To downsize or not to downsize...that it is the question!



The thought of moving used to be quite a daunting thought to me.  I grew up in a very small town in rural Kent and in 18 years of living with my parents, I never moved.  Then university jumped out at me and I had to move.  I used to think that my Clio was like the tardis - I could move my whole life in the back of it.  I was impressed that I could get my worldly possessions into the back of my car.  I was content that I wasn't a hoarder but I also enjoyed owning my things.

Since my university days I have moved around the UK a bit - Ipswich, Kent, and now Birmingham.  My life still feels quite well contained.  I have all of my things in once room of a shared house and I am quietly confident that they would still fit back into my 206 if I needed them to.

But, in my head, moving to Qatar is a bit different.  All of my things, apart from the limited amount of things I can put in a suitcase as my luggage on the plane need to be packed and sent ahead of me by container ship. And it is this that has got me thinking. Do I need to ship everything or just the things that I really need?  All of the shipping companies that I have had quotes from have come back to me with massive quotes and volumes in square feet that I cannot get my head around at all! 

Depending on how much stuff I want to transport, it depends if I need my own container or not - a 20 ft container is 1000 square feet and will easily fit the whole contents of a 3 bedroom house...right....OK, so I will be lost with all of that space!!  I set about working out how much space things really take up.  I made a box 1 foot square and tested out a few things.  60 DVDs in their cases will fit in my specially crafted box, plus something about fist sized.   From this, I have worked out that I will not be needing any more than 100 square feet for all of my things and I still think that I am being generous with my estimation.  I could even opt for air freight at this rate!!

So, back to my original question - to downsize or not.  There are some things in my room, like books that I have read and are unlikely to want to read again.  Do I keep them as they are mine and will make my new place feel like home, or do I sell the ones that I am unlikely to read? 

CD's are an even trickier decision for me.  As I said earlier, I am not a hoarder, but I do like my things.  I do like looking at them and I feel proud of my small collection.  They have memories for me.  I can put a CD on and have a flood of memories of where I bought it, who I might have been with or something that I was doing while listening to it.  I know that I have all of my CD's carefully stored on my iPod and I would be beside myself if I lost that!  So, do I need the physical CD's? No.  Not really.  Do I want to keep them? Yes! The rational part of me says to get rid of them.  I might make a tenner for them and that will help out with my costs of moving.  But the romantic side of me is screaming at me to keep them!  I have spent many evenings discussing music with people, CD's spilled out over the floor.  I always loved looking through the LP's at my parents house and having those out to look at the covers (what amazing covers!!) - things like Elton John's Yellow Brick Road album which to look at was one of my favourites.  Or Led Zeppelin III's cover that span round so you could change the picture.  Amazing and such great memories!  My parents still have these LP's and I am sure that in the future they could be worth some money - could this be the same with my CDs?  They certainly don't feel as iconic.  I wouldn't feel lost without them, like I would if my iPod was lost or broken but I would feel very sad.

I think I shall have to sit on the fence over this decision for a bit longer.