Daydreaming...

Decluttering is progressing very well, although so far it is kind of hard to see the results. Alex got rid of two boxes from the storage room on Sunday night and I think we only kept two things. Total. From two full-sized bankers' boxes.

Before you read on, I'm not keeping any secrets from you guys about moving. We're not moving. Just to be clear. Okay. And this does relate to decluttering. I'm just a bit longwinded (like you didn't know that...)

I don't know where it came from but for the last week I've been daydreaming. About moving. About moving far away. Moving far away to a foreign country. But only for a few years. Like maybe three. So we'd get the feel of the place. But then we could come home. Because I'm all about home.

In my daydream we'd have to leave pretty much everything behind. And each take two suitcases. Eeeep. Two suitcases multiplied by a family of three equals six. That's it. Except really it's eight. Because somehow Alex gets a great job and has to go over before us so I go with him for a week to find somewhere to live and make it inhabitable and then I come home and deal with the loose ends here before J and I head over to wherever our new home is.

So, as I've been doing normal house stuff, like cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, picking up eighty million toys twenty four times a day, I've been evaluating our stuff - would I keep this? Would I store it? Would I pack it?

If we were coming back there's lots we would store - furniture, books, kitchen stuff - and lots we would give away, toss, or donate - clothing, toys, books (yes, it goes both places), things - but there's not a whole lot we'd take.

I'm having a great time furnishing our new "home" in my head. I figure I'd get most of my stuff there, but on a much smaller scale than here. Because really, I could survive with just a blender. don't *need* an immersion blender, a full sized food processor, and a mini food processor as well (just for the record, I do use all of them). We could get by with fewer things like sheets and towels, we'd just have to do more laundry.

And because I've been home, feeling sorry for myself, with a sore throat, I've been browsing rentals and properties for sale all over Europe. And you know what, I might complain sometimes that we don't have much space, but we have two bathrooms. And a dryer. And a dishwasher. And 950 square feet. Some of the places I've been browsing have, oh, 800 square feet and THREE or FOUR bedrooms. And cost six times as much as our place. Although, if I look at more rural properties or in larger cities that are not London or Paris (hello suburbs of Manchester) we could potentially (based on similar lending laws and salaries) purchase a large home.

I'm having fun thinking about how to scale down and how I'd decorate a clean slate like that...and it's actually motivated me to get rid of more things that I would have. Besides a tidy, well organized house with minimal clutter, my goal, one day (likely years from now), is to only have Christmas decorations, baby stuff, and one set of tires in our storage room. And maybe all those boxes for small appliances that we haven't tossed yet because they make moving so much easier. We don't need them. And if we needed space for something more important they could go, but the coffee pot and the slow cooker and the food processor all fit so well in their own boxes and that made our last two moves so much better....