The Great Life Purge: What Happens When You Declutter More Than Your Closet

Selling Everything and Moving Abroad Was More Than Decluttering a House

When we decided to move abroad and start a new chapter in Albania, I thought the hard part would be selling furniture and donating clothes. Turns out the real work was a full life declutter. Not just closets and cabinets. Phone contacts. Email addresses. Old subscriptions. Digital clutter. The whole thing. A complete 360 reset.

Somewhere between listing lamps on Facebook Marketplace and deleting email accounts I hadn’t opened in years, I realized something uncomfortable. I had more attachment to my stuff than I thought. Not because I’m materialistic, but because a lot of it represented a chapter of rebuilding after my 2021 divorce. Every piece in my house had been hand-selected. Curated. Chosen with intention. That sofa wasn’t just a sofa. It was proof that I had put my life back together.

And apparently I had put it together with a lot of throw pillows.

Moving Abroad at 40 Forces You to Rethink What Actually Matters

But here’s the truth nobody talks about when you start planning a big life change, whether it’s moving abroad, starting over at 40, or embracing slow travel. Stuff quietly becomes a barrier to the life you say you want. Furniture turns into logistics. Closets turn into decisions. Storage turns into weight you’re dragging behind you.

The more we prepared for our move overseas, the clearer it became. The life Moe and I want in Albania doesn’t need most of the things we owned in Jacksonville.

So the purge began.

First the obvious things went. Extra furniture. Clothes I hadn’t worn in years. Kitchen gadgets that seemed like a good idea at the time. Then it got deeper. I went through my phone and deleted hundreds of contacts. People I hadn’t spoken to in years. Old work numbers. Half remembered acquaintances. My email inbox went next. Multiple addresses merged. Thousands of messages deleted.

It turns out digital clutter weighs on you just as much as physical clutter.

What surprised me most was how emotional some of it was. Selling Christmas decorations gave me nostalgia. Letting go of pieces I had carefully picked for my house made me pause. For a minute I wondered if I was throwing away parts of the life I worked hard to rebuild.

But the opposite happened.

The less we owned, the lighter everything felt.

The house started to echo. Closets got empty. Our schedule opened up because we weren’t constantly managing things. And slowly a new perspective took over. When you remove most of the noise, what’s left becomes very obvious.

Where you want to spend your time.
Who you want to spend it with.
And what actually matters.

Spoiler alert. It’s not the Poly & Bark Sofa.

Preparing for Moving to Albania Meant Letting Go of More Than Stuff

One of the biggest lessons from this process was realizing that intentional living doesn’t stop once you’ve decorated the house. I had curated my home beautifully. But I hadn’t realized how much maintaining that life kept me rooted in one place.

And the life Moe and I want now is different.

We want experiences instead of storage units. Slow mornings in coastal towns. Long walks through places we’ve never been. Exploring Europe between cruises. Building a life that feels lighter and a little less predictable.

You can’t do that easily when your life is anchored by a house full of things.

Decluttering our home turned into decluttering our priorities. It forced us to ask a simple question over and over.

Does this support the life we’re building?

If the answer was no, it went.

How to Start Over Abroad Starts With Letting Go

The funny part is that I thought this process would feel like loss. Instead it feels like momentum. We’re not just moving to Albania. We’re creating space for a different way of living. Less stuff. More freedom. Fewer obligations. More time.

And if I’m being honest, the most humbling realization of this whole experience is that most of the things I thought I needed were just… things.

Nice things. Carefully chosen things. But still things.

Turns out the life I want fits in a couple suitcases and a one-way ticket.

And maybe a few less throw pillows.