So, when my husband and I had made it over to this side of the “should-we-or-shouldn’t-we-move-our-family-out-of-the-United-States-to-explore-and-play-and-work-and-see-what-other-parts-of-the-world-are-all-about” mountain (do you know this mountain? Have you heard of it? It looks so small and inconsequential from afar, but then you get up close, you start to climb, and it turns out to be quite a doozy), it was in the height of Marie Kondo’s hit Netflix special, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. So here we are, looking down the barrel of a really big move. Let me paint you a picture: Our house isn’t big, but it sure isn’t small. And we’re not totally materialistic and have to have all the things, but let’s just say there are…collections. Collections of collections, even.

Let’s bring this back around to the Netflix special. So if you haven’t watched it, the premise is about letting go of things you don’t need, things that have no emotional strings attached or are of any use to you, and then about making better use of the space left behind. And the way you figure out whether you need it? You hold it in your hands, take a moment, and see whether it “sparks joy”. That said, I LOVE organizing. Like, luuuuurve. I would marry it. Having a place for everything, not having a bunch of extracurricular crap hanging around, it’s my happiness.

Fast forward to the time between when we say “Yes! Let’s take that job in Sweden” and the time Human Resources says “OK, it’s yours!” This is a funny few weeks where time seems to have slowed waaaaaaay down. Minutes turned into days, days turned into years. That’s a dramatization, of course, but the hurry up and wait part of the decision making process was leaning heavy on the waiting side. And so, I began going through my workshop/art studio. My feeling was that if we did in fact move, this room would be the death of me and i wanted to have a good amount of thoughtful time to go through everything. as an artist/magpie, there are thousand of little components hiding behind these former kitchen cabinets. 

Except.

Except in the workshop, because you never know, right? Like I never know when i might need these fake birds I bought when i was 20. I’ll never know whether 2 full boxes of vintage golf tees will be enough vintage golf tees for a future sculpture. I’ll never know if the fabric harvested from a dress that meant a lot to someone I no longer see will be the exact chunk of fabric I need to finish…the thing. And what I do know? It is a fact, 6 weeks (years?) after I give away the fake birds I have been hoarding collecting for 20 years is exactly when i will need them.  

So, an interesting headspace to be in, following Kondo’s idea of holding something to see whether it sparks joy or not, is to hold something and wonder if my 45 year old self will find all the joy. Will I be so stoked to open a bin and see this thing i have been missing and is now totally useful. Who is this 45 year old woman? (And that’s rounding up a bit, as I imagine I’ll be closer to 43 when we return to the states, but somehow imagining a 45 year old is easier. But also totally weird. My 18-26-32 year old selves would be like WHAAAAAAAT?!?!?) Will she be so thankful I saved these things for her? (For sure the typewriter, because she will need one at her 45 year old self’s cabin at the lake, naturally). Will she laugh at the weight these weirdo things seemed to hold, or at how I toiled for days over whether to keep the wallpaper samples? Will she even remember? What will she be making? What will she be into? Will she still obsess over portraits and houses and portraits of houses? Will she care? (Of course she will.) Will her new Scandinavian way of being even recognize this time capsule i saved for her? 

Update: I wrote this post about a month before our move. About 80% (!!!) of the contents of my studio went to maker friends or to Scraps KC, a fantastic creative reuse center. Now as we are looking for a home I am a little nervous that maybe I packed too much, as spaces here are so much smaller than what we had in sprawling Kansas City. I’ll revisit this post when we begin to unload and settle in, as well as write a bit about packing air and sea containers (which I have been second guessing on the daily).