Culling The Clutter!

When we performed ‘The Big Move’ last year, we naturally cleared out heaps of rubbish in the process. Numerous trips were made to the local tip, although we still seemed to have an enormous amount of things to pack in boxes.

Many of the items that came under the heading of ‘keepsakes’ were despatched to my mother-in-law’s loft. Other belongings were stowed in boxes under one of two categories – group 1 for things we would need almost immediately, and 2 for items that we would unpack at a later date.

Following the move, we had to reorganise some of these boxes as our plans changed. Our original idea of moving into our static caravan whilst the renovation took shape was shelved, due to an issue with transporting said caravan down our lane. Deciding to live in the ‘glorified shed’ whilst simultaneously working on it seemed to warrant a whole different set of chosen belongings.

We finally organised ourselves and have lived ever since with half of our possessions still boxed and stored at various points around the building. What suddenly struck us a few days ago, however, was that we haven’t missed the things that are out of reach. In fact, we’re struggling to remember what half of them are! Which got us thinking...

How many of our possessions do we not actually need? Ok, we’re living a slightly pared down lifestyle, and when we open the boxes we may find some items that we greet like long-lost friends. But we can’t help wondering whether half the boxes’ contents will be destined for the tip and local charity shops. Less is more, as they say, and maybe we’d all got used to too much clutter.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens at the grand opening of boxes – whenever that may be. Will we exclaim, “How lovely, how did we manage without this?” as we lovingly unpack each item, or will our reaction be more a case of, “What on earth are we doing with that old thing?” Time will tell, but I have a feeling that we could be saying goodbye to an awful lot more of our old possessions.