Today is the day the movers come to pack up our home on the east coast. I am a military brat which means I can move out of any home in a heartbeat and be set up in a new place in no time flat. You never get used to putting everything you own into brown boxes and seeing them loaded onto a truck and then see it disappear down the street.
What does a move open in the realm of possibilities? Well if you are like me, it is a time to purge, donate, look at items which have occupied value energy and floor space and ask myself this: “Does holding onto this thing lift me up? Does moving this item to our new home bring me enough joy to pay to move it 2300 miles? Does this thing represent something, I am not willing to let go of just yet?” What I have found out is that when the “hold” is gone the need to “hold onto” the thing is also gone and I can freely even joyfully give away the item which before had its own “hold” on me.
By giving things away that someone else can you gives me great joy. A friend of mine is an image specialist and when she and I were in my closet one day she was sipping on some tea and sitting on a chair with a pair of comfy slippers on and evaluating everything I tried on, and as I tried on item after item she would ask me: “When did you last wear this? Do you LOVE it? I don’t think so! When was that in style?” We both had lots of laughs, but the thing I love her for is the way she made me feel about letting go of the items I was attached to. She would say: “…..oh, that’s the other ladies clothes…” and that’s how I began to view letting go of things. “Oh, that will be used by some other woman to decorate her home, or to cook in, or for her children to play with….”
By the end of a long week of packing my home is reduced to several hundred brown boxes all packed, taped and labeled. The house seems empty, sad and I can hear my echo.
That last night in ones home is a bitter sweet one.
Tomorrow they come and load up all the boxes.
