When we arrived in Malmö in June, I felt like I had survived a decluttering marathon. We had lived in our Malibu house for six years. Our kids had literally grown up there, as evidenced by the pencil scratched benchmarks on the kitchen doorway and the two closets full of toys in my son’s bedroom. Sorting through our accumulation of life was not easy.
We had amassed six years of stuff, the usual clothes and books, tools and toys, furniture. But there was also a pile of stuff the kids had also grown out of — books and toys, stuffed animals that used to be friends, games we never got around to playing. I knew it would be silly to ship most of it to Sweden, and just as silly to let it sit in storage. But it was not easy to let it go. I felt like I was letting go of my kids’ childhood, which, to be honest, I needed to do. Healthy mothers nurture and equip and release their young adults to their full potential without making them feel guilty for growing up. I know this. I want that for myself and my teenagers.
So in the weeks leading up to our move I gave my friends most of the books, games, dishes and random things that I thought they might want. We sold other things on Craigslist, but on the day before we left California there was still a car load full of donations to go to the thrift store.
The whole process was emotional and exhausting, and in the end, rushed. So much so that I had several moments during the three-month interim period between our moving-out day and our moving-in day that I could not remember if a particular item was in the anticipated shipment or if we had given it away.
Even so we ended up bringing things we did not need, and we gave away a few that we had to repurchase in Sweden. Already I have looked around for at least one book that I wish I had kept. But really, most of our material possessions needed to go. It is good to move on when you move on.
We accidentally packed rocks.
But even so, there are a few items, really just a few, that I have been very happy to have with us in our new apartment life in Malmö. The Vitamix is near the top of that list.
We had to get a huge transformer to make sure we did not burn out the Vitamix engine on the 230 volts piping through our electric outlets here, and after blowing a few power fuses, we have worked out a system to make it run in our Swedish kitchen. It works pretty well.
This morning I got up, despite the persistent October grey, and went for a run. When I came home I made an awesome blueberry, banana, almond smoothie. It was perfect, the true breakfast of champions, not unlike so many Malibu post-run breakfast smoothies. And as I ran the Vitamix I thought about how this transcontinental move is all about that process– simplifying, moving out into the unknown and living this next part of life well. But in the end a familiar purple smoothie just makes it all sweeter and a little easier to swallow.