Sick and tired... Literally! But everything H, my partner, and I own is in his (small) car. We decluttered, then sold, gave, and threw away most of our stuff, and finally packed the rest into the car. The process took us a long time, mostly down to procrastination, but the bulk of it was done in just a week.
Defining our goal
We knew we had to declutter. It was apparent to us on our last move that we had too much stuff. Two van loads and one car load are two van loads too many for a couple who does not own a home! The questions was: how much do we want to declutter?
The easiest option (and from the reactions we received the one most people would expect) would be to put everything we own into storage somewhere. It was our initial plan. We still wanted to declutter most of our stuff but also rent a small storage unit to put most of the rest. That initial plan was not sitting well with us though.
We are not doing this trip because we want to indulge or treat ourselves, though it certainly is a privilege we are very thankful for. It actually came out of (perceived) necessity. We had not been happy since we moved to Thurles and my partner's fascination with Ireland in general had been fading for a while too. We needed a change. It was time to go back to Portugal and check if the reasons why we moved to Ireland in the first place are still valid a few years later.
I did not want to leave anything back in Ireland because I do not want to have to return. After living in Ireland for a few years, I cannot see myself wanting to live in a country as warm as Portugal. But I want to be open to that possibility! Regardless of what we choose in the end, I want the decision to be intentional rather than influenced by strings pulling us back to a specific place.
We could also have left stuff with family and friends but, again, those would be strings pulling us back to Ireland.
So, the only option left was to get rid of everything that did not fit into the car... The goal was to be able to sit in the car with all our stuff by the end of this decluttering process!
Deciding what to keep
We even heard an audiobook on how to declutter, but in the end we just took it day by day and item by item. I could give you a list of nice steps for you to follow, and they would probably make more sense than what I am sharing, but the truth is that with pretty much just one week to declutter our whole lives we did not have the bandwidth for more than just going thing by thing and deciding if we were keeping it or giving it away.
We wanted to keep stuff we need (e.g. clothes and toiletries), stuff that is perfect for our future home (e.g. our vacuum cleaner that we even bring to hotel rooms!), and stuff that we want to use in the meantime (e.g. the boxes of books that pretty much filled the whole boot...), so we judged each item to see if it fit into at least one of those fields. I must say however that those three fields were created retrospectively. At the time we were not organised enough to translate them into all those words but I believe they were at the root of every decision we made!
Though we were not very organised, there were two methods we adopted that I found really helpful and you may too.
The first was to empty a room in our home and fill it with the stuff we wanted to get rid of. It both helped while decluttering, by removing the noise from our lives and showing us that it really is better with less stuff, and while selling and giving away our stuff, by being a kind of showcasing area to bring people to for them to shop away - left for items for sale and right for free items!
The second was to slowly (or as slowly as it can be done in so little time) pack the stuff that we wanted to keep into boxes/bags and moving it to a specific area close to the main door. Packing everything of a certain type of stuff (e.g. art supplies, notebooks) always gave me a sense of closure and progress that helped me stay motivated.
Getting rid of our decluttered stuff
We postponed this step so much that we ended up with only one week to get rid of all the stuff we decided not to keep...
The first step was reaching out to a friend in Ireland to give him whatever he wanted. Then, I posted the stuff we wanted to sell into a local Facebook group (and spent the next few days managing all the replies!) and the stuff we wanted to give away into a freecycling Facebook group. I also upsold and upgave a bunch of stuff to those (un)lucky enough to willingly come to our home during that week!
We sold most of our tech stuff to Cex. What we get from them is less then we would have gotten from a private sale but it is also much quicker and less stressful...
I am quite proud to say that in the end we pretty much only threw away trash (e.g. broken stuff, cardboard boxes, bubble wrap). The rest we either sold or gave away!
We made a bit of money but we definitely underpriced pretty much everything. We would have given the stuff away without earning anything from it so that did not bother us, but if you are planning on doing something similar to us, give yourself more time to make sure you get the right amount for your stuff!
Packing the rest into the car
We started with stuff that could be laid on the floor of the car without it being damaged by what we laid on top of it. Then, we moved onto the biggest and heaviest boxes (only five of these because the car is really small!). And finally I just ploughed through fitting the rest of the stuff in the cracks. Not an easy feat... or should I say fit?
H brought to our attention our fluctuating confidence in fitting everything into our car.
At the very beginning, before we had even started deciding what to keep, I was so confident that we would fit everything into the car! I thought we could fit eight boxes for the IKEA KALLAX into the boot and still have the back seats free to sleep there is we so wished... H was not as confident as I was, and with good reason!
My confidence started spiralling down when one week prior to our departure we tried to fit those boxes into the boot and realised only two would fit - not the eight I had anticipated! I am great at making something just the right size fit into a place, but I am the absolute worst when it comes to visualising if it is even possible...
We slowly built up our confidence over the week during which we sold and gave away most of our stuff... Surely the essentials would fit into the car! (Yes, books are essential.)
But most of the fluctuation happened while I was putting stuff into the car. I felt very confident when I put everything I had packed in the living room into the car, but then H kept bringing stuff from other rooms and we kept finding stuff we needed/wanted to bring with us! There was no way I would fit everything in at that pace...
I gave away half a kilogram of ginger powder to a nice neighbour, we left a few things for the next tenants that we had wanted to take with us, and we made a quick stop at a recycling point to give away a couple of bed sheets and five blankets (we still have five, don't worry about us being cold!), but in the end everything fit! Granted I had just enough room for one foot on the car floor, a bag of snacks and a homemade brioche on my lap that I was holding with one hand, and a small cactus (named Gato) on the other (Statue of Liberty style)... But it all fit!!
I anticipate that one of these days I will be writing a post about how all the weight in the car broke its suspension... The car is practically dragging its butt with all the weight. But life feels much lighter to us now than it did before!
