Relocating to Berlin: Getting Rid of S**t - ahem - Stuff

One of the first things that people ask when my wife and I mention that we are leaving the country is, what are we going to do with all of our stuff?

The short answer is that we're getting rid of it!

Although, that's not really true.

My wife and I have lived in the Washington, DC area for over 20 years, first in separate households (before we were married), then in progressively larger apartments and houses as our salaries at work have increased and as our family has grown.  Along the way, we have gathered an impressive array of what can most politely be referred to as "stuff".  My wife and I are collectors by nature.  She collects books.  I collect books, music, movies, militaria, sports jerseys, and antiques.  Until we made the final decision to relocate in January of this year, I notoriously never got rid of anything.  I come from a long line of low-level hoarders.  Admittedly, nobody in my family ever got bad enough that they were buried alive in the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of their lives.  But more than a few of us in both my and my wife's families like to hang on to whatever crosses our path because "it's always better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."

However, when faced with the prospect of moving from a 4-bedroom split-level suburban house to a small urban apartment, it was immediately obvious that something was going to have to give.  All of the stuff that we have accumulated over 40+ years of life and 16+ years of marriage would have to go.

And so began a months-long stream of moving sales, charity donations, sales to second hand/antique stores, gifts to friends, and sales on craigslist and ebay.  We only had to stop ourselves from selling all of our furniture, so that the house would look occupied when we sold that.  But all of the stuff that has cluttered our lives was up for grabs.

After a lifetime of collecting, how did it feel to get rid of things that had been a part of my life seemingly forever?  Surprisingly enough, considering how compulsively I have collected stuff for so many years, it has been wonderfully liberating.  For the most part, neither of us really needs all the stuff that is in our house.  But, like an anchor, we have felt the need haul the dead weight of all this stuff with us everywhere we moved.  One thing that has made it easier to decide what to get rid of is that anything that runs on electricity has to go.  After all, without buying huge numbers of power converters, none of it would work properly anyway.

What are we keeping?  Our daughter - while she has been a real trooper in selling off many old toys that she no longer plays with (she had the incentive of getting to keep the money for any of her toys that she sold, which she used to buy her own iPad) - will be taking most of her bedroom furniture with her.  We don't want to wrench everything she has ever known away from her.  We will be keeping some of our dishes and some pots and pans.  We will be keeping our guest bedroom set (it's much smaller than our master bedroom set), and a few smallish custom or heirloom pieces of furniture from our living room.  And we'll keep at least some of our books.  Well, we are humans with needs after all. 

Best of all, from both a monetary and a space perspective, we will also be selling both of our cars.  In their place, we will keep our bicycles.  Berlin has limited parking.  But Berlin is considered an urban bicyclist's paradise as it is absolutely - almost preternaturally - flat.

Ever since this project to get rid of stuff started, I have become something of an anti-clutter evangelist.  I have been singing the praises of getting rid of the things we don't use to everybody who will listen, and even to more than a few people who have eventually gotten tired of listening to me and stopped returning my phone calls.

Speaking of which, does anybody want to buy some of our stuff?  It all has to go!