T-minus 10 days until we fly, and we still have a flat full of stuff. As my weekdays are occupied until just before we leave with the assembly of yet another riveting piece of 'factual' television, that leaves the precious weekends to cram as much of my life as possible into the luggage allowance, and store anything else that I can't bring myself to throw away.
It's an interesting and slightly surreal exercise that brings the reality of what we're doing into sharp focus. Packing away my warm clothes into storage boxes feels strange - will I really not be needing them at all for the foreseeable future? It comes as a mild shock to realise quite how many clothes I have that I just don't wear at all. I'd packed a whole load of them before it dawned on me that if I don't wear them now, I'm unlikely to want to in a few years time when they're even less fashionable - so out of the storage box and into the charity bag they go.
All those cables and gadgets and things that I've stashed away in case I needed them at some point? I don't need them after all. They can go. Books I'm never going to re-read? Travel guides full of long-closed businesses? Those too. Pointless items I've kept for purely sentimental reasons? Now is the time to be ruthless.
The further down this path you go, the easier it gets. It feels good to throw your ballast over the side of basket of life's balloon. The shocking thing, though, is how little remains. Is this all I have to show for my years on earth? Time to remind myself - you are not what you own.
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