The list!


To continue where we left off in our previous post we are now in the process of “letting things go”. Two grown ups plus two children equals a lot of stuff, clothes, things and toys!

We’ve been here before. A couple of years ago we decided to narrow down to the more important things. You know, something like the guys from The Minimalists and just generally having a more “Buddhist” approach to owning things. It’s been a fantastic and a very recommendable decision to minimize our belongings and for the first time in my life I’m actually able to visit a flea market without bringing anything home. I'm usually quite good at finding gold in a pile of old things, so I still feel a rush every time we drive past a sign that says "flea market".

We’ve been throwing out a lot of things the last couple of weeks and making piles of clothes to friends. Because now is the time where every single little thing, peace of paper, shoes, bags, books, toys, teddies, clothes and so fourth has to be sorted out. It’s a process about the fact “do we own our stuff, or do they own us”.

Of course, some of the really amazing pieces of clothes, books we love and furniture we can’t live without is boxed while we are away. We have a very small basement and whatever we can fit in that can stay -everything else has to go.

Recently, several have asked us more questions about our decision to leave Denmark in favor of Portugal. And what heck we're going to do?!

We really want to answer everything so here are just a few of the most frequently asked questions:

Why Portugal?

The answer right now could easily be “Why not?!”, but in reality there is never one answer to a question like this. The answer is due to a lot of thoughts and the final answer came forward after we made “the list”. We, Emil and myself have a lot of dreams, some of them big and some of them not so big, but on our list we had four important dreams in total. Okay, it sounds like we're these cool people with fancy lists of "life goals", but honestly we’re so not!

We made the list to figure out where we could merge our dreams in the best possible way and Portugal turned out to be the perfect place for us to move.


What will you do?

Besides living near the water, be with our two children every day and surf as much as we can, it’s also all about work. Having a business together is also something we love and both work really hard on, to form something we can be proud of.

Our dream with LEO LEO is to do good and be able to expand. We dream of LEO LEO to grow and become a universe where others want to join. We dream of developing different and fun jobs, with the freedom to live, be who you are and create something great together. In Portugal we have a manufacturer whom which we are working on new designs and collections to be presented in the near future.

How can you afford it?

We can't! ;-)

The truth is, that in order to afford our dreams we must bet everything we own. No financial safety net, no money hidden under our mattress and no guarantee of us to succeed. We do this, because we can’t do anything else!  

There is no other way around it. We have to grab the life we’ve been given and to fulfill our dreams we are willing to bet it all and work hard to get there! We try to believe in ourselves and the possibility of making our dreams come true! It's about giving it all, giving up our jobs and be fully committed to the list of dreams.

But to stay where we are now also feels like taking a risk! A risk of not being happy, risking the possibility of missing the “dream train”, in which we feel is so much worse. Missing our kids lifes by sending them seven hours a day to a kindergarten.

I guess it’s that way of thinking, that makes it possible to be a way of living. It’s so easy to let the negative shit pull you down, the what if’s, the financial uncertainty and fear. But in this case, our case we believe it’s about what the heart tells us, and then let the brain be the tool to make it all happen.

With that being said, we often think that we’re really just doing something totally ordinary in which people have been doing in centuries. Moving to a new country, learning new cultures, producing stuff and then sell to others. Something people are doing every day all over the world. It’s really not that big of a deal.

If not just to see our kids play on the beach, watch the sunset and sunrise all four of us, meeting new people, seeing new places and hopefully learn how to catch a wave. We can’t possibly see how, following dreams could ever be a bad idea.

Next step is to plan the route, how to live, where to live, passports in orders, things like insurance, last doctor visits, vaccines, packing lists and more dismissal of things.  And of course the goodbye party must be scheduled.