Are You Packed?

One of the biggest questions we’ve been getting is “are you packed?”

Answer: Kind of.

Here’s the longer answer. We own a house in Colorado (ok, technically the bank owns it, but you get the idea). We share the house with roommates, and those roommates would like to keep living where they are living, so we are keeping the house.

This means that we have a base of operations for when we come to visit the US (which we plan to do for approx 2-3 months of the year), we have a place still to keep all the stuff for the nonprofit (I’m still the Executive Director and Billy is still on the board and the Treasurer), and we can leave behind whatever we want. And so we plan to leave most of it at the house for now.* We’re not packing up our things at the house; we’re just moving them into smaller, less in-the-way piles. (And by we, I mostly mean me. Billy lives with fewer possessions than I do. 🙂 )

So the question then becomes, “What does one really need (when living somewhere)? What can’t you do without?” Not a lot, really. I mean, having our passports with us will make our lives easier, and having anything the Dutch government might want to see is a good idea (taking the marriage certificate, for example), but beyond that, most things can be replaced or substituted. Even medications can be replaced (but I do plan to take mine).

I currently in the “going” pile I have some of my favorite things; comfortable clothing; special mugs (like my Dryad Tea Hufflepuff mug); a few satchels; a blanket we’re crocheting together; and a few boardgames. We each have the large Rick Steves backpack (the Classic Back Door Bag), so basically our plan is to fill those two and take nothing else for this first trip.

We are lucky enough that we are coming back to the US in three months (Billy has a work meeting) and we’ll be in the states through the holidays and into January to run HexaCon, so if there are things we really wanted to have taken in the first trip, we can grab them when we’re back. I expect there will be a few clothing items (I’m taking mostly fall clothing and may want some of my winter-weight items), a few personal items, and the rest mostly boardgames. 😀

*We’re leaving most of our things at the house for now, but on each trip back, my plan is to go through them and either toss or take until there’s very little left at the house. If I really need it but don’t want to take it, I can replace it in Europe I’m sure. I expect some books will migrate over, and maybe papers that I’m keeping for one reason or another, but at some point, I would like to let things go and live a lifestyle that encourages owning fewer things and owning more memories of neat experiences. Letting go of physical possessions has been a multi-decade process for me, and I’ve learned that it’s not about the things, it’s about how I feel. So working on learning to let go of the thing and keep the feeling has been part of the process.  And if I focus on spending that time, energy, and money on fun experiences, I get to share those experiences with you, which for me means I get to relive them over and over, and that’s great bang for the buck, er Euro. 😉

So are we packed? Not yet, but we will be by tomorrow night. 🙂

What’s next? In 48 hours we will be boarding the international flight to Schiphol airport, the main airport for the Netherlands! After we land, we’ll take the train to Arnhem, where we’ll begin the next step in our version.

As they say in the Netherlands, tot ziens!