It’s been just about a month since we moved to London from New York. Two weeks before that the movers put all of our possessions, minus two suitcases, on a boat headed for our new city. In total it’s been about six weeks since we’ve seen most of our stuff from cutlery and cooking supplies to clothes, snowboarding gear and about sixty boxes of whatever else. So when the movers called and said our things had arrived, it goes without saying that I was beyond excited. I was ready to cook and wear something other than one of the three sweaters I brought with me. I was looking forward to eating off our Villeroy & Boch plates and using silverware as opposed to plasticware. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were roughing it, but it definitely hasn’t been easy.
On Friday, Josh left work at around 2pm to accept the delivery. I was at work and had my phone sitting next to my computer, waiting for him to confirm that everything made it in one piece. By 3pm, I had called, texted and emailed twice. You’d think I was expecting news about the arrival of a newborn baby, not a shipload of belongings.
When I finally got a hold of Josh, he sounded deflated. He said it all came, but he was knee-deep in boxes and packing paper and lots of things he couldn’t make heads or tails of. It was my secret fear come true. While I could finally set up my kitchen and curl up with my Snuggy, I wasn’t looking forward to finding a place for all the material items we’d acquired.
Funny thing is, we’d become accustomed to certain things that have no place in our lives. Yet for some reason, we had trouble getting rid of them. For example, we shipped a box of candles—the same box of candles that was sitting in the closet in our last apartment. We don’t even own a lighter! We shipped not one, not two, not three, but four down blankets. We could warm a small country with our surplus of hats, gloves and scarves. And on that note, I’d like to point out that I’ve since discovered that I have some sort of weird Freudian obsession with hats. I counted five conductor caps, three berets, two tribly hats, a knit hat and a bucket hat. Seriously? You’d think I was an eighty-year old bald man.
The point is that aside from my roll bag of knives, which I literally blew a kiss to, pots, pans, plates and utensils, we really don’t need the rest. It’s actually almost sickening to think of how much we’d gotten rid of in New York and how much we still had. And it’s even more shocking to see the pile of clothes, shoes and other non-essentials we plan on donating now. In a way, I think we got used our simplified life, devoid of the useless crap we for some reason were lead to believe we couldn’t live without. Not to mention we had enough room to do cartwheels—that is if we were talented enough to know how.
If this experience has taught us anything, it’s that the people in our lives are irreplaceable and the “things” in our lives are disposable. Not the other way around. Sadly, I think society lets us forget that. We have no problem collecting and carrying around baggage, yet we’re too busy to phone a friend.
From now on the goal is to go with this feeling and purge as much as we possibly can. Pants (or shall I say trousers) I’ve had since freshman year, the leis we got in Hawaii, the Dirt Devil we can’t plug in in the UK and even two of my precious hats. Without all that clutter, we might actually be able to reclaim our guest room for guests. Now isn’t that a better use of space?
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