Ep 9 - The Big Declutter Before Moving: Featuring Priya Short

 

This week I’m talking with my dear friend and client, Priya Short. We worked together as she planned and executed a move from Munich, Germany to London, England. International moves involve more details around shipping, as well as extra care in the decluttering process. Hear how Priya made these decisions as well as some of the items that did (or didn’t!) make the cut.

You can listen right here, on Apple Podcasts, or you can read the transcription below. Enjoy!

 
 
 
 

Carly: Priya. Welcome to the show.

Priya: Thank you for having me. It's exciting.

Carly: Thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to have you here. So before we jump in, tell me who you are and what you do in the world.

Priya: Sure. So my name is Priya Short and I am a visual effects artist. For those who don't know what that is– I create all of the effects for movies. You have probably seen some of my work if you've gone to the cinema in the last eight years. You've seen some of my stuff up on the big screen. That's what I do.

Carly: Can you tell us some of the titles your work has appeared in? Because I'm a very proud friend.

Priya: Sure. So there's been quite a few Marvel movies.

Priya: I won't list them all, but I guess most notably Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Captain America: Civil War. Let's see, what else? Oh, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 . The most recent one  I'm pretty excited about is the ABBA Voyage concert. That is in London at the moment in a purpose-built arena and it is going on for the next few years.

Priya: So yeah, that's what I've been lending my talents to.

Carly: So cool. I'm so happy for you. Before we get deep into the conversation, I wanted to touch on how we met because we go way back, which is unique for this. I know that some things that come up in the conversation might sound a little inside jokey, and if that happens, That's why.

Carly: We were roommates in college before I came back to San Francisco after living in London for six months. You and I also went on a trip with our friend, Billijo, and we all went to London in 2006 together, and now you're living there. So it feels like this big, full-circle thing.

Priya: A little bit, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of great.

Carly: I'm going to dive into the questions because we're talking all about the big declutter before moving.

I know that you recently had to do a big declutter before moving. Can you please tell us more about where you were moving from?

Priya: Sure. So I lived there for almost eight years. It was like seven and a quarter years in Munich, Germany. I moved there in 2013. I was married and my ex-husband got a job at a company based in Munich. We made the move from San Francisco to Germany and it was really scary. But it was kind of easy at the same time because his company took care of everything for us.

Priya: They moved all of our belongings out there and they took care of the visas and everything.  I didn't have to think about anything at all. I just had to turn up and find things or collect things. And it was pretty painless. However, because they took care of everything, I wound up moving my entire life – like all my things. I left very few things back in California. So I had quite a bit with me when I was looking to move from Germany to the UK. And that's where Carly came in.

Carly: A big part of the logistics was about how much you wanted to keep and ship to England.

Carly: Can you tell us about that decision-making – How did you decide the volume of what you wanted to take in the end?

Priya: I started my own little personal decluttering process in 2019. I'd lived in Ireland briefly for a job again with visual effects.

Priya: Few people know this, but my job was fairly nomadic before COVID made work from home possible. People used to travel around from country to country, wherever the work was. So I was in Ireland briefly for a job. I was living with another mutual friend of ours who had done several international moves and had pared down her life.

Priya: And I started thinking about sort of the things that I was holding onto and why was I holding onto them? And so when I got back, I started culling a lot of things. Then it came time to move and I had to be brutal. I only had a thousand pounds as a reimbursement from the company. It's a nice gesture. 

Priya: They could have said, absolutely not. You gotta take care of it yourself.

Priya: It was not cheap. Those shipping containers are not cheap at all. And even if it is slightly shorter, in terms of distance, you know, moving from Germany to the UK still costs a fair amount of money. So I had to be fairly brutal. I had to look at a lot of my things and try to determine if this was necessary for my life, necessary for my existence, or if I could do without it. 

Priya: I don't want to talk about Marie Kondo exactly, but did it sort of evoke something in me? Not necessarily spark joy, but was it something that I felt I needed to keep because it was important to me or if it was something I was just holding onto for the sake of holding onto it? Well, I'm going to use this eventually.

Priya: At some point maybe. It's like that pair of jeans– oh, I'll fit into it again. I'll just hold onto it. Maybe it'll come back into fashion. I'll hold onto it– kind of a thing. I had to be brutal and sort of reject my previous tendencies. I tend to be a little bit of a sentimental pack rat. I don't know if you remember, but I had a ticket stub collection.

Carly: Oh, I do remember that. Yeah.

Priya: Yeah. I had my movie ticket stub from like, 1992. 

Carly: You've always loved movies too. So it's not like a random thing. This is the industry that you work in now.

Priya: Exactly. I'd kept every single movie ticket stub from 1992 ish until… I want to say maybe starting to peter off after I moved to Germany… Maybe 2013, 2014.

Carly: Wow.

Priya: That's a lot of movie tickets. Sometimes they were printed on cheap paper. The ink would rub off. I didn't even know what this movie was anymore. It's like, I don't remember what this is. Do I need to have it in my life? 

Priya: My sister used to tease me. My parents are from India. And so we spent a lot of my childhood going to a city in Southern California called Cerritos.

Priya: They happened to have a Little India.  We would go there frequently to do grocery shopping or to get Indian sweets and snacks and things. We had gone to this place and I made a little Frankenstein out of styrofoam. I drew a face on him and I shoved the straw through the base of it to make bolts in the neck. I held onto that for easily, 15 years. I finally got rid of it, but she used to make fun of me for that. So these are the sort of things that I would hold onto. It's like, okay, I need to seriously downsize because I don't need to move the stuff from country to country, to country. It's not essential.

Carly: Being sentimental in itself is not a bad thing. Logistically, I can see how if you're moving from country to country, it gives you time to examine it. What was the thing that kind of clicked like, okay I need to figure this out and I need to do something different? 

Priya: I think it came down to the logistics of it. It's like, okay, I need to be pragmatic here. I need to stop being emotional for the moment. And bring logic into play here. Decide if this makes sense for my life or not. The things that matter to me, the things that are important to me,  I've kept, of course. There are things that I just absolutely can't get rid of but then there were other things that I did.

Priya: And that was still painful. That was still really, really hard. Like a lot of my Gesture drawing from figure drawing class In college. I got rid of those. It's just a bit of charcoal on newsprints. The good ones I took photographs and saved on my phone. Well,  I guess they're in the cloud. I should probably back that up.

Priya: I've held onto them so I don't need a giant piece of newsprint. I didn't have it displayed on the wall or anything. They were shoved in my storage unit. If it's just collecting dust then why have it? Why continue to hold onto something just because I created it at one point in time doesn't mean that I need to hold onto it forever.

Carly: We worked together to figure it out the timeline when you were moving. We were touching base for accountability, talking about logistics, really just making sure that the timeline was in place so that you were making movement in advance and not having to rush to do everything at the end before you had to leave the country.

We had to chat through a lot of tough decisions in that process. What was the most surprising thing to you about the process of letting go?

Priya: I think just kind of how easy it was. I mean, it was definitely painful. The thing that still brings me a lot of pain is my books. Cutting my library down broke my heart.

Priya: I took quite a few to the English bookshop in Munich. They took several off of me but then a lot, they were like, yeah, we don't want it. We don't need it.

It is sort of like an accepted practice in Munich that you can put things out on the street in a box, and just label it to give away.

Priya: So I did that. I grabbed a box and I put all the books that the shop wouldn't take in the box. I set it outside, cried, and ran back into my flat. It started raining a couple of hours later so I ran back outside, grabbed the box, and brought it indoors. Because you know, I have to protect them. They're my books. They're special to me.

Priya: But then when the weather broke, I put it back outside. They went fairly quickly and I was happy about that. It was like, okay this is going to a new home and people are happy about it. Like giving away my wedding china as well too. This is a huge emotional weight that was lifted because I had held on to a lot of things from my marriage.

Priya: Like giving away my wedding china. This is a huge emotional weight that was lifted because I had held on to a lot of things from my marriage that as a single woman, I just didn't need anymore. I don't need china settings for six people. I'm not giving grand dinner parties in my tiny little studio apartment. Like it's not happening here. I don't need to hold on to the fancy frame that we had our photo and our wedding invitation in.

Priya: I don't need any of that anymore. It's not relevant to my life. Keeping it and seeing it occasionally, not that I'm trying to run away from those feelings or bury my past, but it's painful, you know, my divorce wasn't easy. In hindsight, It was necessary but wasn't easy.

Priya: I just didn't want to feel that heaviness anymore. Shedding those things helped with that. I finally sold the wedding ring and engagement band a couple of weeks ago, too.

Carly: Wow.

Priya: Yeah, that was a really big one. That was a huge one. 

Carly: It's hard too.

Carly: Yeah, of course. Of course. It helped me feel like, okay, new beginnings, a fresh start, new life. Hopefully a happier life. Yeah.

What advice would you give a friend who just hired an organizer that is going through the same thing — either a big move or just feeling the need to make a change?

Priya: Ooh, that is a good question. I would say ask all the questions. nothing is stupid, nothing is silly. Get as much clarity as you can because it can be overwhelming. It can be so overwhelming. International moves are a giant deal. You have to deal with customs, and it costs a lot of money and the stuff doesn't get there straight away. When I went from the States to Germany, our stuff was in a shipping container on one of those boats for like three months. 

Priya: My ex-husband was like, oh yeah.. every so often these containers just like fall off the boat. There are whole households at the bottom of the ocean. And I was like, what are you doing to me right now? My anxiety is skyrocketing right now and I have to wait three months. It's just so silly. Like none of this is helpful. 

Priya: So, no question is stupid. If you need your hand held every step of the way, then that is okay, that's fine.

Priya: They're there to help you. You don't have to act like you have it all together. You are going to this organizer. Hopefully, you're going to Carly because she's the best. You're going to this person because you feel like you do need the help so use them. Accept the help.

Priya: It's so hard for any of us, but I think especially women, to say I need help because we are supposed to have it all together all the time. Right? I'm not a mother. I was not blessed in that way, but I know that there is so much pressure on moms to have it together all the time. To have all the lunches done and arrange all the playdates.

Priya: And to take care of herself physically. To lose the baby weight straight away. To not look like she hasn't showered in three days or whatever. There's this constant pressure on us to maintain the household and to be personable and to smile, and be grateful, and gracious.

Priya: we're human beings. We have complicated emotions and a move even just down the street is difficult. Uprooting yourself from your home, and uprooting yourself from your routine is not an easy task. An international move is very emotional. 

Priya: If you're moving from your home country to another country, you're leaving behind everything that you've known. In my case, I was 33 when I left. So I was leaving behind San Francisco which I had moved to when I was 18 years old. I grew up in that city.

Priya: It's super cheesy, but I left my heart there. There is a giant piece in my heart in San Francisco and it is going to remain there. You leave all the stuff behind and you start over and you start fresh and you have to learn new systems. In my case, I had to learn a new language. I never fully mastered German.

Carly: You did great.

Priya: Thank you. It didn't help that I took French in high school so that is what I was speaking when I first got there. 

Carly: You speak French great too. I can't speak either so I'm very proud of you

Priya: I almost went on a tangent about when we were in Paris, but that's for another.

Carly: Stay tuned for the bonus footage…

Priya: right? Cute boys on the steps of the opera house.

Priya:  So don't feel like you need to stand on any sort of ceremony or principle or anything. Say I need help and accept the help. Nothing is too silly. Nothing is too stupid. Think about all the things because there are a lot of logistics that come into play that you don't even realize.

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to plan a big declutter before moving?

Priya: Get with an organizer. If you feel like it's a task that is too overwhelming, like I said before, ask for help. Then set up an action plan with your planner and go through and figure out the major things that you need to be done.

Priya: The other things will start to present themselves as you go through and you'll realize the other little things that you need to do. That is the spreadsheet to tick things off as you go. 

Priya: I divided things up by room. I didn't have a big place. I only had a studio apartment. I still was like, okay, I'm going to start with office stuff. I had like ten bags of shredding.

Carly: Oh yeah. There's a lot of shredding.

Priya: Yeah, so much shredding.

Carly: That is common by the way. To anyone listening that feels this way, know that I've had people feel embarrassed by how much shredding they have. it's just like cleaning out a pantry or fridge. Sometimes there are just things that have been forgotten about for a while. It is what it is. We work through it and we move on. Just don't worry about it. Just get it out of there. anyway. Sorry. Continue.

Priya: No, no, that's fine. My ex-husband was terrible about that stuff and he had made multiple moves across the Atlantic. He had bills from like 1994 that I found when we were married. We got married in 2011 and it's like, Why do you still have this? Get rid of it. The phone line is obsolete.

Carly: I've gone through a lot of papers, even junk mail that is 30 years old. If you're nodding along, you are not alone. Just know that you're not alone.

Priya: You wind up holding onto things. You do. It happens. It doesn't make you a bad person at all. You put it somewhere and you forget about it. You have company coming over and you think quick, shove it in a drawer. You forget about it and then you move. You're like, all right, I'll just throw it in a box and deal with it later. That was what I wanted to avoid on this move. I didn't want to just be like, alright, screw. Let's just throw this in a box and we'll figure it out later because I knew I wasn't going to figure it out later.

Priya: I had to figure it out then I'm there. That was the big thing.

What is your biggest self-care advice about the process?

Priya: Ooh, self-care has been difficult for me over the years. As you very well know, I'm not the best at self-care or finding Healthy ways of self-care.

Priya: Really being kind to yourself, being kind to yourself, talking nicely to yourself. Why is that the hardest thing? Why is that? It's ridiculous that it's so difficult. Just be kind to yourself. Talk nicely to yourself. Tell yourself. It's okay. Do a little bit at a time. If you only spend half an hour going through something and you need a break, then say that is okay.

Priya: I remember I had one day I was telling Carly earlier that I kind of documented a fair bit of my move on. Instagram through my stories. None of which I saved. So I'm sorry, you can't go and reference those

Carly: It's personal too. Like a personal account.

Priya: Exactly. But there was one day where it was like Okay. It's a beautiful day outside in Munich. I moved in September of 2021. Munich in the summertime is something spectacular.

Priya: If you can go... do it. Treat yourself. Just go sit by the Eishbach. Have a beer at a beer garden. It doesn't matter which beer garden. They're all beautiful. It's a great place to be in the summertime.

Priya: So there was a day where it was gorgeous outside. I kept looking out the window and I posted to my story.

Priya: I was like, okay, poll you guys. Do I blow off packing and organizing for the day and go play in the sun or do I knuckle down and keep moving forward? And everybody's like, go outside. just freaking go outside. Okay, I’ll go outside.

Priya: I needed that from other people. Yeah. I needed other people to tell me it was okay to take a break. And to live your life and have a little bit of fun. It didn't need to all be about hunkering down and getting everything to a point where it was, you know… I got there in the end. Everything was packed up and ready to go when it was supposed to go.

Priya: But yeah, taking that time and just clearing my head for a couple of hours or half a day or whatever it's necessary. It really is necessary because otherwise, you go down the rabbit hole.

Carly: I think it's easy to underestimate how much those micro-decisions can wear you out because you're burning calories, even though it's just brain work, you're burning calories.

Carly: So if you're feeling tired at the end, that's why. It's because it's all taking just micro tolls on you and it wears you down.

Priya: I didn't have the benefit of a Kinko's or something where I could go hand them my shredding and be like, take care of this.

Priya: I don't know if that exists in Munich to be honest with you. I don't know, maybe it does. but as I said, my German never got good enough for me to be able to figure it out. So I was just at home, on the floor with my little personal office shredder that I bought from Amazon, shutting stacks and stacks of paper.

Priya: My back was destroyed. I had hardwood floors, so after like even 30 minutes of that, I'd have to stand up and stretch out. Stretch. Make sure you stretch. Stretching is so important. Lift with your legs, not with your back.

Carly: I was joking around with a client the other day.

Carly: I was like, don't worry. I'm lifting with my back, not my legs.

Carly: That's like my dad joke during sessions.

Carly: Anyway. So you were lifting with your legs. You were stretching.

Priya: Stretch. Drink lots and lots of water. Eat. Remember to eat. I get into a project.  You might remember this from when we were roommates, but when I would paint, I would just get lost in it and I would forget to eat.

Priya: I do that with a lot of things. Sometimes when I lose myself in something it's like, oh, I haven't eaten all day. Probably having something you need that fuel to keep going is vital.

Carly: Get back to the basics and stretch and hydrate. Exactly. I'm going to link in the show notes. I have a post about 7 Tips for Decluttering Any Space. I hope that I'm quoting that correctly. The tips are to eat something before you do it and hydrate along the way. It's really easy to forget how much of an effect your blood sugar is going to have on you.

Carly: Especially when you're doing the micro decision-making. I plan my meals and my protein levels around my schedule with clients specifically. I make sure to protein load before sessions so that I don't turn into a hangry bitch. Like during somebody else's time. That's terrible.

Priya: Or like you just completely shut down. You get that weird headache and you can't focus. You can't concentrate and you're a zombie, and then, yeah, you can't do anything. So it's really necessary.

Carly: And this is a side note, but in case this is helpful to anyone. Just remember that there is a point when you're decluttering, whether it's for a move or not, where you can just mentally shut down and just be done and stop and not come back. Our role as Organizers is to help people make sure that they don't get to that point emotionally, and that we're cheerleading but not pushing them past that line.

Carly: When you're on your own it's important to make sure that you see it coming. So if you're feeling extra hangry, if you're feeling extra emotional, just take a break, take a little water break, just walk away before you reach the edge. Otherwise, it will be tough to come back. Anyway, just a side note that nobody asked for.

Priya: It doesn't even factor into your consciousness until you're like in it and you're doing it and you're like, oh shit, I need to do this.

Where can folks check out your work and learn more about you?

Priya: Oh gosh, this is weird. Self-promotion. I’m terrible at this. On the one hand, I'm like everybody look at this thing I did!! And on the other hand, I'm like, oh, I'm shy. Don't look at it. I don't want to be boastful. I don't want to brag.

Priya: If you want to check out my full filmography you can look me up on IMDB. That's the internet movie database. So it's imdb.com. You can type in Priya Short and find me there under visual effects.

Priya: There's no photograph of me. But I like it that way. Or you can go to my website priyashort.com to check out some of my work there. I am on the socials, but that is private. I don't like to share that with people who aren't In my close friend circle. Those are the places where you can find me publicly.

Carly: fair enough, definitely check her out. Her work is amazing. As somebody who has known you for, oh my gosh, about 20 years now.

Priya: I was trying to do the math this morning and I was like, when was the first time that we met? When Krista and I were standing outside of the building and you and Billijo came up, what year was that?

Carly: That was probably 2021 or 2022.

Carly: 2021, no sorry. I meant 2001.

Carly: Yeah. 20 years, 20-21 years ago.

Priya: Oh my God.

Carly: On a personal note. I have seen you as a person– we have both learned and grown a lot – but just your work, it's amazing. I'm so happy for you. You're doing what you love and I've seen your skill level grow exponentially. I'm just so thrilled for you.

Priya: Oh, thank you so much. I have to say the same about you. I'm so proud of you for building this business. You are such a badass lady boss. You guys don't even know how exceedingly proud I am of her.

Carly: Aw, thanks. Thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate you.

Priya:  anytime. Anytime.  

Carly: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you want to learn more about how I can help you head to tidyrevival.com to learn more about how I work with people, one-on-one or in the Clutter-Free Home Process course community. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you'll always have access to the latest show. We would love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to tag us @tidyrevival on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. 

The Tidy Revival Podcast is written and hosted by Carly Adams and edited by Brittany McLean. The title song, Maverick, is by Dresden The Flamingo. 

Until next time remember…


 
 
 

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Tidy Revival Podcast, DeclutteringCarly AdamsTidy RevivalDecluttering, emotions, relationships, moving