A wet summer, a trip to escape it all and some realizations!

It’s been one of those summers here on the west-coast of Norway…

I tend to wake up really really early in the morning, from the sun streaming in, and there is a moment I think “hey, this looks like it will be a gorgeous day”, before I doze of again for a while longer… and guess what.. when I wake up for real.. it’s pouring down 😦 or if it’s not raining the sun is nowhere to be found again for the rest of the day. There are parts of the west coast where I’m sure people are starting to develop fins between their toes it’s been that bad.

To escape it all, B and I took of for a few days of R&R, to the east coast of Norway, hoping the weather would be a notch better at that end of the “world”. And guess what! Turns out not only did we have a great trip, but the weather ended up waaaay better than the weathermen had predicted (so much so that I regretted not bringing shorts) 😉

It was a great little trip, we had a few days at a wellness center, visited my brother in Oslo, hung out with some friends we hadn’t seen for years in Holmestrand, took a detour to Tønsberg on our way back to Oslo. Where we stayed a couple of days, “touring” some travel shops we were curious about, and hung out with friends.

We have been back for a few days now, and I have to admit it’s tempting to get back on the road, as it’s still raining over here 😦

I’ve had a personal goal the last year or so of managing to travel with a 25 liter backpack only, and we are definitely getting there. On this trip we had one 25 liter backpack each + I had a personal item where we typically would put stuff like water, fruit, my iPad mini, a book and my journal.

The good thing… I could have managed without my personal item, if it wasn’t for the fact, that on this trip, I was bringing a bit of food, as I’m on a special diet at the moment, and I didn’t know if the places I was going would be able to accommodate that.

The bad thing.. my bag is still a bit on the heavy side 8-9 kg, but I’m working on that 😉

One of the aspects of being on the road that I really like (now that we have managed to get down to a small bag each), is that we don’t have a lot of stuff with us. It’s easy to find everything (it’s not like there is a big bag for the stuff to hide in), and there is not a lot of stuff floating around. Turns out we don’t need much to have a good trip!

So why do we “need” so much when we are at home?

I understand that there are things we need at home that we don’t need when we travel, I get that. But even removing the essentials from the scenario, most of the time there are so much more in a persons home. Even if we account for all the “little” things we just want to keep around us because they bring us tremendous joy, more often that not there are a lot, a lot of items left that has absolutely no purpose at all.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since we got home, as I find that my house feels kinda “cramped”. There is no reason why I  should feel this way, as my house isn’t really cramped at all.

I believe the feeling comes from how easy and light it felt when all I had to “worry” about was what I carried with me, and that the stuff in the house isn’t quite as easy to pack up, should I want to.

This is what weights heavy on me right now, wanting to have it all decluttered down to a point where I could easily pack my stuff and relocate (not that I have any plans whatsoever to relocate anytime soon… then again.. we never know what’s around the next corner now, do we.. )

I’m not sure how to address this. I wonder if I would feel better about it, if I can just get some of my heaviest “tasks” out of the way?

My three nemesis’s… documents/papers, photos and computer files, are the ones that I’m struggling the most to ever get on top of.

The biggest reason is that, in my mind, I want quite a bit of the physical paper/photos etc all scanned to my computer, in addition I have oodles of files on several hard-drives that needs sorting, so I can get down to one hard-drive and one only.

Easy, peasy you say!! Well yes, except that the computer is the one thing I really should be staying away from, as it doesn’t take a lot of computer time before my headaches gets bad 😦 And herein lies my problem! The computer issue stops me in my track, and I get super frustrated because these three tasks is what needs to be done for me to feel like I’m where I like to be delutter wise.

There are times I wish a fairy would just magically take care of this for me… you know, poof, all sorted, scanned and neatly organized on my computer.

I lieu of a fairy..  anyone out there that has any ideas for how I can (once and for all) get on top of this? Anybody???

Yes? No?

Guess, I’ll just have to eat this particular elephant one tiny bit at a time.. even if I need a couple of years to get it done.

Unless any of you want to come visit and help me out, that is… I have wine 😉