Moving: Lessons Learned

Shawn Today

It was a 12-week process from when we decided to move until we were in our new home. But we made it.

On today’s show I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned about life, possessions, and moving.

1. Don’t stop unpacking. If you do, you may never start again! We’ve been focusing on a different area of the house and trying to make a little bit of progress every day. It’s hard work, but we don’t want to end up in a half-moved-in home.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from your friends.
   This was especially difficult for me. It’s hard for me to need the help of others, and I want to just do things on my own. But there was no way I could move my whole family by myself — I had to ask for help. And, turns out, my friends were more than happy to lend a hand. I know I would say yes to any of my friends who asked for help, so of course they would do the same.

3. Get rid of stuff without prejudice. We thought we had decluttered so much before moving. Before listing our old home on the market, we packed up or got rid of about 60% of our belongings. It was everything we didn’t need.

   We did this so our home would feel more “open” and less cluttered for potential buyers during their walkthroughs. We left a few things on the shelves and in the closets so that the home felt lived in, but we didn’t have much there.

   Yet, with over half of our belongings packed up, we didn’t even notice what we were missing. And it was about 5-6 weeks from when we first packed those things up until we moved into our new home and unpacked them.

   Even still, we found so many things during unpacking that we didn’t know why we had it. We realized that it’s easier to keep things you own when you are considering the object within its “context”. Each item we kept had a place and had a story and a context for why we owned it. But in our new home, everything has had to earn its new place — and so there are many items that we getting rid of even though we thought we already had simplified before moving.

4. Tip: take photos of sentimental items you don’t want to hold on to but don’t want to “forget about”. This is something we gleaned from Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

5. You fill the space you have.
   In our old home, we had a 500 sq. ft. storage space, and it was filled completely. In our new home, we have only a small storage closet and a storage loft I built in our garage to hold some seasonal items (Christmas and camping), but that’s about it.

   In short, we have less storage in our new home than in our old. Which means everything we own has to have a reason — it has to be “in use”. It’s on a shelf, in a dresser, or in a closet. There’s not much space for “long term, just-in-case” storage. And yet, even still, I bet we could get rid of about 10% more of what we have.

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There’s something freeing about only owning items that we use. And not just items that serve a utility purpose, but also which are fun to own or special.

I see “minimalism” in terms of possessions as being about having what you need and no more, but also no less. There’s nothing wrong with holding on to items that have strong sentimental value or getting rid of something just for the sake of getting rid of it.

A few books on these subject that I bet you’d like: Essentialism and the aforementioned The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Download here. (25:37)