We’ve been traveling away from home for 10 months. Apart from the stuff we carry in our luggage, our actual physical “stuff” is in a storage unit. Not a lot of stuff mind you, we’ve given away the majority of our possessions over the past few years.
We’re now back in Australia for a few months to spend time with family & friends, and today we visited our storage unit to retrieve some of our clothing. I don’t know if we had any expectations of the great reveal, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the realisation that we feel no particular attachment to the things we packed up almost a year ago.
Standing at the storage unit doorway, we paused for a moment before gingerly stepping in to locate 2 big bags marked “Dave clothes” and “Sue clothes”. These 2 bags hold the total of our wardrobes, we were that good at culling last year. Oh, actually that doesn’t count the hidden box with some handbags and shoes, but we don’t have to talk about that.
Our travel clothes of the past 10 months are literally in tatters and about to be thrown out, but we wanted to check our packed up clothes before we buy new stuff. Will these things still fit us? I think we all know the answer to that….. let’s just say carbohydrates featured very highly in our daily diet over past months.
Apart from our clothes in storage, we’ve been looking forward to reconnecting with our Thermomix. We’re staying in a fabulous Airbnb flat for the next 6 weeks and having “Thermie” with us will create opportunities for us to shift the way we’ve eaten. Now there will be daily fruit smoothies, soups and healthy vegetable stocks. Maybe some breads, mayonnaise and yoghurt. This was a great investment a couple of years ago and is something we did miss during our travels. **not sponsored, just loved 🙂
I have to admit to having a slight scarf fetish. Count them, 22 scarves stored, and there were more before the massive cull. I can’t help touching and stroking scarves wherever I am, and I feel very proud that in all the time we’ve been away I bought only 2 new scarves, plus one as a gift from our lovely Lawrence friends. A bit like choosing your favourite child, I love every one of them for differing reasons. My packing rule is to take maximum 3 scarves so you can imagine my dilemma, balancing form with function. So the scarves that pull the short straw will be back into storage.
Once we’ve worked our way through our clothes, we’ll pack up what we decide against taking with us on our next round of travels and return them to the storage unit. In the meantime though, our place reeks of moth balls, but that too will pass.
One day we’ll slow down our travels and re-establish a “permanent” home for ourselves, and will be glad to have hung on to our stuff. But we can’t help questioning the need to pay monthly storage and insurance fees for things that mostly don’t really hold a place in our hearts, apart from family photos & memorabilia and legal documents (and scarves).
I think that because our personal possessions have been limited to a suitcase and a small backpack each, anything more seems unneccessary for us. And in fact when we leave here in a few weeks to move along again, we’ll be downsizing our luggage even further because we really have had too much stuff with us. Though that’s for another story…..
