Preparing to Move Changed My View on Decluttering
My Upcoming Move to Finland Is Highlighting Things I Still Need to Pare Down.
Our family of five is packing up our life in Kodiak, Alaska and heading across the ocean for three years. My husband is in the Coast Guard and has been tasked with overseeing the buildout of a brand new Arctic icebreaker ship in Finland.
And as excited as that is, it also means one thing: it is time to declutter.
But wait, does a decluttering educator really need an overhaul decluttering session to move?
Because we are moving across the ocean, there’s a mindset shift. Decluttering goals change as we move through life, and this is one of those moments.
In Episode 153 of Paring Down, I’m walking through 20 actual things I’m getting rid of before we leave. Not hypothetical things. Not the “common decluttering advice” things. The real, specific, slightly embarrassing things that have been quietly accumulating in our home—yes, even the home of someone who declutters for a living.
My Decluttering Mentality Shift When Moving
For most of my decluttering journey, I’ve asked myself the classic questions: Do I love this? Do I use it? Does it serve my life?Those are great questions, and I still believe in them. But moving brings a mentality shift where I’m asking myself something a little different:What can I get by without?What can I genuinely, honestly, comfortably live without?It’s a subtle shift, but it changes everything about how you look at what you have and what you choose to take with you. Suddenly that extra set of wine glasses you never use isn’t just “fine to keep around.” It’s something you are actively choosing to move, store, unpack, and make room for (across an ocean) for no real reason.When you ask what can I get by without, the bar gets higher. And for those of us who have already done a lot of decluttering work, that higher bar is exactly what’s needed to make more intentional choices when packing.
No Matter How Intentional You Are, You Still Need to Declutter Before Moving
No matter how intentional you are on a daily basis, there will always be something you part with during a move.
Kids are constantly growing out of stuff. Interests change, which is developmentally normal. Plus, when you move, climates are different, your new space isn’t the same size, and your needs change.
What I’ve realized in preparing for this move is that even a relatively decluttered home has layers. There’s the surface level—the stuff that’s obviously out of place. And then there’s the deeper level—the things that have been around long enough that we’ve stopped seeing them: The box of wedding koozies from 2014 that somehow made it through four military moves. The chopsticks your spouse has hidden in two separate kitchen drawers because he knows you’ll declutter them. (At least he’s cute.)
These things aren’t taking up a lot of space individually. But they collectively weigh on us. And the solution isn’t to organize them better. It’s to let them go.
20 Things I’m Intentionally Decluttering
In the full episode, I walk through every single item on my list, from the specific (a sake set) to the broad (our entire pantry), to the emotional (children’s books).
I also talk about what we’re putting in long-term storage versus actually decluttering, and why I have strong feelings about not using storage as a loophole.
Whether you’re moving across the world or just trying to make your home feel a little lighter, I think this one is going to give you the push you didn’t know you needed.
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Ready to listen to the full episode? Listen to Episode 153 of Paring Down wherever you get your podcasts or click one of the badges below.
Episode Timestamps
[5:58] What can I get by without?
[16:34] The list of 20 items
[48:31] Long-Term Storage
