Despite my impeccable timing of leaving the US before the 2016 presidential campaigns go off-the-rails, I have chosen to leave two months after the lease on my apartment runs out.  Creating an interesting gap between the life I have and the life I am moving to.

When I moved to the east coast from California eight (gulp- is that true? yeah- eight) years ago, I took only what I could fit in my car. But I assumed I would be back in two years, after I finished my Masters. Whatever I couldn’t convince my roommates to store, I pawned off on my parents. But here’s the thing- I didn’t go back after two years. I am not even going back after eight (parents- let this be a lesson to you).

This move is a lot different. For one thing, I cannot drive to Denmark. But for another, it doesn’t make sense to try to hang on to all of the things I amassed in graduate school. After reading several blogs about expatriating, moving to Denmark, and de-cluttering, it seems to boil down to two steps:

Step One: Sell EVERYTHING!  OK well maybe not everything. But most things. For clothes I tried consignment shops (local) but found their desire to only buy Old Navy items instead of my beautiful Ann Taylor dress clothes frustrating. For books, I tried (and have had decent luck with) Amazon (http://www.wikihow.com/Sell-Books-on-Amazon) but mailing large boxes of books gets tiresome. For furniture, I did what the blogs say to do- sell to people you know and then deliver the furniture when you are ready to move. All tolled- I have more purging to do but I am making progress!

Step Two: Give away what you cannot sell  I find this to be easier said than done. At the moment > 1/2 my clothes are boxed for charity, along with the vacuum that “Santa” brought me for Christmas last year, my microwave, etc etc etc- you get the idea. I am sure that it will be “liberating” but mostly it is kind of depressing getting ready to discard aspects of your daily life.

The other major piece of advice I have taken away from these blogs is to cut myself some slack. A big move is hard. Changing jobs is hard. It is perfectly normal to feel sad as well as excited.