I’m getting rid of all my worldly possessions. Sounds a bit dramatic eh? That’s really not my intention. It’s just more of a minimalist thing and perhaps a bit of psychological purging.
As mentioned in my previous post, my job is wrapping up soon and I’m planning to depart soon for international travel in Asia. I don’t wanna deal with storage so am instead purging all my stuff.
When I say “all my stuff”, I do mean damn near all of it, at least to the point where what I own should fit in a couple suitcases.
A Few Things Stay
There’s obviously a few things that I won’t get rid of out of necessity and we can think of them as sort of the bare essentials of life. What are my essentials?
- The Macbook stays. I can’t imagine being without a laptop. Along with a few peripherals like external hard drives for backups. Dongles and what not. I just wanted to say dongle.
- Double Edged Razor and the basic toiletries If you’re a guy and you’re frugal minded or just want a nice clean shave that doesn’t irritate your skin. You really owe it to yourself to try a double-edged safety razor. After trying a few, I landed on a double-edged slant razor that cuts closer and easier. Best razor I’ve ever used in my life. You can literally shave for under $5 a year in blades if you order these Astras. I always buy the 100 pack for $10 and it lasts me like two years. I only shave a couple times a week though.
- Smart Phone I currently rock a relatively unheard of OnePlus 5. These Android phones are pretty good smartphones that are on par with whatever the current flagship is for significantly less. The company is out of Hong Kong. It’s like a more affordable version of Google’s Pixel.
- I’m keeping the basics for clothes of course. Boxers, t-shirts, socks, shorts, jeans, some dress shirts and I’ll probably store a suit I had tailored for me. I can probably wear it again if I lose 15 pounds. This might happen in Asia.
- I’ve whittled down important documents to the point that they should fit into a safety deposit box. The rest I scanned to file. No idea why I didn’t do this years ago.
- I’m undecided about the car. I might put it in storage for a return to the US this spring or I might sell it.
- If you’re doing a lot of travel you need a good bag. I did a lot of research before picking up an Osprey. I highly recommend them.
That’s really it. It’s surprising to me that I’m not really missing anything. I think the reason people have such big inventories of stuff is a result succumbing to the ploy of marketing.
Everything else is either gone, about to be sold, given to Goodwill or the dumpster. Let me tell you something. This feels good. But why?
Minimalism
There’s an old saying that “Whatever you own, owns you.” I think there’s truth in this saying. If you have a bunch of things you need, then you’re dependent on them and carry some level of stress to make sure they are properly stored and safe.
Have you ever seen the show “Hoarders?” It’s reality tv with people that have everything they’ve ever owned stacked up around them in filth. I feel anxiety just watching it. What’s interesting, is in most cases, there’s some personal trauma that the person has dealt with and it’s clear that the hoarding is a way of not being able to let go of past pain. It’s some attempt to prevent loss.
But I think it’s also fair to say that for the extreme minimalist, there may be some trauma behind this behavior as well. It’s just a different way of dealing with things. It’s a form of loss avoidance. You can’t lose anything if you don’t have anything right?
There’s the old biblical idea of “not storing up worldly treasures” because you can’t take them with you to heaven. This is interesting to think about if we consider heaven to be a metaphor for living a pleasant life that is not wrought with suffering. Now if I can just get someone to pay a decent price for my used custom built desktop PC with a Ryzen 5 1600 processor. (Update..someone bought it. I hope they take good care of my baby)
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