Letting Go and Looking Forward!

I've been a little surprised by the reaction some people have had to our downsizing efforts so far... especially my throwing away so many of our family photos. I had one person post on my Facebook page that as she was reading my blog about getting rid of Christmas stuff and going through our photo albums, she could feel a strange palpitation in her chest and was near having a panic attack and it wasn't even her stuff! LOL. Wow. I bet she has a lot of stuff.

Oddly enough, it really hasn't been that hard for me. The photographs were probably the toughest and maybe that's why I tackled that project early on - to get it over with and put it behind me. You know what they say about the best way to eat an elephant... one bite at a time. :) Now that it's done, I feel amazingly lighter. I can still go through my one photo album and have all the memories attached to those pictures... and, should the need ever arise, I can easily grab that one album and be able to save those memories and take them with me.

Knowing we're not going to have a lot of space has really made me prioritize what's important and what's not and I've pretty much decided that stuff is just not that important. Sure, some things are more valuable that others... jewelry for instance. But I don't have a lot of expensive jewelry other than my wedding rings (which, of course, I'm not giving up.) And then there are things we've always valued because of tender memories associated with them but not hanging on to the things isn't going to erase the memories. And isn't hanging on to the stuff with memories attached kind of a way to live in the past? Is that really where we want to live? I don't think so. I want to let go of the past and look ahead to the future.

So with that in mind, I'm heading home from a business trip this afternoon and I'm ready to make another sweep through the house. I don't think I'll find too much that needs getting rid of still... I'm pretty sure we accomplished most of that last weekend. But I do think it's time to start packing up those things we'll be keeping that we may not need to use in the next few weeks... summer clothes and shoes (I heard it got into the 20s at home last night... Brrrrrr!), stuff like that. I think by the time we are actually ready to move, it should be a pretty easy process.

We've got another Urban Neighbors get-together tomorrow evening (a monthly social this time) and I know we're both looking forward to it. Looking forward. That's what I want to do... not live in the past. Look forward. Look forward to new friends (although I AM keeping all my old friends - some things you don't want to get rid of!), new experiences and new adventures with my sweet hubby, not burdened or weighed down by things that just don't matter.

I feel a palpitation in my chest, too, but it's not panic, it's excitement. :)


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