Goodbye house!

In the next few days, Frank & I will be moving with all our possessions, out of the 6 bedroomed house where we have lived for the past 11 years, onto a 39ft boat! Quite a challenge, if I do say so myself!!!

The logistics of de cluttering 35 years of accumulated ‘stuff’ has been an incredibly difficult yet cathartic experience.

One way- view of our house we are leaving…..

We have stored a plethora of cartons, boxes and household items into a 10sq metre shed at the bottom of our son & daughter in law’s garden. It is now a veritable  ‘Rubik’s cube’ that can only be unravelled by use of Nikki’s little book that describes what every carton contains and where it’s positioned within the shed. Heaven help if we actually need or want to remove an item! Or worse still, that we lose the book!!

We have given away most of our furniture (to our children, op shops & the tip!). We have sold or at least tried to sell genuine bargains at ridiculous low prices on the internet and still ended up giving them away! We have distributed all our  junk & bric-a-brac to locals at rock bottom prices in several crazy garage sales. It amazes us how they race past the $20 digital cameras worth several hundred dollars in a scramble to reach the tatty nicknacks that have sat on a shelf for 20 years gathering dust!

We have loaded up Stars End 2 up to her gunnels, and yet there are still more piles of ‘things-we-simply-cannot-do-without’ waiting around the house to be stowed on board. Frank & I have visions of us ending up like those tv shows that feature hoarders unable to move, surrounded by walls of ‘clutter’.

Other way- view of our new home for the indefinite future, Stars End 2!

In a few weeks, I am sure we will have settled into life on board the yacht and figured out what we really need to make life comfortable yet uncluttered. Simple acts like flushing a toilet and throwing clothes into the washing machine will cease to exist. Instead, we look forward to enjoying the simple things in life and appreciating what we have.

As soon as we have caught our breath, made Stars End 2 ship shape and settled all our affairs, we are keen to free ourselves from the restrictions of a marina. Frank may continue to work for a while, but it will hopefully be with a gentle breeze blowing through the portholes, and being lulled to sleep at night on a calm anchorage, with the waves lapping gently on the hull of Stars End 2. Or else……….

Dreams are made of this!- Sunset anchorage at Moreton Island