Packing Up House To Travel

When Kapil and I quit our jobs to travel, we knew we were going away for more than half a year, so we decided to give up our rental apartment, pack up our worldly possessions and put them into a long-term storage unit.

Kapil and I are no pack rats. In fact, I have a bit of a reputation amongst family and friends for deriving inordinate enjoyment from every decluttering opportunity. Yet, over time our material possessions had increased to fit the space in our 2-bedroom apartment. Our sporadic weekend declutter sessions generally focussed on specific areas of our home and we always found ourselves circling back to declutter that same spot again in a few months. Packing our things for storage presented us with a great opportunity to re-evaluate the usefulness of every single item we owned.

Ever wondered why you declutter and organise your home, only to find yourself doing it all over again in a few months? Over time, I have come to the realisation that in order to make any permanent change in our physical state, there has to be a corresponding shift in our mental state (sort of like thinking thin to lose weight and keep it off). Also, the things we acquire and hang on to even when we know we shouldn't can be of many different types, but when segregated by the thoughts and emotions that motivate their acquisition and/or retention, these all fall into a few broad categories.

Sitting inside our cupboards and drawers, and on our coffee tables and countertops, are things that bear silent witness to:

Our refusal to let go of the past: Clothes that no longer fit. Schoolbooks and assignments that have accompanied you for years in unopened boxes, from house to house and city to city.

Our fear of scarcity in the future: The four bottles of Listerine mouthwash you bought because it could be ages before they were that massively discounted again. The 100 pack of A5 plastic pockets I bought for my recipe file instead of a 10 or 20 pack, just in case I never found them again.

Our endless to-do lists: Incomplete and abandoned DIY projects. All items that occupy space in our basements, garages and cupboards because we haven’t gotten around to fixing/mending, donating or throwing them out.

Everything we could/should be doing with our lives and time: The pasta maker from that time you resolved to never ever (until the very next week) use store-bought pasta again. The gardening books and tools from the time my plans to start a herb garden in the balcony were cruelly thwarted by several hungry birds (and one inept human).  

The person we could/should be: The cross trainer/tennis racquet/ yoga mat/kettle bells that sit unused in the corner of our bedrooms or basements. The study material from the French language course you never completed.

A life we could but do not have: The motorbike you stopped riding with the arrival of your firstborn. That glamorous dress you've been saving for years to wear to a suitably glamorous cocktail event or party.

Surrounded by these niggling reminders for all that we coulda-woulda-shoulda, we often feel restless in our own homes—the space that we retreat to for respite from the frenzied demands of the outside world.

Having just broken down the mental barriers that kept us postponing our travel dreams for years, Kapil and I felt a lightness and freedom that made it easy to rid ourselves of anything that did not belong in the life we wanted to create for ourselves.

Much of the last few weeks preceding our departure from Melbourne was a blur of frenetic activity: preparing handovers at work, calls to utilities, banks, insurance companies, movers etc. Frenetic activity that, to me, was punctuated by cathartic hours of packing up house.

When we were done, the 3x3m storage unit that we had booked (based on the recommendation of storage facility manager) turned out to be too big for our stuff. We could have gotten away with a 2x3m unit, with room to spare.

We thought we had done a great job culling until we returned from our travels seven months later and found ourselves donating, selling and tossing out more as we unpacked. Kapil and I are working towards creating a simple and minimalist home and life. And yes, tackling my excesses in the footwear department will be part of the trip.