Purging & Acquisitions: Spatial Awareness

No matter where in the world you live nature is shifting gears for the next season. Whether you are entering into Autumn, or here in Brisbane, we are nearly 3 weeks into Spring.  The transition is becoming apparent outside in the gardens and for some this is the unconscious nudge to start purging or storing items no longer suited.  While simultaneously you begin noticing the things you need to acquire.

I know a little bit about purging material possessions.  

When the decision was made to move overseas to Germany/The Netherlands in September 2010 I put the acreage on the market, boxed up the contents, let go of a large amount of stuff by either selling it or gifting it and set off for an International adventure.

Abroad, we were living in a quaint furnished cottage in Germany, and in comparison were living quite simply.  The house I was selling was approximately 316 square meters versus our quaint cottage of about 75 square meters.  I often said that we would be fine with a house half the size, then we moved into a house 25% of what we were accustomed to...Talk about downsizing!

I measure "simply" not only in actual size, but in features.  And the comfort I found in making that change was that we were living with & within what we needed and there was zero unused space.  

As a testament to making it work I was still able to host a Canadian style Thanksgiving for twelve people, feeding them all my standard fare and did so without having things like...

• a double oven,
• a double sink,
• a dishwasher,
• a formal dining room table, 
• a 2.5 m x 1.5m counter for the buffet, 
• various kitchen gadgets & accoutrements etc...

Everyone ate, drank and enjoyed the celebration!  This validated things for me in more ways than one.

For me that shift, not only to another country & culture,  but into another way of living was refreshing, relieving almost like releasing the breath you didn't know you were holding.  

Would I have attempted to make such a drastic change in houses if we'd stayed in Canada?  I doubt it.

Did I miss certain creature comforts? No question.

Am I blessed that my girls adjusted to sharing a bedroom smaller than one of theirs?  Absolutely.

This transition did not come without sacrifices and challenges, whereas before you would have to look for where a person was in the house, now you were acutely aware of everyone's breathing patterns. :) 

Not to mention 1 Bathroom versus 3 girls in the house...

Even though this was a furnished house there were practical things I chose to add.  However when I was bringing something "into" the house, it had to make absolute sense, it had to fit and it usually had to be multi-functional.  I had to be acutely conscious of my acquisitions to insure they were adding value and not just taking up prime real estate space.  And the wardrobe rule of something new coming in, meant something old was going out was strictly enforced, without discussion.

Arriving overseas with just our suitcases and leaving the bulk of our personal items and home contents all packed up in Canada proved to be a great lesson in value...to be continued.