An Empty House

An empty house is an interesting thing, particularly one you have no intention of filling.  I have had six major moves in my life and we are in the midst of number seven.  Movers showed up this week to grab all our stuff, which led me to two conclusions.  First, with creative arrangement, air mattresses can make great couches.  Second, we have way too much stuff.

As I sit here on the floor, I’m amazed and somewhat disgusted at the sheer number of things that have accumulated around me over the years.  I remember my first move consisting of a single trunk and a few duffel bags.  The next got packed up in a single crate.  This time?  Seven.  Seven full crates.  Who knew owning furniture was so volumetrically challenging?

Furniture aside, there’s comfort in having a purge release valve built into your life.  Having mandatory moves across the world every few years serves as a forcing function to take a look at what detritus has a swirled around the eddies of your life.  Having the requirement to sit down and sort through everything you own into separate keep and discard piles is liberating.

It can be difficult to let go, though.  Sure, I bought this tube of nutmeg five years and two continents ago, but what if I need it?  And these flip flops have been with me for over twenty years now!  Yeah, there’s a massive hole in one of them and they somehow hurt more to wear than walking barefoot, but can you put a cost on emotional attachment?

Which brings me to the non-tangible debris.  Getting rid of physical junk is hard enough.  Tossing out the mental baggage is even worse.  With boxes, you can see whether or not something has been opened from move to move.  What we carry around in our minds and souls has no easy classification.  It waits and grows where we plant it, often in the dark recesses we prefer to avoid.

Again, this is where these moves—with all their hassle, their stress, their chaos—are a blessing.  Each time we uproot our lives and move to a different place in the world, we are plunged into a new environment.  Our jobs change, the people around us shift, our hobbies adjust; everything becomes something else.  In that sea of change, it becomes easier to toss a few unwanted packages over the side.  Easier, not easy, but easier nonetheless. 

So as I sit on the floor of this empty house, having put in the time to separate what will come with us across the world, I will take the time to think about what will stay behind.  And I will feel all the lighter because of it.