Post vacation reality check

So clean, yet still comfortable.
I don't know how to do that.

Y'all, somehow we've been home for two weeks. It feels like both minutes and like we were never away. Life just overwhelms and sucks you right back where you were. 

I'm trying to hold on to that Paris feeling, though. Not the urge to see everything, everywhere, all at once, but the example they set to slow down and enjoy life. I saw surprisingly few people speeding along the streets, looking stressed. If they were moving quickly, it was because we were moving slowly. 

The other thing I've really noticed since we've come home is how much stuff we have. The apartment where we stayed was not an Airbnb rental, but an apartment whose owners rent it out once or twice a month, so we were living in a space normally occupied by a Parisian couple. Talk about togetherness. My kingdom for a door beyond the one to the toilet. 

But the one big closet held all the clothes, all the linens, the vacuum, the iron and ironing board, a few small extra kitchen gadgets, and that was it. The kitchen cabinets had the basics. A drawer in the kitchen table held all the silverware and knives. 

When you have to carry it 
up these stairs, you have less stuff.

I probably have more stuff in two cabinets in my kitchen. We won't even talk about the closets. 

But on the other hand, it's the right time of year to have this realization. Animal Friends of Lansdowne, our local cat rescue - and where Tessa and Rufus came from - has there annual yard sale fundraiser in May, and I have been building an enormous pile for them. Some of it is vintage that I intended to sell, but it's just too large/heavy to deal with USPS, but most of it is stuff that is just here and I don't know why. I pulled a half dozen mixing bowls out of a cabinet in the basement. I have a half dozen in the kitchen. Who needs twelve? 

I do this every once in awhile - lightening the load. Having a few less visible possession seems to take some weight off my brain, and that's never a bad thing. 

What about you? Could you do the Parisian minimalist thing or do your possessions comfort you? No judgment - I'm never going to be a minimalist. I would just like to be slightly less maximalist.

View from the bedroom window.