Surviving on the bare minimum

Soooo... for the past week, we've started the arduous process of packing and selling of our things. Try imagining the place looking both messy and bare at the same time.

Let me just paint you a somewhat unstructured picture of what's been happening lately...

Our apartment is looking like the early days when we just moved in with hardly anything. Early last week, we started putting up ads to sell of our furniture and appliances. I advertised it as "MOVING SALE - NEED TO SELL OF EVERYTHING!"

We started receiving numerous enquiries almost immediately. Seems like there's also a lot of people moving to Sydney from somewhere else.

Saturday was the busiest day. We had one couple who just migrated to Sydney from Beijing who pretty much wanted to buy everything. They arrived with nothing and were moving into their apartment that day itself and wanted to cart of everything on the spot (they had hired a truck and movers ready to transport the things).

They basically cleaned us out... our bed, coffee table, dining table, chairs, fridge, washing machine, bed... then they saw our futon couch... I was reluctant to sell it because I wanted to hold on to it for us to sleep on until the very last day... so I named a much higher price hoping they would refuse... but instead they jumped on it... I glanced at hubby and understood the look on his face... "we'll manage somehow" (anyway we still had the blow-up mattress we borrowed from our friend for when Sam, Paul and JM were staying with us).

So we closed the deal and by the end of the afternoon, we were left bereft of most of our belongings.

We were left in a funny situation because we had two boxes of ice-cream and no fridge. Plus I was worried how we'd manage with just one blow-up mattress between the two of us. It was starting to sound mighty uncomfortable. We then decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood and bring along an ice-cream each to enjoy, and also to take the trash out.

This was when we encountered an amazing experience of God's provision.

We took the lift down to the basement where the rubbish bin area was located. Then something caught our eye. We saw a load of furniture left near the bin area (not in the bins itself)... it seems someone else in our building must be moving out and couldn't sell of the items and had to get rid of them somehow. There were some tables, chairs and a queen-size mattress. Hubby suggested that we consider taking the mattress.

I was dubious at first at sleeping on a strange mattress. Who knows why they were throwing it away. Was it safe to sleep on it? So I went to inspect it closely. It was a little old, but there didn't seem to be any funny smells and no apparent stains on it. So I gave the OKAY and hubby lugged it upstairs.

After we returned from our walk, I proceeded to vacuum the whole mattress and laid out two layers of flannel blankets on top of it before putting on the sheets. We slept very comfortably that night. I said to hubby what a good thing it was we found the mattress because I couldn't imagine sleeping on the cold hard floor for rest of the weeks we had left.

We spent the rest of the weekend eating frozen pies and melted ice-cream. The ice-cream wasn't so bad. It was magnum ice-cream, so the chocolate coating stayed solid, so all you had to do was nibble off a bit of the chocolate and slurp up the cream inside. I think hubby thoroughly enjoyed eating the ice-cream this way. He has a thing for semi-melted ice-cream and always liked to let his ice-cream soften and melt before eating it.

We had to finish up bits abd pieces of food from the fridge... a small pack of frozen vegies, bacon, sausages, some green curry paste. So hubby, struck with a sudden inspiration, whipped up a meal of green-curry fried rice. There was enough to last us two days. At first hubby was worried that it wouldn't keep without a fridge. But I was certain that it would keep a couple of days. After all our grannies used to keep cooked dishes for a whole day inside those funny larder/cupboards with fly-netting. Plus the weather was a lot colder here. I was right. We had enough leftover for lunch on Monday. And the fried rice was really good too... clever hubby!

Some exchange students from Denmark also dropped by and bought some of our tableware, cutlery and utentils. I let them take our can opener before I realised that I still had two unopened cans of food. However because every decent guy should be equipped with a swiss army knife, there was nothing to fear. So thanks to hubby's trusty knife, we were able to enjoy canned peaches for dessert on Tuesday and luncheon meat for dinner on Wednesday.

This whole experience just goes to prove, that you really truly don't need a lot to survive... and that human beings are on the whole very adaptable creatures... and to treat every new and usual experience as an adventure!

Also, today's verse of the day in my sidebar is Luke 12:6-7 (Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows)... Jehovah Jireh always provides!