Living Lighter

Part of the joyful experience of moving overseas was that we took only about two thirds of our belongings with us. I wish we could say we took less. It would have been much easier; especially in light of the fact that we only ended up staying about seven and a half months. In hind-sight we should have stored almost everything, packed our suitcases and left.

But evening leaving one third of our possessions behind was a wonderful experience. I don’t recall missing a single item in storage while there and by the time our storage items were re-delivered, almost a year later, I had forgotten most of what we had packed away to begin with. For a few precious months, there was less to pick up, clean up, keep up, fix up and pack up. It was liberating. Since we did not own our house in Germany we didn’t have a myriad of home improvement or fix-it projects hanging over our heads. And thus felt available to pack a suitcase or just a picnic lunch for a day trip and leave to go sightseeing or exploring for a weekend--guilt free!

We lived with only items from our suitcases for six weeks in a German hotel and for another six weeks back in Idaho both going and coming. You just don’t realize how many possessions including houses, cars, pets and yards clamor for your attention and suck away time and energy until you have lived without them for a time.

Now that we are back living on American soil in a large house and garage filled-to-the-brim with stuff, we are once again overwhelmed at trying to manage and clean and fix and organize it all. And so we keep boxing it up and getting rid of it via donations and it feels like we have barely made a dent. But we keep trying because we remember how invigorating it was to live lighter for one (school) year.