Leaving home and much more!

Extricating yourself from the dusty, cluttered tendrils of 17 years of accumulation is no easy task. But such was the need as we packed up our entire home and sent it off to storage. 

While packing up a home is a big task it is also a fascinating and therapeutic task too. Fascinating in the discovery of items long forgotten, such as a collection of toys I had saved from when I was only about 9 (kept safely alive in a box pricked with air holes ;). Therapeutic as the clutter of life is sorted, dumped or given away. 

There is something hugely cathartic in the process, as more and more of life's needless baggage is stripped away. It is no easy process as each item is evaluated and some nostalgic or other reason is found for its continued storage. Yet despite this bakkie loads of our hoardings left our home to new homes or to the fiery pits of the dump. 

Finally our home was clean, every room exorcised of years of clutter, except for a few items the tenants had asked us to leave. All our worldly accoutrements were either in storage, or in boxes in the one room we kept in our home or our new base camp - a single small room at M&Ps home. 

It's interesting that our trip of 12+ months that lies ahead is not only a physical journey but one that will also take us to many unexplored mental spaces. How will it be to have no "home" besides our car? How will it be to sleep in over 100 different places in a year? How will it be to only have one small bag of clothing for a year - this one particularly is concerning the girls. How will it feel when the new and unknown is our routine? 

These are new mental spaces we will explore in the journey ahead. But already we are experiencing paradigm shifts. As we have packed up our home we have experienced a strange sense of unloading. It's cathartic in a sense that we are letting go of baggage but equally it is disconcerting as we wonder if we will need these things we have relied on for so long. Already we are living out of cases and learning to need less and experience more. Already we have slept in over 8 beds in 14 days and learning that home is where your family and your pillow are. 

Well, here's to new places, new experiences, new paradigms. Let the AfricaTour begin!

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