49 days go to (lol)

Yeeee hawwwww.

After getting near to burnout at the beginning of August, I took two weeks off taekwondo to recoup my energy and actually work on things I’m meant to work on. I had set a goal at the beginning of the month to sort this room out on Kyle’s request. And it started off well! The box of junk you see in the middle of the room there is my broken bottom desk draw filled with electronics and cables that we won’t be taking with us. Some of them were foreign, so Trade Me wouldn’t let me list them. But praise the Lord for Facebook Market place!

Unfortunately, the selling of two foreign plugs and a faulty Tamagotchi wasn’t enough to make much of a dent. We did, however, re-home the borrowed joystick set, which makes the before and afters look a bit more impressive.

The Before and Afters

Bookscapoof! (That’s a legit wizard spell. I looked it up).
As it stands now, we’re basically left with the books that we’ll definitely be taking with us. Some are already packed in fact. There are less than 5 I want to read before we go, but if I don’t get there, it’s no big deal. At the moment, decluttering this shelf is not high priority because leaving it bare feels makes the room less cozy. You book lovers out there will know what I mean.

Stupid shelf… It’s about time I sell it actually, to force myself to clean up the discarded nonsense left here. Again, this has been low priority now that the easy stuff has been taken care of.

Normally, I wouldn’t show such a photo unless there was an obvious change. You’ll only be able to spot one. However! See that pile of papers above the Slipknot LP? That pile is smaller, just unnoticeably. And it’s important I tell you that because I’ve been slowly scanning them into PDF format to save forever. They are hand-written stories from my teenage years that range between two to fourteen pages long. I don’t need to keep the physical copy, but I try to do one a day, so hopefully that little piles is completely gone by the end of September.

Ooooooh. Bring on Spring!!!

And here we have the pile of miscellaneous cables to get rid of. But, instead of looking at that, admire how clear the fireplace opening is now! Can I get a eye-heart emoji?

This is going to sound weird, but I’m trying to convince Kyle to consume the pills in the bottom-left corner. He bought them so he should eat them. Ha! But otherwise, other things are slowly being consumed and not being replaced. I don’t know about you, but doing things that way makes me insanely excited. I can’t wait to finish off some of my sleeping pills… just kidding!

Yeeea boi! Saving some of the best for last now!
Please direct your eye to the top-most and top shelf of this wardrobe. I ended up focusing most of my attention in this area in August, and I think it’s paid off. There’s a lot of small stuff you can’t even see in the first picture that has now disappeared.
We very rarely use the things in this cupboard, so I’d love to have it completely empty by the end of this month. #Discipline.

And here I have a cupboard I haven’t shown you before. Truth be told, I started decluttering this area before I started my blog. You’ll have to just trust me that it looked a whole lot worse before. And (happy face) you can see the first packed box I ever completed on the top shelf there. Yay me!

The Personal

You may be asking if our Melbourne plans are still on. I’ll explain.
We continue to use October 16th as our deadline. Human psychology shows us that nothing gets done when we have infinity. Once a deadline is made, things start to progress. With a deadline, it’s possible to plan more effectively, and things get done faster. Without a deadline, we would get complacent and end up moving to Australia maybe only in several years! After all, it’s much easier to stay where you are than make a big change. We’re going to wipe our whiteboard of excuses clean and pretend October is our date. We’re serious about this move, so we gotta prove it.

Earlier in August, however, we weren’t serious about the move at all. We hadn’t even realised our complacency.

In an effort to keep on track, I asked myself, “if by some miracle we can move in October, are we ready?”. My chest did a somersault. The answer was undeniably “NO”. It was then that I realised I had to start exercising my brain to believe we had a shot at moving in October. Only then could I keep my motivation to pack up our New Zealand life, keeping only what was necessary. Boy, have I got some catching up to do…

As it stands now, we are not allowed to enter Australia. I get quickly reminded of this every time someone attempts to politely ask if we’re still moving. Unsurprisingly, people take my answer as naively optimistic. But I’m a mature adult and I’m not going to be upset if we don’t end up moving this year. Last Thursday, our Life Group leader asked me to explain the reason behind keeping such an unrealistic date as our deadline. So far, he’s been the first person to genuinely attempt to understand our decision on such a deep level and remain encouraging towards us. It was beyond lovely to explain how we came to our decision.

My sense of ease is directly connected to Kyle and the peace I have knowing we’re exactly on the same page. We both know that we’re unlikely to be moving in October, or maybe even this year. But as I said last month, us Dunkerley's make the most of our time.