Moving redux
04/29/2009 at 20:36 from (47.525054, -122.048447)
We have now officially cleared what might have been the highest hurdle standing between us and our trip: Moving. We have devoted what little free time we've had over the past several weeks to sorting, packing, recycling, tossing, donating, moving, and cleaning. It's been a long and intense process, to say the least.
A few times, things got heated as we were forced to reconcile our goals with our sentimentality. We decided to take a filter approach to assessing how we would rid ourselves of our piles and piles of stuff. The assessment categories are as follows:
1) Keep - This item is vitally important for our near-term existence, has very high sentimental value, or would be difficult or impossible to replace later, when it will be necessary.
2) Sell - This item is no longer important or necessary for us, but could be useful to someone else, and they're likely to be willing to pay for it.
3) Donate - This item would cost more to try to sell (storage, time, etc.) than it's worth, but it's probably still useful to someone else.
4) Discard - This item is of little or no use to anybody. It should be recycled, if possible, or thrown away.
As we moved through our apartment, we sorted every single thing into one of these categories (which usually manifested themselves as piles on the floor). The truly frightening thing was how much of our lives wound up in the Discard pile. The Sell pile, by comparison, was relatively tiny. Apparently, we had spent years accumulating things that had little value to us or others. It was just costing us money and effort to care for and store it all, and the opportunity for us to recuperate that investment was nil.
Depressing.
That's not to say, of course, that we threw everything away. In truth, we managed to donate and sell a lot of stuff. We took 15 garbage bags filled to bursting with our clothes to Goodwill and we sold a lot of our books and furniture on CraigsList. We donated boxes of tools, dishes, clothing, and office supplies to family, friends, and charity.
And most of that was from the first pass we made though our filter.
Just as with any purification process, the more passes through the filter, the cleaner the result. We got rid of the bulk of our unnecessary stuff in the first pass, as we packed to move. But we also spent a (thankfully) shorter amount of time later, as we were boxing and sorting our stuff for long-term storage and moving into our new spot (a certain young man's parents' basement), running all of our things through the filter a few more times. This resulted in more (mercifully, smaller) piles of stuff to be donated/sold/discarded.
Each successive pass yielded a noticeably smaller stack of things we absolutely cannot live without, which means we wound up storing even less and giving away more. That translates directly into more money and free time for us in the near term and the long run.
There was another revelation, though.
We had worried that we wouldn't have enough room in our backpacks to carry our necessities for the trip. Our accounting of the clothing and accessories we would need for up to a year abroad indicated that our packs are just too small and our backs too weak. Furthermore, we were certain that we would easily fill a small storage unit to the rafters with the things we planned on leaving behind.
As we continued filtering, though, we began to realize that most of the stuff that we were saving -- from clothing to kitchen supplies to books -- hadn't been used in months, if ever. A surprising percentage of our possessions were one-time purchases for special occasions, impulse buys, guilt-driven acquisitions, or junk pawned off on us by other people.
We quickly noticed that we really only used a slim minority of the things we owned. Our clothes, for example, filled one very large closet. However, when we started digging through them all, it turned out that we tend to wear the same 5-6 sets of clothes over and over again (I only started digging into my less-used pants and shirts when I'd managed to put off the laundry for over a week). The rest of our clothes were just sitting around, collecting dust.
This was actually a relatively reassuring realization, though. Sure, we had hundreds of pounds' worth of unused junk that was taking up our space, time, and attention, but there was a pleasant flip side: we had already been living pretty minimally for years!
The great sacrifices in comfort and lifestyle that we were sure we'd have to make for this trip (mostly in terms of a severely limited supply of clothing) don't seem nearly so extreme now that we can put it in the proper perspective. In fact (now that I'm doing my laundry on a schedule more frequent than the lunar cycle), I'm almost eager to pare down my wardrobe further for the simplicity it affords me.
Marijana, however, might not share my feelings on the matter...