It's a complicated process to move overseas. It's a bit different than a traditional move, at which time you sort your house and most things go in boxes to go in the moving truck. Usually at the start, a lot of effort is put into sorting and purging and the like. But often towards the end you run out of time and you literally just start tossing things in bags and boxes to be figured out when you unpack in the new place.We've all been there.
When moving overseas (where you don't ship a container or have a moving company help), at the end of the process everything either has to be
1. In storage
2. In your allotted number of suitcases you are taking
3. Given
4. Sold
5. Trashed
There isn't really a 'Ack I'm out of time and I'll deal with it in a week when we arrive in the new place' category. You could store boxes of unsorted junk, but then, you know... YOU'RE STORING BOXES OF UNSORTED JUNK. And that's just not ideal.
So all this means that EVERY SINGLE ITEM in a home has to be individually considered and must fall into one of these categories.
Every kitchen utensil. Every child's toy. Every single book (and we loooove our books). Each pair of earrings. Each baking pan. Every solitary holiday decoration. Every pair of underwear (x 5 people). Every card that's been given in the past few months. Every DVD. Every toiletry item.
I think you get the idea.
E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
It's daunting.
It's exhausting.
It's humbling (very).
It's time-consuming.
It's stressful.
But it's good. It's a good process to go through I think. It's so easy to just keep adding 'things' to our lives without really ever forcing ourselves to make decisions like this and 'trim the fat'. Good processes are often hard. This definitely is that.
All that to say that one thing that had to be sorted was the 'solo sock' collection. I had a drawer in my dresser that held all the socks that had lost their match. Once the last loads of laundry were done (Thank you Mom!!!) and there were no matches for these sad socks, there was nothing left to do with them but toss them. They certainly don't fit into categories 1-4.
These socks are a mystery to all of us, eh?
Here they are. Three years of solo socks for a family of six. WHAAAAAAT happened to the matches?
We'll never know...
When moving overseas (where you don't ship a container or have a moving company help), at the end of the process everything either has to be
1. In storage
2. In your allotted number of suitcases you are taking
3. Given
4. Sold
5. Trashed
There isn't really a 'Ack I'm out of time and I'll deal with it in a week when we arrive in the new place' category. You could store boxes of unsorted junk, but then, you know... YOU'RE STORING BOXES OF UNSORTED JUNK. And that's just not ideal.
So all this means that EVERY SINGLE ITEM in a home has to be individually considered and must fall into one of these categories.
Every kitchen utensil. Every child's toy. Every single book (and we loooove our books). Each pair of earrings. Each baking pan. Every solitary holiday decoration. Every pair of underwear (x 5 people). Every card that's been given in the past few months. Every DVD. Every toiletry item.
I think you get the idea.
E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
It's daunting.
It's exhausting.
It's humbling (very).
It's time-consuming.
It's stressful.
But it's good. It's a good process to go through I think. It's so easy to just keep adding 'things' to our lives without really ever forcing ourselves to make decisions like this and 'trim the fat'. Good processes are often hard. This definitely is that.
All that to say that one thing that had to be sorted was the 'solo sock' collection. I had a drawer in my dresser that held all the socks that had lost their match. Once the last loads of laundry were done (Thank you Mom!!!) and there were no matches for these sad socks, there was nothing left to do with them but toss them. They certainly don't fit into categories 1-4.
These socks are a mystery to all of us, eh?
Here they are. Three years of solo socks for a family of six. WHAAAAAAT happened to the matches?
We'll never know...
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