This week sees us unwinding our life here. 6 years-worth of detritus and at least 35 years of junk. We thought it was time to get ruthless and bin, donate or save everything not used for a year. In the process, I’ve been throwing out old invoices from 1991! Why I’ve been holding on to them, I don’t know…it’s like they’re life bookmarks, so I didn’t want to throw them away as it feels like throwing your life away. But of course I have no use for such things and I’ve not even looked at them for 6 years since the last move. So we must be unsentimental about it
It’s exhausting and emotional to be honest. But in the last year we’ve been clearing out all sorts and I’ve not missed a single thing that we’ve thrown away. Once it’s gone, it goes from my mind completely and it’ll be the same this time too.
It's astonishing how much drek you acquire over the years that not only do you not use but don’t even look at. We just sort of hid it all in a cupboard. We are selling a lot of gardening tools of Dawn’s too and some drills etc. We reckon we’ll just buy new stuff as and when we need it. No point in paying someone to move things on the ferry we might never need.
At times it feels overwhelming to have to pick up the details and architecture of your life and take it somewhere else. When we were younger and renting, it was always quite painless, but not any more. I know we’ll keep anything of use and I’m really looking forward to being in a new place too, but the logistics are very challenging.
Not that we’ve much except sofa, beds and white goods (which are actually black) but it just all requires so many decisions and we both dislike having to make decisions. But it’ll be like this for the next six weeks. What is it that makes a change of routine such a wrench at this age, when 40 years ago in my mid 20s it was easy to do? But you can’t get change without some disturbance to the status quo can you?
Incidentally, it shows you how silly it is to get attached to material possessions in general. Maybe there is something in the old Buddhist saying that “all pain comes from attachment”…except to records, they failed to add. But we’re determined to cast away a lot of life’s baggage and I’m more than happy to do it, seeing it as part of letting go of the stroke as much as I can. I’ll have no “before” and “after” at the new place, after all. So I’m sure it's all worthwhile and after waiting for 3 months for the sale, I can’t wait for it to be over and done.
