Non-attachment
As soon as I had even the glimmer of a decision to make this move, it was all-of-a-sudden very easy to go through my house and send things down the road. Home for just two weeks after my Summer trip, I gave away half my clothes, then later gave away even more. Every pass through the house I scanned for what could be given or thrown away. My thought was “if holding onto this will keep me from going to Milan, then I’m going to get rid of this.”
The whole trip preparation has been a lesson in “non-attachment”. Not “detachment”, which has a negative connotation of disinterest, but rather a not-being-attached to things and situations. It’s more fluid, more easy, looser. It’s been a progressive letting-go from the very first stirrings of this idea, to the clearing out my house and handing over the keys to the tenants. Each relinquishment stood on the foundation of the one before, and on the certainty I feel about this move. It became very easy to let go.
All of that said, I STILL think I kept too much stuff to put into storage! I really was trying to whittle it down. In the end, it fit into two rooms. I think that everyone should touch everything they own at least once every 5 (or 10?) years. Doing so would show exactly how much there really is being held.