One Heck of a Jigsaw Puzzle

I love jigsaw puzzles, I always have. Whether it’s childhood memories of everyday at Grandma’s being spent putting together ancient jigsaws, fun memories of teaching our own toddlers the invaluable skill of finding and joining edge pieces, or even doing my own jigsaws just because I felt like it, my life has been filled with the pastime. Today, however, the activity was not as enjoyable as I remember, nor (to be honest) did the innate skill of ‘straight edges first’ come in helpful.

So what was the puzzle?

Believe it or not – packing the car! Now I ask you, after all the sorting, storing and throwing we’ve done over the past months, wouldn’t you think we’d have whittled down everything enough? Yes, I might have had concerns over the past few weeks but, how can we still have too much? Honestly, how can we? Don’t ask me, because I certainly do not know!

Most of our belongings have been sitting in the front room of our current house, with other bits in use around the house, all of which makes it hard to gauge how much we really have. Of course, it doesn’t help either that everything was ferried here in a variety of trips that fitted around us still clearing and selling the house even though Steve had already started the house-sitting.

Anyway, (as she stops waffling on) the big question is… did today’s trial packing of the car work?

The answer… better than I expected, but not particularly well.

The rubbish bins will be pretty full when we leave this weekend and we’ll be making a bigger delivery to the local Op Shop than I’d expected. But the main thing is – YAY! It fits! Who needs to see out the car’s back window anyway?

It’s certainly been a bigger learning curve than I’d expected though, and one anyone who’s taking up house-sitting will need to learn – depending on the size of their car. When we first started this adventure my aim had been to get all my belongings condensed to two suitcases and a box, and in hindsight I have to say, that that was a pretty accurate estimate. But I’m not, as yet, anywhere near it in reality – still we’re having fun stream-lining ourselves more each day, and there’s nothing like seeing an over-packed car to make you consider what you’re taking because you need and want to, as opposed to because you feel you should, think you should, think somebody else thinks you should, are taking without considering or because you simply can’t be bothered to decide.

So, I bet you can’t guess what we’ll be doing this week – other than driving around in a semi-packed car? Yep, once again, we’ll be sorting clothes, eating meals consisting of an unusual selection of foods, paying all kinds of things forward, and visualising what we truly want from our future. It’s almost becoming a way of life!

But, in the meantime, I have a question for you… do you think so many of the people we find ourselves talking to these days are in the process of minimalising their belongings because of our current focus, or is it a current world focus?