I am feeling MUCH lighter today. We nearly emptied our house.
On Saturday Diego and Sergio came round and #Babybernie was packed of to Anna’s for the weekend and we set about taking the PILES of shit out the loft, emptying the cupboard ‘above the stairs’ (we live on the second floor) and piling it all in the corner with ruthless execution.
I dived into the kitchen and looked for stuff we never use, even nice stuff that takes up space – tins we never bake in, scales that look cool but only just work, that extra saucepan that only gets used once a year.
As part of my ‘road to recovery’ I had been really good at throwing out clothes that I did not wear and had yet to pluck up the courage to throw out all the stacks of paper and the CD’s that took up so much room and that I never used.
It was heartbreaking. In a good way, in fact it was exhilarating and liberating – VERY exhilarating and liberating. In one day we created more mental space in our life and felt lighter, it was one of the biggest steps we had taken towards fleeing the country yet.
The toughest one for me was parting with my 500 or so CD’s. There was over 20 years of dancing, wannabe DJ’ing, broken hearts and romances in there, as I quickly looked though them I revisited every year of my life.
I took a deep breath and looked though, wow I have had some good times and been loved by some great people – I can still put my finger on the songs we shared while in love and the songs that helped me through the heartache after. I was taken back to crying my eyes out at Barking Station over Sophia to ‘State of Independence’ and playing Boyz to Men ‘End of the road’ full blast in Chilis as a set up the bar and put my life back together over Nanette.
It is great having my cousin Emma around to remind me of what a drama queen I was in those days, she has said the best thing about me being married is she does not have to listen to me whining down the phone about how I will never love again….
Anyway! There I was clearing out the house, it was all chucked in a big VAN in 10 minutes by the nice men from the Sue Ryder Shop. Over 20 years to accumulate, two years to think seriously about what to do with it, one day to pile it all up in the house and 10 minutes to say goodbye.
I had to keep the Good Morning Vietnam CD.
The rest went. I try to scan them with an app and sell them, it was one of the most long-winded things and took a year, one in five of the bar codes was correct and I did think about calling a Task Rabbit person to do it. In the end I opted for the ‘just pull the plaster off’ method and loaded it on to the van before I could change my mind.
Also I’d rather Sue Ryder sell it and help someone than me waste my time trying to recoup my losses after accumulating so much stuff!
I love not having stuff, I love having space, I love that everything can be online in Google Drive, Audible.com, Spotify and Evernote. Why would you want to keep lots of crap around? I always thought this and when we did something about this I was delighted, as bloody morbid as it sounds it is one of the best things I have done for my mental health in the last two years.
Also it gave me a huge confidence on how to buy things in the future, I used to buy everything, I would see things a few times and need it. CD’s, 100’s of them. I was always recognising the path to a better life in something in a shop, I still feel it now when I walk through Westfield Shopping Centre on the way to 90 Mainyard – walking past the North Face Shop or Nike Shop and I soon transform in to some cross-country athlete in need of a storm proof jacket and some leading running shoes.
Really so much of what we think we need is bollox.
Sitting still and making space is what I think we need. But what would I know?
