Moving house can be stressful and destabilising, but it can also be a new beginning

It is also an opportunity to declutter and to re-organise our relationships with our most personal spaces.

There is no doubt that moving house is really, really painful.  I guess if you don’t have much stuff it wouldn’t be so bad, but if you have a lot of stuff, then it is a heavy load to carry, literally.  Even with help.

Indeed, we moved a mere four blocks, and had six people with two trucks with us from dawn to dusk, and it was totally exhausting.  The movers themselves are as much a source of stress as they are what enables a smooth process.

There were the weeks in the run up to the move, planning all of the changeovers with the utilities, mail, etc.  There were also a number of things we wanted to pack ourselves, because they were very fragile or important—and they were scattered all over the place.

And of course, throwing things out.  Oh, the stress.  Supposedly ADD people accumulate things and have a hard time getting rid of them, “in case they come in handy some day,” or “they’re for a project I’m going to work on.”  Those are two common excuses and why we have so much stuff around.  

Meanwhile my S.O. and one of my children are just the opposite. If they don’t know what it is or what it is for, in the bin it goes.  One shoe?  Don’t know where the other one is.  Throw it out.  Find the other one?  Is this the other one.  Oh well, throw it out.  Sometimes it happens that important pieces get thrown out.

Some choice items thrown out never to be recovered include: house keys, car keys, car parts, and a whole range of perfectly good stuff, barely used.  Very stressful.  And of course once things arrive on the other end, the house is not configured the same way, so whatever used to go together may not go together now…and since the movers didn’t do room by room or stay focussed on like with like in boxes, unboxing is taking forever.

The good part?  I too am learning to throw things out, which is curiously liberating.  I have to do so more often.  And perhaps most importantly of all, I am remembering what I have, finding memories and friends everywhere, and holding each object, feeling it, remembering it, has been a wonderful way to reconnect with the landscape of memories.  

My conclusion is that as painful as it is, it is a therapeutic decluttering that. Is going on. Whilst I did like our old house an awful lot, I like the new one better.  It has better energy.  I also love my new bedroom.  And whether it is ADD or some other “thing”, getting over my inability to throw out things that have just gathered dust is an important form of therapy.  As we deliberately declutter our closets, cabinets, refrigerator, wherever we can, I feel a weight being lifted.  I am going to like this new home.