Life in Boxes (Part II)

Well this last week has been hectic. For me anyway. Ben's always very calm and cool-headed about these sorts of things. I spent the week packing the house and moving the majority of things into our study, which turned from a decent study into something out of "Hoarders: Buried Alive"...

After the movers were finished it became a 100% empty room with an incredible echo that Ben and I have been sneaking into to sing mini choral duets, because the resonance sounds more like a cathedral than even a cathedral! (We mostly burst out laughing half way through at how ridiculous we are singing at each other in a weird room). Our favourite tunes include those haunting ones from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (hehe!)

On Friday the movers arrived, exactly at 8.00am- two burly looking European guys- and after 2.5hrs our home transformed into a maze of walls made of boxes stacked high.

It was a pretty stressful business, mostly because Ben and I felt helpless to do anything and seemed to just be getting in the way if we tried to help. The best we could do was to have prepared the house in advance like we had, and then just supervise. I still have no idea where actual items went though. Our beloved ice-cream maker that we wanted to lend to my family could be in any one of 5 large kitchen boxes, packed tight and wrapped in paper. They'll never find it.

I think the saddest thing is that this was our home, we'd built this place (not literally) and filled it with ourselves and our memories, things that we'd collected before and after we were married. It was comfortable, homey, and it was ours. Now we will not see many of our things again for 2 years or more, and by then, we would have accumulated more 'things' and more 'stuff' that could leave our original belongings redundant. We hate ourselves for being so consumerist and defining ourselves by our possessions, but that is just the way it is. Now, we are living in the empty house for 1 last week while Ben finishing teaching at the school and I give the house a jolly good vacate clean. We have a suitcase each, an air mattress on the floor and a couch (that belongs with the house) as a bed, as well as 1 cooking pot and 2 bowls between us. We're going to be living like this for the next month or so anyway as we jet down to Perth for Christmas and then to the UK to visit family, before finally leaving for Cambodia.

 It definitely feels refreshing to be so minimalist, I just wonder how long we will keep it up once we actually settle again for real! Most of all, we feel like this is definitely 'it' now, there's no going back on our decision. Our new life begins now!