Downsizing and what to do with a lifetime of stuff before the move

Gave myself a hard rule: if it hadn’t been used in the last two years, it went. Cut through a lot of the sentimental hesitation that would have otherwise stalled everything.

The kids not wanting the good china, painfully relatable.

Photographed sentimental items before letting them go — kept the memory without the physical weight and cost of shipping everything.

Did selling things actually offset the cost of shipping what you kept, or was it really more about the decluttering itself?

Viktor, to your question: selling things paid for maybe a third of the shipping for us, so it was mostly about the decluttering. The hardest single item was my mother's piano, which nobody in the family played and which would have cost a fortune to ship. We gave it to a primary school down the road, and the headteacher sent us a photo of the children around it. That photo came to Portugal. The piano didn't. I think my mother would have approved.

Ben, the piano at the school is exactly the kind of goodbye that makes letting go possible.

We're on box forty-three and I'm printing Ben's reply for my husband.

A photograph of the thing, not the thing itself, is the whole trick.