This morning I read a blog about minimalism
It came at the exact right time to be honest, as this was exactly what I needed to read and remind myself of: stuff is just stuff and quite often not even important to us. We all know the feeling of having too many items in our home that are excessive and never or barely used. Some of us may only declutter when moving homes, others may do it regularly or even only buy new things when an old thing is removed first. Either way, it's fine whatever you choose because in the end it's your life and you need to be happy with how you live it.
I used to hold on to items for a long time
To me, most things had some sort of emotional value, a memory to someone, or maybe an item that used to be one of my favorites and at some point became excessive but still, I could not get rid of it. When we left our home country a few months after the birth of our daughter, we left in stress, hurry, and fear. Meaning that I was not able to think my choices of items that needed to go with us through carefully. In my stress, I even forgot the few items that were incredibly important to me as they were my hold-on memories to my two oldest children. I made sure to have this insight constantly to NOT forget them, and eventually, in Spain, I discovered they weren't there. I could cry about it for days, to be honest, I knew I would now never see them again and it hurt, it still does. On the other hand, it also means that all these other items became even less relevant and important when I realized that I'd trade all my other belongings in my suitcases for these few things. Stuff is just stuff, and thankfully, memories live on forever in our hearts and minds.
We lived a bit of a nomadic lifestyle for a while
As we were volunteering and had a few temporary accommodations we went with the flow and didn't know what the future would bring. Thankfully for us, our final host became a friend and helped us settle down, we are still grateful for meeting a complete stranger who turned out to be someone with a golden heart! If it weren't for his help, who knows if we were settled down that quickly after leaving our home country? Although we stayed for almost a year in our rental apartment when we found one, we never collected as much stuff as we did before, but still narrowing it down to a few suitcases was hard, even then. Add a longer period here in Hungary, namely 5 years, and you will understand that narrowing things down now is harder than it was at the time.
Laptop only vs a full office
Back then our "workplace" was a laptop, now we have a complete office including comforts like several screens that hang at the perfect angle as well as a decent keyboard, a printer, and speakers. The computer itself is a tiny one, and the least of our worries to carry! The items that belong in the office are probably the most important luggage to carry because without these items, we can't work. Well, I can work on my laptop, but for my boyfriend, it's impossible to do his work if he isn't able to use his computer. It's the most important luggage we carry when we go, you could say it's our lifeline in a way haha. No workplace, no income.
I've been bothered by the clutter around me
It's inevitable when you move, that you will see boxes, or piles of stuff that need to be thrown away, sold, donated, or taken with you. You have to sort your items carefully to find out what's needed and slowly narrow things down to the perfect amount of items you can take with you. That's what I've been doing for a few months now. I knew that some items would take more time to categorize as well as some items that needed to be sold would take time before they found a buyer. It's been one heck of a journey, where at first the listings would move quite fast, and at some point, sales stagnated a bit and I found more useless chats in my dm where people often even wouldn't show up on appointments. It's been a true headache especially the FB ping for when a chat appears is one that I will not mind hearing ever again after I close this chapter. I think I can safely say that FB will be a closed chapter again unless the new school for my daughter also communicates there like the previous one did.
I donated items, I sold items and I threw some items in the bin
I also made the first big selection of clothes that will most likely end up in the suitcases and will be taken to Spain. I did a test with them and see if all our clothes could fit in the 3 trolleys (carry-on luggage) and it seems that's the case. Shoes are the exception though, I'm not counting these. We will have to narrow things down until it fits in 2 big suitcases and a maximum of 3 smaller trolleys. This is not your average packing session though because that includes 2 big screens, a set of speakers, keyboards, mouses, and a few laptops as well. But obviously, there's more we need to take so it will be a challenge either way. Thankfully, we have a very nice friend in Spain where we also have some boxes with stuff plus kite gear from when we left Spain, and he offered that we could send a box (or 2) to their house. We gladly took that offer but decided to only send 1 moving box and ship as many things in it as possible.
I'm getting less picky now the date is getting closer
I noticed that I have less trouble throwing things away as I tried to offer them for a decent price a few times and as well as for free, I just want things to move now and not deal with potential buyers anymore. It's exhausting to deal with people that often think you will just bring items somewhere and are truly annoyed when you say you won't or in this case I just say I can't due to self-isolating. That's less hard to say so I prefer that reason now, it's also true so I'm not lying. During the past days, we have brought several boxes with (some very good) shoes as well as clothes outside for the gypsies to take and I'm not even bothered anymore that I didn't earn any money back while we would have never given the items away if we didn't move countries. But this is the decision we made, I could send two boxes to Spain instead of one, but truthfully, there are too many items we kept for comfort not because they are worth shipping over there. This is a great time to be very picky about the belongings that are left and start the minimalistic journey again. I won't say that I narrow it down to X items max, but I really want to try and not buy too many items in our new home. I will ask myself do we really need this? Will we use it often or is this more a "just in case we need it" item. When it's the latter, I will probably refrain from buying it.
I'm very curious to see our status in let's say a day or 5 from now as well as right before departure. I'm not sure yet if it will end up in a stressful last-minute realization that we still need to narrow it down a bit or that all goes smooth immediately. Time will tell! Thank you for reading!
Previous parts of The Expat Diaries
- When the universe aligns everything perfectly
- Catching up and saying goodbyes
- We're closing the kindergarten chapter sooner than expected
- Finding a place to live in Spain
- The countdown is real - The last times in Budapest
- Our life in 6 suitcases - sorting, selling & giving away our belongings
- Moving back to Spain very soon!
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