The things you own end up owning you.
— Tyler Durden. Fight Club.
I wrote a while back about how moving back to Singapore after nomading for a few years and unpacking my encased-in-amber flat had been, well… a bit embarrassing.
Despite living out of a backpack for months on end, I’d left an entire apartment in storage. Stuff that was not so much needed as made me somehow feel more secure and comfy knowing it was there. Despite considerable financial and mental carrying costs. And despite the fact Singapore’s heat and humidity had ruined much of it.
But, looking at my most recent move-out, I seem clearly to not have learned the lesson this should have taught me.
Why It’s a Problem
Having more stuff than you need subtly influences your decision-making: what you believe you can do, your willingness to take new courses of action, and binds you in weird ways that were not immediately noticeable to me until I’d reflected on the whys of certain (esp career) decisions.
Perhaps, like Cortés, we all need to burn our ships behind us.
About to move out and nomad again, I’m shocked (and disappointed in myself) finding how much material cruft I held onto. Insidiously convincing myself I’d have time someday to get round to using stuff in the manner which I’d planned. This was particularly insidious with stuff for learning or identity-based goals.
Perhaps this is because our society runs on material abundance. We not only encourage constant consumerism (the modern economy may even rely on it). And it is somehow easier to store of things than dispose of them. While we are encouraged to replace things with newer models, there’s rarely a dynamic that’s considered good where we have fewer things or stuff.
The start of the move out actually had me anxious, worrying about all the stuff I had in the flat and what I was going to do with it and store, give away or other decisions.
So, I am tossing stuff now with extreme prejudice (and selling or giving away furniture). Old running shoes, out-of-date electronics, a cacophony of boxes and papers (receipts 5+ years old! 8-// ), lab and scientific equipment (from teaching myself genomics and DNA sequencing), loads of clothes I never wear (especially criminal, numerous dress pants and shirts from a previous life nearly a decade ago as Managing Director of a tech consultancy.), unused but stored linen, a 12 year old Sonos Playbar (still bubble-wrapped from my last moveout), cookware never cooked in… I am embarrassed to say how far the list goes on if things I bought with good intentions to use, that just did not materialize, so are just weighing me down.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still things I would never part with even though they’re hardly easy to port around. Momentos, artifacts, pictures and paintings, a sculpture, a whack of paper photos and old hand-written journals. But these are all things with emotional resonance and memory, they’re not just material to decorate my life with. They’re not just… I dunno… cargo.
New Rules
So, since habits seem to work very well for me as a life operating system:
Anything I have not used in the last 12 months get tossed. I am literally putting an annual toss day in my GTD app, so that I specifically spend a full day throwing out stuff that does not streamline or better my life.
I will have my standard one backpack for travelling and a second small duffel for seasonal clothing or sporting gear that matter for comfort and performance and are expensive to replace when needed (heavy weather gear, snowboarding clothes, dive mask, hiking boots, dress shirt and pants, etc and a light streaming device to make hotel or long-term stays in places with just local tv palatable (powered by my streaming service.
I’m limiting myself to the tiniest (climate-controlled) storage locker rentable, till I land someplace I want to stay a year or two. Only mementos, cherished gifts, and objects of emotional content. Stuff to make my next home feel home-y when I ship it.
But more than my nomad setup, I am realizing I also just need guardrails when I get back to a settled place again. Some safety measures to avoid
to pad lighter on the ground And I think I need to think about padding light on the ground as a habit I need to reinforce, so like my other fondational habits, putting a recurring Toss Out reminder in for every 6 months to battle entropy and living cruft.
- Buy Less, but Buy Quality.
To be honest, I’m already kinda good at this. Anything I spend a great deal of time interacting with, I tend to spend money on to optimize the experience. My bed, my office chair, my laptop, my comy couch. These end up being quality of life purchases but they also last. My last laptop (which still probably could have gone on a while longer) lasted 6 years and was still ok-ish. - Have a Plan for Use
This may sound silly, but “stuff” often requires horizontal surfaces, or a place to tuck things away. It amazed me at one of my past places (which had no closets) how I bought fewer things because things made the place looked cluttered. Conversely, more rooms and closets ends up equating to more things to fill them. - Clothing
I’m hardly a clotheshorse, but still I am amazed at things I rarely wear or I save that take up space in my closets. Any piece of clothing I have not worn in 6 months (save seasonal sport gear like snowboarding stuff etc) goes to Goodwill or the dumpster. I particular, I have this terrible habit of keeping things I don’t like wearing. Why?? I’d actually warrant that I wear approximtely the same set of outfits every week and probably wear out the stuff I like faster since I wear it more often. I also need to review my wardrobe every 6 months and toss what I have not worn as a hygiene habit. - Experiments
My real danger zone. Personal growth and learning are hard and take time. Often, new goals, especially identity based ones, seem to require new stuff (I think Thoreau warned about enterprises and new clothes, but probably wasn’t thinking computers, scientific equipment, and textbooks). I need to limit experiments and try not to do too much at one time, especially if it involves purchasing new things. Also, for experiments, buy refurb-ed equipment if I can (this worked well in at least two cases.). - Buy Cheap, Fast (and Toss). Buy Expy Slow.
For some reason, I tend to overthink all purchases. Maybe a side-effect of a childhood where money was always really tight. I think my rule needs to be anything over 100 bucks I give it a beat, and for anything over 500 I pause a day for each integer (ie. 2500 would be a 5 day wait). And for anything cheap, don’t hesitate to buy it if it saves time or effort (so, valuing my time highly). For major purchases, pause and think about it as many days as it would take me to make back the money (unless an emergency replacement).
Fin
Sure, this sounds like a lot of rules for a (simple) existence, and from above you may think I am some profligate purchaser rather than a minimalist, but I’ve been thinking, wow… if I have this much cruft, what must normal people have?
Also, as I’ve simplified my digital life, I’m realizing I also want to streamline my material one. I mean, I’m not about to join a fraternal order or anything, but it’s amazing how much lighter and freer I suddenly feel tossing cruft (strangely, the feeling was worse for items that would be difficult to dispose of - large pieces of furniture that required more than myself to move or could not be broken down into more mobile units.). And yes, I would say I had a minimal, but very comfy home setup.
I think if anything it’s made me a bit more wary of the things I end up just accumulating through simple inertia. Let’s revist this in a year or two and see how I fared.
I hope you found this useful. If this post was useful to you, or you have something to add or a counterargument drop me a line and let me know, via mail or elephant below. If you have a better approach, tighter security, or think you have additions that might make this better, please holler. Feel free to mention or ping me on @awws on mastodon or email me at hola@wakatara.com.