no regrets about letting stuff go

When we moved to Portugal, we went through a lot of life changing experiences. One of them were our possessions. A lot of decisions grew out of that.

First we looked at shipping our possessions. This included a cost of over $25k and the minimum of 6 months to get to our new home. Of course that did not include a car if we wanted to.

So over the next few months we had to decide on plan B. It was obvious. And through this time Judy had a harder time letting go of some things more than others.

We knew that all the small appliances were hopeless either way as they would not work in Portugal. And if we were going to bring anything, well, there would be some serious choices to be made.

So we set on a journey to purge.

We did sell our car, which we were happy to do and give the sans car life a try.

Had a garage sale, which was a waste of time.

Our small appliances and a lot of other stuff we donated to the local Thrift Shop. Also, about 400 DVDs.

And then we started trying to sell furniture and other large items on a local sales page on Facebook.

We sold our washer and dryer and our two Concept 2 rowing machines.

The other stuff? Well, we learned two things quickly.

• People will hardly play crap for anything
• It’s a pain in the butt to spend the time doing this

Now on a side note we had just recently bought a new couch, comfy chair, a very cool coffee table and a TV. All in great shape and less than 6 months old.

Well, when all was said and done, we made the decision to give all our furniture (living room, bedroom and office) and TV to Habitat for Humanity. When we emailed them pictures of everything, they were thrilled and picked up everything the day before we left.

We also had a couple of very nice computer monitors and a fairly new, high end, HP laser printer. We gave those to the local elementary school.

Of course, a lot of junk found it’s way to the dump.

The fact is we felt good about both having donated so many things to great causes, and, purging our possessions. We never considered ourselves hoarder, even after 40 years of marriage, but there was still plenty to deal with.

We left the US with 8 suitcases checked in, and what carryon luggage we could bring in Business Class. All of our life packed in those suitcases.

And yes, we love our lives and never regretted anything about our life-changing move.