It’s 1.00 am (6 hours until our flight), windy, rainy and cold as I drop my company car off at my now ex-employers. I take out my 2 black bin bags of the clothes and items that are meant to be in my backpack that will be my belongings for the next 2 years. I switch to Nadia’s mums car with Nadia and the kids (asleep) to carry onto the hotel airport hotel, which we should have been at hours ago.
Stressed, tired and now wet, it was turning out to be a very unpleasant night, when it should have been an exiting one. We were off on our Round-The-World Trip!
I had a romantic vision in my head for the day we left. Having everything sorted, seeing our family and friends for one last hurrah. Then waving goodbye as we drive off into the sunset before settling into our airport hotel for the evening and relaxing before our exciting adventure begins the next day.
How wrong I was!
So how had it come to this? Let’s rewind a few months…
No More Things!
Once we had made the decision to go off on our Family Round-The-World Trip, we decided that we wanted to get rid of the majority of our possessions (I had wanted to do this even before travelling!)
As with a lot of families, we had accumulated a lot of stuff over the years, much of it completely unnecessary. And it was actually one of the things I was most excited about with regards to heading off travelling.
Getting rid of all our stuff and only having a backpack with our possessions was an extremely appealing concept to me.
We were lucky that our parents offered to store some stuff for us. So over the course of the next few months we just needed to find the few important and sentimental things we wanted to keep. And then sell, donate and recycle the rest.
Easy, right? Wrong!
Life just continued to get in the way.
But we really felt like we put a lot of effort in. We had sold stuff online and in person, took countless journeys to the tip and charity shops, handed off a lot of things to our families and friends. Yet it looked like we had barely made a dent.
We jut had sooooo much stuff! We made a promise to ourselves never to let it get like this again! Something I wish we had applied to our lives long before we decided to travel.
So if there’s a piece of advice for any family even thinking about long term travel (or even if you’re not), start downsizing now! Even if you don’t end up going, your Feng Shui will thank you and we’ve come to realise since travelling how little we really need anyway in life.
Judgement Day
The day came when we were due to leave. Nadia was actually physically sick when waking up and seeing what we still had to do. We rushed as much as possible trying to get everything done. But deep down we knew we had no chance!
We hadn’t even ‘practice packed’, something we would highly recommend when packing for a RTW trip. But the stuff I was taking was everywhere.
And when I came round to finally trying to get everything into my pack I quickly realised I could only get about half in!
We (and by we i mean me!) were even contemplating cancelling the flight at one stage.
But no, we had to go. If we cancelled we would probably be just in the same situation in a few days or weeks time. What’s the point?
Finally we decided we had to cut our losses. ‘We’ve just got to get out of this hell hole’ Nadia stated.
Whilst that was no direct reflection on our home as a whole, which we still have very fond memories of with the exception to that day, it was how we felt in that moment.
The chaos that surrounded us was overwhelming and Nadia was right. We needed to jut leave and make it work! After all, we only had a few hours now for our flight.
We had one final check to see if there was anything sentimentally important in the piles of chaos.
I then gathered all my gear and clothes that would be potentially going with me into a couple of bin liners. So I could make the decision of what to take in a much calmer environment of the hotel.
Nadia scooped up her own rushed backpack (but at least it was packed) plus the two children’s backpacks (probably the most organised bit of our luggage at this stage, didn’t see that coming!) plus the two actual children who had dosed off.
We left the mayhem of our once happy home behind. With some family members offering to finish the job of clearing it out once we were gone. Something we felt guilty about due to the pretty sad state we had left it in. But we had little choice at this stage.
Even though it was late we still had one last piece of admin to take care of. I still had my company car to take back. Luckily this was on the way to the airport hotel, so in tandem we headed off. Which brings us back to the start of this post.
A bad start, but things got better
It was a miserable night not just for us, but weather wise as well. It was chucking it down with rain, which made the car journey even more stressful on top of our ordeal.
After dropping my car off we finally got to the hotel. Nadia had her care-free attitude back and just went straight off to sleep. I on the other hand was now on the floor to select which items I really needed and which ones I didn’t. Once I had my bag finally packed it was pretty much time for the flight!
I left my remaining items in the room telling the staff they could take what they want and if they could donate the rest. There were some pretty decent brand new things in that pile so hopefully they’ve been made use of somewhere.
As soon as we were on the plane, the stress immediately lifted. And this I guess is the moral of the story…
People often ask us if travelling is stressful or scary or hard work. And, whilst it can be all of those things at times, I always say I have never been any more stressed or anxious since we left our ‘normal’ lives and decided to travel long term. And in fact, the most stressful day of our travelling experience was the one when we left! Since then it’s been pretty plane sailing.
It’s almost as if those last few days were a crescendo of stress before one of the most relaxed periods of our lives.
So to anyone thinking of travelling long term as a family we would always encourage them to go for it. It’s different for everyone and so we can’t guarantee you will love it as much as us, but for the majority you will have little regret.
Just make sure you focus on the leaving as much as the going…