TAKING THE PLUNGE TO PORTUGAL

On 1 January 2019, my husband, son and I made a New Year’s resolution. We were excited for the start of the New Year, yet terrified at what we had just decided.  We were going to re-locate from Johannesburg, SA to Portugal. 

The reason simply being that we wanted a lifestyle change, a safer and more rewarding lifestyle. The plan decided upon was to buy a quinta in Portugal, restore a ruin, plant fruit trees and vegetables and acquire a few chickens, sheep and perhaps a cow. The aim to be self-sufficient with off-grid homesteading was key.

Oh my word, there would be so much to do. The thoughts were raising through my mind. The house would need to be fixed to be put on the market, we would need to place our son in distant schooling, we would have to cancel our service providers, we would need to sort out our banking, start selling and decluttering our items, ensure that the paperwork is in order. The hardest part would be to resign at work, sell our motor vehicles and bid our family and friends farewell. In a quick few minutes, the totality of what was needed to be done to achieve our goals and dreams was understood. For this New Year’s resolution to materialise, we had a lot of work ahead of us.

The urge was becoming a reality and a driving force for us to start packing up and leaving. As the weeks went by, the driving force got stronger and stronger. The feeling was not only one of light-heartedness and a happy choice being made but it was also feeling like a necessity and we were driven as if our lives depended on it.

Most of 2019 was spent selling our belongings and getting the house renovated and ready to sell.

We had contractors come into the house and all at once it felt as if we were living on a construction site. We had the kitchen made smaller, taking out the pantry and knocking down walls, bringing it back to base. A portion of the kitchen would become an additional huge guest bathroom. Our outdated built-in bedroom cupboards were removed. We utilised a bit of space from the outside laundry room and the outside bathroom, adding an extra room at the end of the house, which was to function not only as an office space but also as a safe room, should the need ever arise.

Furniture, clothing, bedding, linen, towels, files and stationery were stored in the third bedroom. It was quite a mess with dust and things everywhere but slowly the mess became organised chaos.

My husband and I started fixing the house. We worked full steam ahead over weekends, starting as early as 06:00 and often finishing around 17.30. We wanted to save as much on costs as possible and this meant doing a lot of the work ourselves.

I started by painting the outside laundry room. Next, my husband laid the kitchen flooring and built our clothing cupboards, after having brought the kitchen back to base. Once the cupboards were done, I could pack all our clothing onto the shelves, which helped sort the third bedroom considerably, making the clutter less.

This equipped us to fine-tune another set of skills besides office work, sitting behind a desk. We were instead mastering the art of grouting tiles, painting and building cupboards. Each time after working, we would pack up all the tools used and clean up, which is very tiring. I will admit to shedding quite a few tears from mere exhaustion.

Motivated, head down and working through the heat with a beer in one hand, might I add, building the counter-tops, building in the extractor fan, gas and hob plates and selling items in between.

Next, we started work on the two bathrooms, being our en-suite bathroom and the guest bathroom next to the kitchen.

While working on the bathrooms, my husband built two deck areas leading out from the kitchen. From the one deck, one gets a view of the beautiful sunsets. The other deck area was built facing the backyard with the rockery as a backdrop.

The next few months were spent completing the kitchen, laying lawn in the rockery area on top of our driveway and laying the additional lawn in the backyard, completing two bathrooms, finishing the office/safe room space, sorting the garage and selling more items.

I started to sell items as we had too much stuff. First, we concentrated on selling the weekend hut we had at Bronkhorstspruit Dam, approximately 90 minutes out of the city.

Next, I focused my attention on decluttering the kitchenware and all the sets of crockery, the number of curtains, bedding, the endless wine, whisky and drinking glasses, too many towels, picture frames, the tons of books, loads of CD’s, the big black bags of clothing and shoes, vases, a big Alu-Star trailer.

We then sold the television set, then a desk, a mini CD player, our son’s baby change unit that should have been sold some 11 years ago, a pressure cooker, gym weights, brand new tires, a generator, a bicycle rack, Jerry cans filled with diesel, a coffee grinder, a branch shredder, cordless phones, a bathroom cabinet, a mini Sanyo Hi-Fi set, a tumble drier, a standing mirror with jewellery storage, 2 leather wingback chairs, statues, accessories, an old Coricraft couch, camera, DSTV Explora decoder, hair tongs, headboard with 2 side cupboards, camping tent and camping gear, a biltong cutter, paper shredder, a few of the horse riding items, a scanner, an Apple keyboard, a pocket watch, an iPad 1, an iPad 3, a power bank, lots of files together with plastic and brown paper, a few toys, extra dog bowls, another 2 side bedside tables, lamps, a laundry basket, an iron, 2 large mirrors and a wooden chest.

The washing machine was my husband’s when we got married and it lasted our entire married life. Although it was still working perfectly, we let it go two days before we vacated the house, together with the microwave oven and our Samsung fridge.

A few friends were made along the way. One couple bought our 2 red wingback chairs. They came back two days later and purchased the Oregon pine cabinet. A few months later, three days before leaving South Africa, they had purchased and collected the wooden dining table and benches. In the 13 years living in our house, we had accumulated far too much. At times one clings to the material items and although sad to see it be taken by someone else, I was excited for what the future had in store.

I was selling pieces of items for a solid year and towards the end, we still ended up giving a huge amount away. What we did not manage to sell, give away or throw away, we left in the house for the new owners who were too willing to sort through it all – cleaning products, brooms, a weed eater, more books, more horse-riding gear, a vacuum cleaner and more crockery.

If anything, we have decided not to have so much clutter and furniture in our next home. On the one hand, thinking about it could be quite wretched, but we were driven and motivated and we wanted to leave. We had this driving force that could not be explained and there was still a huge amount of work to be had.

We started by exploring the opportunities of placing our son in distance schooling instead of sending him to a classroom every day. We thought that his bedroom or the dining table could serve just as well as a classroom environment, without the interruptions of undisciplined classmates or teachers arriving late for class. He had the discipline.

The next step was to evaluate what service providers were offering and to evaluate where we could cut the cords. We cancelled our security service as we felt that letting strangers onto the property was becoming a greater risk, a risk that we could do without and which was also costing us money at the end of every month. Now we relied heavily on our two dogs to guard and protect us, the vigilance of neighbours in the street and of course, more importantly, our instincts. When something does not feel right, it normally isn’t.

We waited many hours in banks to scale down on our banking status and slowly started to close savings accounts and credit card facilities. We cancelled insurance policies and life cover, years and years of wasted money. We often heard we do not have enough saved for our old age. Who wants to have sufficient money when one is old or worse yet, has passed on? Would we ever have enough? Surely spending is for the living. We did not want to merely exist, we wanted to live.

We spent many hours at The Department of Home Affairs, waiting to submit forms that we thought would be needed or finding out if the documents were ready for collection.

September 2019 was a very big month for us as we said our goodbyes to family, neighbours and close friends. We had a lovely get-together at a lovely restaurant in Johannesburg on 23 September 2019.

On 26 September 2019, I sold my second Honda Jazz motor vehicle. What a reliable girl! My husband had already sold his Mahindra Bolero and we were utilising a rental car for a few days.

My last working day was on 27 September 2019. As was my husband’s. It felt very surreal. After all the rushing about in getting everything done, came the feeling of calm and slowly gearing down, which was an odd feeling. We said our farewells to colleagues. This was the second time that I was resigning without having secured another business opportunity.

Three days later we left for Cape Town where we were to spend the next month and a half to bid farewell to family and friends in the Mother City, our place of birth.

January 2020 was spent arranging for the house to be packed up and arranging the crates for our 2 doggies. The house was sold three days before our flight.

On 26 January 2020 the three of us, together with our two rescues, Shayna and Lilly, were on a flight to start our new lives in another country, one that would provide safety and a lifestyle change that we had been craving. We wanted to “march to the beat of our drum”, have our own identity and freedom and not be “a puppet on a string” for the rest of our lives.

Hopefully, we would be welcomed with open arms but who was to know that in two short months, a few short weeks, after leaving South Africa, the entire world would come to a standstill?

After a lot of planning and arranging, our 2019 New Year’s resolution had eventually materialised. It was “our turn”. Things fell into place and we found ourselves in Portugal. We spent 2020 mostly in lock-down but we had managed to purchase our quinta with a few olive trees and fruit trees. We still have many challenges ahead but I believe that the main chapter has been written.