A couple of years ago, my former employer relocated me from to another town. This meant finding a new apartment and moving everything I owned. I had so much random stuff that it this became a real headache. I was resolved to throw away all the old junk I had amassed over the years.
Alas, once I arrived at my new place, I simply put it all in the closet and forgot about it. Then, one Sunday evening after doing the laundry, I ran out of coat hangers. I removed an old shirt that I hadn’t worn in years and was about to put it in a storage box. Then it came to me. Why not throw it away, I would probably never wear it again. So I did.
This began a chain reaction of events that lead me to throw out half of my wardrobe, as well as many electrical goods including a full stereo system. If I had been thinking ahead I could have sold everything on ebay or at least given it to a charity shop. However that night I was so determined to get rid of this stuff that I simply threw it all away. Despite knowing throwing hundreds of Pounds worth of stuff away, I felt awesome!
It was such a great feeling, like a huge relief. I had no idea this stuff had been the source of so much negative emotions until I got rid of it. To this day, there is not one thing that I threw away which I have, even for a second, missed/needed/regretted in some form.
I had a second cull of stuff before I left for the start of my trip. The truth is that originally I didn’t know how long I would be away for or if I would come back. I therefore put 4 small boxes of stuff in a friend’s attic. I took with me, one large suitcase.
When I stopped off at my parent’s place in Kuala Lumpur, I left a few things here and put the remaining clothes and other items I needed into a 60l backpack and my old Jansport schoolbag. This was everything I would need for the foreseeable future. However, it wasn’t enough.
It was quite heavy to carry this stuff on my back and I found that I ended up wearing the same 5 or 6 sets of clothes all the time and the rest were almost pointless. Even when I went to Australia, and my clothing requirements changed slightly, I simply bought the stuff I needed and everything was fine.
Before coming back to Europe, I was determined to make another cull. This time I went pretty extreme and brought only two small backpacks – my Jansport schoolbag and my awesome new Deuter Futura 28AC. When I arrived in Budapest, I felt like I didn’t have enough clothes. Though, on the plus side, it did take me about a minute to unpack.
I took 3 pairs of jeans, 6 tshirts, a couple of tops, a blazer type thing, an assortment of underwear and all my electrical goodies including my awesome travel laptop. The zipper on one pair of jeans broke when I arrived so that left me down to two pairs. I expected this to be a problem. Despite initially finding out where I could get them fixed, I chose not to. Instead, I’m making do with just two pairs of jeans.
Yesterday, after doing a full laundry load, I realised that I had lost a tshirt. I searched all around but could not find it anywhere so tried to figure out when the last time I wore it was. And you know what? I couldn’t remember. I later found it down the back of my bed, which I had moved over a month ago! I had never noticed that I was down a tshirt, even with so few.
It’s difficult to put into words the sort of freedom that you feel having so few possessions. I feel like I can pick up and move anywhere and it won’t be an issue. I probably have less stuff than most people take for a two week holiday.
My one and only shortcoming was my lack of a winter jacket. Having lived in tropical conditions for well over a year, I had forgotten what it was like to be cold. Thankfully my mum is visiting me shortly and is going to bring my jacket out. Had this not been this case, I could easily have bought a decent jacket here for 30-40 Euros. Right now, it is dipping into single figures (Celsius) in Budapest and I’m still managing fine without it.
I’m really not a fan of these hippy type people that only own biodegradable clothes or whatever, but they really are onto something. Possessions and materialism corrupts you, not in a Dick Chaney sort of way though. The elimination of material objects to the extent that our lives become portable, is the ultimate freedom. Unless you do this, you don’t truly have freedom of movement. I don’t suggest throwing away everything and living as a monk, but seriously, clean out your closet every now and then…
