Living the way we do - moving every few years - means we (I) have to be ruthless about decluttering.
Anyone who actually knows me and has visited any of my homes will be laughing their heads off at this statement.
But it's true. For a few years I live in chaos, surrounded by everything and anything I may need or want. But when the time comes to move house, the decluttering mentality kicks in. It's semi-forced upon me by shipping limits and the need to keep the number of boxes down to a reasonable level. Also, I do get fed up with "stuff" around sometimes. It makes me twitchy. However, I shall never be one of those minimalist people though and love much of my "stuff". Not so keen on all Rhiannon's though...
Anyway. I decluttered like mad before we moved to Germany. Prior to the move, the removal people visit to analyse how many boxes we will need and how much over our limit we are. Naturally we were over our limit so I took the opportunity to have a good old chucking out session.
After a few weeks of this, I got a little carried away. We just had so much crap! Many clothes were dumped, using the old adage that if they didn't fit me now they never would. And if I hadn't worn them for the past four years, why on earth would I wear them in the future?
I got into a jettisoning mood with many things.
Closer to packing day I became very random in my ruthlessness. If I asked myself if we needed something, the answer was generally "no". Without thought.
We're now reaping the results of this.
I don't remember dumping many things, but recent events have shown me I must have done.
First of all, Halloween. I was looking for my face-painting kit so I could perform magic on Rhiannon; it was large, full... and not here! OK. I vaguely remember getting rid of that, but there must be some make up we could use instead. Nope! That was all gone too. I don't wear make up much which is why I hadn't noticed before.
Then at the Remembrance Day service, I decided to wear my long, black, cashmere coat to cover up the fact I was wearing non-smart, but warm clothes underneath. I grabbed the only long, black coat from my wardrobe. It didn't feel like cashmere. In a hurry, I put it on and looked for the belt. Gone! It had buttons though. It never used to have buttons... it took me a while to work out that it was a completely different coat. One which I have no memory of buying. And my cashmere coat is no longer here. All I can deduce is that the cashmere was too small and, at some point in the past ten years, I'd replaced it with the cheaper substitute. Weird. And annoying.
For some very bizarre reason I also decided to send a box of woolly hats into storage in the UK. These hats were mad ones I'd collected from South America, so nice and warm, if a little crazy-looking. Why on earth did I think I wouldn't need warm hats in Germany? Brr! Again, it took me a while to remember what I'd done with them and spent ages searching for the box of hats.
Less worrying, but equally irritating, is the fact that my fuzzy decluttering brain decided to discard the nut crackers. We have nuts, but no way of accessing the kernels.
What else will I discover I've abandoned? What a twit I am.