August Expat Blog Challenge: An Accomplishment

It's time again to respond to the monthly expat blog challenge provided by Cristin over at Between Roots and Wings.  For August, it's a photo prompt titled "An Accomplishment."

This empty storage closet is my accomplishment for the past three months.  It may not look like much.  I haven't published a book, endured radiation treatments, fnished a degree, or sent a child off to university.  I haven't even managed to join a fitness class.  But I do have one completely empty closet, and it took hours of work to get it to the state you see in the above photograph.

Moving overseas and back again inevitbly leads to changed perspectives.  One area that changed for me this time around was how I view what I will call stuff.  I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment before we left for Australia over how much stuff I thought had removed from our house, either through giving it away or throwing it out.  Then we left, taking only thirty odd boxes with us.   It wasn't long before I realized that we were surviving quite well without all of the things we left behind.  There were things we missed, of course, but overall life was simpler with less stuff in our closets and drawers.

When I opened the door of our storage closet in May of this year, I couldn't help but wonder why I had kept so much stuff that we no longer needed.  I concluded that rather than cleaning it out before we left, I had merely figured out how to fit more things into the space that was available.  Boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling.  Shelves had broken under the weight placed on them.  I wish I had a "before" photo to show you, but the truth is, it would have been hard to take one had I thought of it since the closet was so jam packed.

I set to work cleaning it out, discarding with a much more ruthless standard than the one I used four years ago.  Some of the stuff was fit only for our rubbish bins, while others things went to veterans' associations and Goodwill.  Not everything was cast aside. Along the way I discovered a few treasures.  The first letter that R wrote to me, for example, the one that began a correspondence of almost daily letter writing for two and a half years.  My kids find it mind boggling that we exchanged hundreds of hand written letters before we married.  I found journals that I had kept and no longer remembered, including accounts of my first overseas trips to the Phillippines and Ecuador.  The letter and journals have been carefully packed away in boxes in the attic.  But most of the stuff that used to occupy that now empty closet has been removed from our house, and it's a great feeling.

I wish I could say that I have been cured of the curse of consumerism, but I cannot.  It will be an ongoing battle to fight the creep of accumulating more stuff.  Hopefully I will remember the work involved in getting rid of it all later, and that those memories will serve as a deterrant every time I enter the doors of Target, Walmart, or the local shopping malls.

 

Comments

[Cristin]

Ugh, we're getting ready to move again soon, and I'm once again staring at all the stuff we've collected. We moved here with 2 suitcases each, and yet we've somehow amassed all this junk! Good for you for lightening that load - that empty closet is an inspiration!

[Christie]

It is amazing how quickly stuff can accumulate. I am sure the fact that I had to completely clear out a house before we left Melbourne motivated me to get rid of more than I otherwise would have. Good luck with the move!