The Simple Life {Decluttering, Part Two}

So this former tent-dwelling backpacker has acquired a houseful of stuff.

That skinny, salty-water-hair girl would have cringed at the thought, but I've got a basement and crawl spaces, a big second-hand freezer, and a 14-year-old VW. When our former, grandmotherly neighbour shows up on our doorstep with another large kid's toy she wants to give us cause she knows no one else with kids, we say yes, cause hey, we've got the space.

Analogue photos circa 2003. I actually just decluttered that grey vest *today*. This move is necessary. 

And I love it--it is the stage of life we are at, and many of these things have emotions attached to them. In many ways, I'm a different person than the one who left Quebec 10 years ago--we met and married in Europe, our kids were born in this city--which makes the sorting, giving, selling at times painful.

We've lived in this city for 9 years now. At first, it was hard for me to settle down. After 5 years of moving every 4-8 months, from dorm rooms in Toronto to a tent in the islands, from a furnished apartment in Quebec City with a view of the Chateau Frontenac to an attic garret in Austria, to a huge (but freezing) room in Greece one winter with a wrap-around balcony looking out over the Aegean sea. I've been blessed to have lived in some beautiful places, to have met more beautiful people. I got used to leaving, to living a materialistically-speaking "simple life." It was an adventurous period for discovering more of the world, of myself, of people and the faith that runs thick in my veins.

But there came a time to put down roots. To stay awhile. To commit to a place and people, a church family. To let people know me and peel back layers of self-defense and protection, layers of criticism and picking the speck out of your eye while sanding the comfy plank in my own.

After years of the transient life, once it was clear I would be moving to Germany to marry the charming German who swept me off my feet, I gave away dishes, pots and CD player to university friends, leaving a box marked "please help yourself" in the hallway of the dorm I lived in in Toronto for the summer between visiting Europe and living here.

So we planted ourselves in this rich southern German soil, our roots drinking deep from the clear blue Bodensee. Life is no longer simple. Those roots have become a network curling around and enmeshed with hundreds of other lives, not just friends but colleagues, neighbours, church, our children's beloved Kindergarten teachers.
And we're about to yank them up.

This post is the second part in a little series, here is part one.