All that baggage

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My oldest niece just finished up her first year of college the other day. Although she actually attends a University, in the US we still say college. Which is a bit of a misnomer because we do have smaller colleges over here that students attend after grade school. The key difference is universities offer four year degrees as well as master/doctorate programs and colleges usually only offer two year degrees.

But I digress...

@mrsbozz was talking to her the other day and she was explaining how she was heading home for the weekend and she was going to take a carload of stuff with her. Then she was going to go back and bring the rest of the stuff in another car load.

Mind you, she has a Chevy Malibu sedan, so it isn't like she is throwing stuff in the bed of a pickup truck.

I looked at my wife and I said:

"What it must be like, to be able to fit your entire life into two carloads"

Having moved four times in my life, I probably have a lot less stuff than some people, but at heart I am still a bit of a pack rat. There is always that extra screw or part or cable or whatever that you should hold onto in case you need it some day down the road right?

@mrsbozz on the other hand is quite the opposite. We have very few "knick knacks" in our house. "It's just one more thing to collect dust" she says. She does a really good job of keeping me in check. I've thrown my fair share of stuff away over the past 15 years at her behest.

Sure enough, a couple of those things I did actually end up needing, but being honest, those times are far fewer than the ones where it really was just junk.

Credit where it is due, my nieces mom (@mrsbozz's sister) is a bit of a minimalist. She started taking a "simplify" mindset a long time ago and it has worked well for them.

I mean imagine it... Your whole life in two carloads.

I'm sure there are a few people who can relate. Those who have decided to live the digital nomad life. Expats like @gooddream, he has written various times about how little stuff he has. As much as we cling onto our stuff, I can't help but think they have it right.

Realistically, the stuff that really has value to me, I probably could fit into two carloads if I needed to. I mean as long as there is room for my wife and dog, a computer, and our document safe, I'm probably good to go.

And yet we hold on so tightly to some things...

As my wife and I consider another move (in the next five years), the status of our stuff looms large for me. Where we thought we needed more room the last time we moved, we now have a house that is quite honestly too large for us. It's not that we needed more space, we just needed better space.

The current house we live in is a bi-level. Which means we have a whole bottom half of the house that we never actually use. To be fair, we thought we would, but it just hasn't worked out that way. I'd much rather have the downstairs living room and the upstairs living room combined into one larger room we could use for entertaining. Like I said, not more space, just better space.

Because a lot of times with more space you just get more baggage

The same is true with our emotions. I'm sure you have all heard the term "emotional baggage". It's true that some of us have two carloads full of that as well and in this case, that's often two too many.

As I get older, I find myself looking more and more to the past. I'm guessing that's quite normal since it's just a fact, that we have more time behind us than we do ahead of us at some point.

Old interactions, conversations, behaviors, attitudes, regrets, all of that jumps to the forefront when I have a lot of time inside my own head.

I'm not saying I have a bunch of empty space in my head, but just like a house, when you have the room, you often fill it with extra baggage that doesn't need to be there. Just like my nieces shoe box of a dorm room, imagine having so little space in your head that their just isn't room for all of those fears, doubts, regrets.

Maybe as we get older we need to think the way we lived when we were younger.

Maybe I am just babbling. Good thing I put this in the #reflect community. I have a feeling this post is going to land with at least a few of the people who I know follow me. While I might not be offering any solutions, sometimes just talking about it out loud is the fix you need.

With such limited space (and time), what baggage are you going to take with you and what are you going to leave behind?


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22 comments
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Haha my wife is also one to throw things away, sometimes unnecessarily sadly. I try not to buy stuff in the first place for the most part but sometimes it’s challenging. You see a cute thing at a farmers market sometimes…… we’ve been downsizing more as well. Trying to move but the artificial home prices are a real pain in the ass right now, hampering our style.

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yeah, now is definitely not the time to be looking. We wouldn't mind finding some property and building, but even that is monster expensive. I used to frequent flea markets in my earlier days. That doesn't happen like it used to. Probably for the best!

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I've moved quite a few times and often had to squeeze everything into just 1 carload! That was tough 😅

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I remember one time I moved it was right down the road so we just walked all my stuff down the sidewalk. It was pretty comical!

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Too much tangible and emotional baggage by far, huge fear when going smaller how much I have yet to clear.

As for the mind games, staying away from that right now, water under the bridge is far easier than trying to explain half of life away.

Such is life, I do admire those who successfully rid themselves of all the extra's!

@tipu curate

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Yes! It is a really amazing feat to unfetter yourself of all that stuff!

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Sudden realization you need to pass on, clear out a lot, not leave it for someone else to do. 🙃

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I've long since adopted using "university" instead of "college" in my speech because that seems to be the standard outside of the US. When I'm talking to other foreigners here I quickly learned that "college" sometimes confuses them, so "university" is better.

I used to be able to fit my entire life in a suitcase. That's ballooned up a little more these days when you add in bookshelves, tables, lamps, etc, but it still doesn't amount to much. I prefer a minimal space. Last time we moved, my kids stuff took much more room than mine when we packed up everything. Tyler Durden's quote "The stuff you own ends up owning you" has always rang true to me. I was more inspired by Buddhist ideas than Fight Club 😂, but Tyler's line does sum the basic idea pretty well. Stuff is often just a weight on our mind and takes up space.

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I totally agree with your first paragraph which is why I felt it was important to make the distinction. I was just watching Fight Club the other day. It has some of the best quotes in it quite honestly. I had "where did you go psycho boy" and "I felt like destroying something beautiful" running through my head all night. I want to read the book one day to see how it compares to the movie.

I like the fact that I am able to let stuff go more now than I did in the past. At least physically. Emotionally and mentally.... I'm still working on that.

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The book is not as good—one of the few cases where I can say that. Even Palahniuk himself said that the movie improved almost every aspect of the book. Still definitely worth a read, but don't go into it thinking that it will be better.

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Ah okay. That is too bad. It definitely isn't the case usually. I remember reading Timeline and then watching the movie and realizing just how horrible the adaptation was.

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As I have gotten older I often reflect on the past as well. I think it's very normal as I know the time ahead is much shorter than what I have already lived. It goes way too fast! I remember starting a family like it was yesterday now they're all grown up.

After my last move I became more minimalist when I realized how much stuff I had accumulated vs how much I really needed. To an extent I felt like some of it was owning me so I sold off much of it and enjoy the smaller space I bought with a lot less clutter. Enjoy the ride because it speeds up every day!
!PGM

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Enjoy the ride because it speeds up every day!

Ah, don't say that! I'm already so afraid that I am running out of time and I probably have more left than a lot of people (hopefully!).

I think a lot of the stuff in the lower half of our house we could probably do without. I think that is the point my wife is trying to make. I hope we can find something that makes us happy in the future. This was a good house and it fit the bill for us at the time, but I think we have grown beyond it.

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I tend to shed more possessions as I get older. A lot of "things" just feel like a burden to me and I feel like I can even think better in a space that's minimalistic/uncluttered.

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That makes a lot of sense! I have a feeling with this summer I am going to be doing some house cleaning. Hopefully both literally and figuratively!

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