We have a lot of stuff. Like, a disturbing amount of stuff. One of our friends was like "Where the heck did you put all this?" and I honestly couldn't tell her. Here I was thinking I was a high and mighty anti-consumerist and then all of my junk comes crawling out of hiding to taunt me.
So, we decided to sell it all and donate the proceeds rather than keep it to move across the country in a year. We did keep a few "extra" things (our rule for "extra" is this: if we aren't going to use it during this year of {vaga}bonding, it goes), which are tucked away in my parent's basement, happily being borrowed by friends and family, or in boxes designated for re-gifting. Despite this, we still didn't manage to keep enough stuff to win the approval of either of our mothers.
After sorting out what we wanted to keep, we piled everything in the living room & around the house, set up a donation jar, and opened it up to our friends and family for a free-for-all. Take a gander at our garbage:
Today people kept asking if this was hard for us. Jamie seems unfazed by all of it. I, on the other hand, am much more sentimental, and yesterday was difficult for me. I actually came to tears more than once over some things; mostly gifts, knick-knacks, items with a history but no real practical purpose (some of the stuff I hang on to I don't even like that much). It was like an episode of hoarders, except that I don't have a big enough problem to make it on TV. Jamie kept telling me this was all my idea and then I would sob some more. But I got it out of my system, and I woke up this morning mentally and emotionally prepared to see 90% of my belongings march out the door. I have been vastly disappointed. We sold a lot of stuff, but there's still a lot of stuff left, and our sale is only open another hour (it's been slow... as evidenced by my having plenty of time to blog).
I must interject with this clip. I love this movie, mostly because it has David Bowie in it, but also because of scenes like this:
"I HAVE TO SAVE TOBY!!" Classic. For those of you sad people unfamiliar with the film, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is on a mission to save her little brother from the Goblin King, Jareth (David Bowie). Jareth sets up traps along the way, and her comfortable little room in her home with all of her things is one of those traps to distract her from her goal to save Toby. Luckily she escapes this trap like all of the others and goes on to take over the Goblin City, meet the greatest challenge of all of turning down David Bowie (I mean, defeating Jareth), and have a happily ever after with her brother safely at home and all of her friends around her in a big muppet party. It's great.
I never want to have this many objects to worry about again in my life. I don't want to feel like I'm literally uprooting myself in order to relocate. I don't want to have to hem and haw about what is important enough to pack in a box, cart down the road or across the country, and unpack again. My roots should be based solely on the people around me, not because I don't want to have to pack up all my crap. And really it's not so much the inconvenience of moving that motivates me to remove all of this stuff from my life (although that is a strong factor), but the weight of it. Why do I feel a need to accumulate all of this stuff in the first place? All it does is keep me distracted and bogged down, like my computer when I was 10 and didn't know better, when I downloaded every little thing with hidden trojans and viruses entwining themselves in the poor machine's memory. I should mention that gifts are another animal entirely, and I need to continue to flesh out my thoughts on their place in all of this as well, but that is for another post.
This "Great Schlep" has been a long time coming. We still have enough stuff stored to fill Jamie's car three times over, but it's a start, and I intend to continue down this path if I can. I will save my rough history with minimalism for another post as well.
Anyway, even though we still have over half of our things to deal with (and I still don't feel that sense of freedom that those crazy minimalists are always talking about), we found homes for a lot of our things and our friends and family generously donated over $1200 for the homeless and poor in Paradise and Chico, and that is something. =)
So, we decided to sell it all and donate the proceeds rather than keep it to move across the country in a year. We did keep a few "extra" things (our rule for "extra" is this: if we aren't going to use it during this year of {vaga}bonding, it goes), which are tucked away in my parent's basement, happily being borrowed by friends and family, or in boxes designated for re-gifting. Despite this, we still didn't manage to keep enough stuff to win the approval of either of our mothers.
After sorting out what we wanted to keep, we piled everything in the living room & around the house, set up a donation jar, and opened it up to our friends and family for a free-for-all. Take a gander at our garbage:
Today people kept asking if this was hard for us. Jamie seems unfazed by all of it. I, on the other hand, am much more sentimental, and yesterday was difficult for me. I actually came to tears more than once over some things; mostly gifts, knick-knacks, items with a history but no real practical purpose (some of the stuff I hang on to I don't even like that much). It was like an episode of hoarders, except that I don't have a big enough problem to make it on TV. Jamie kept telling me this was all my idea and then I would sob some more. But I got it out of my system, and I woke up this morning mentally and emotionally prepared to see 90% of my belongings march out the door. I have been vastly disappointed. We sold a lot of stuff, but there's still a lot of stuff left, and our sale is only open another hour (it's been slow... as evidenced by my having plenty of time to blog).
I must interject with this clip. I love this movie, mostly because it has David Bowie in it, but also because of scenes like this:
"I HAVE TO SAVE TOBY!!" Classic. For those of you sad people unfamiliar with the film, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is on a mission to save her little brother from the Goblin King, Jareth (David Bowie). Jareth sets up traps along the way, and her comfortable little room in her home with all of her things is one of those traps to distract her from her goal to save Toby. Luckily she escapes this trap like all of the others and goes on to take over the Goblin City, meet the greatest challenge of all of turning down David Bowie (I mean, defeating Jareth), and have a happily ever after with her brother safely at home and all of her friends around her in a big muppet party. It's great.
I never want to have this many objects to worry about again in my life. I don't want to feel like I'm literally uprooting myself in order to relocate. I don't want to have to hem and haw about what is important enough to pack in a box, cart down the road or across the country, and unpack again. My roots should be based solely on the people around me, not because I don't want to have to pack up all my crap. And really it's not so much the inconvenience of moving that motivates me to remove all of this stuff from my life (although that is a strong factor), but the weight of it. Why do I feel a need to accumulate all of this stuff in the first place? All it does is keep me distracted and bogged down, like my computer when I was 10 and didn't know better, when I downloaded every little thing with hidden trojans and viruses entwining themselves in the poor machine's memory. I should mention that gifts are another animal entirely, and I need to continue to flesh out my thoughts on their place in all of this as well, but that is for another post.
This "Great Schlep" has been a long time coming. We still have enough stuff stored to fill Jamie's car three times over, but it's a start, and I intend to continue down this path if I can. I will save my rough history with minimalism for another post as well.
Anyway, even though we still have over half of our things to deal with (and I still don't feel that sense of freedom that those crazy minimalists are always talking about), we found homes for a lot of our things and our friends and family generously donated over $1200 for the homeless and poor in Paradise and Chico, and that is something. =)
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