the process. I was of course, living with Matt, who, let's just say, was not quite as motivated. Still, I thought that I had done a pretty decent job of clearing out my stuff.
Alas, it's quite a different story when you're moving 3,000 miles away into an apartment 1/2 the size. That reality provides a new lens through which you view all of your belongings. Suddenly those items that you had no intention of getting rid of are out the door (literally I couldn't get them out the door fast enough!).
It's been a process... long, yet short, hard but easier than I thought, and exhausting yet oddly energizing. And the theory is that now we're left with only the stuff that we need, love and can't live without. I guess we'll see how we did when we unpack and settle into our new home...
