I was thinking about our Klamotten, the German word for gear, things. Our stuff arrived today. It was 31 boxes of essentials, things that we could not do a year without. Oddly enough we've been doing fine with the small set of things we were able to carry in our suitcases. Of course, our apartment is furnished so there was nothing like bed or chairs of knives or desks that we needed, but even so, we thought there were really essentials that we could not do without-piles of clothes, gobs of creams and things, books many and varied. All essential. Yet when it arrived all of it seemed unnecessary. Why did we bring all this I kept wondering? From the other side of our adventure everything we packed was unquestionably essential. It had been pared down from the mountain of things we owned to the tiny subset of goods that we simply could not do without. When we looked at the pile of things we were allowed to bring, we wondered how we would get by without so many of our belongings. However, 0n this side of the adventure we've needed very little of it. Lori is glad to have more towels so maybe she doesn't have to wash as often. We brought lots of food along to save money. I bought three boxes of books that I couldn't imagine life without. But now? I don't know why I brought so many books. I don't know why I thought I needed so many clothes (although my workmates must have wondered that I only ever wore two pairs of pants and three shirts and one tie during the week). But really, we were doing fine. We could have made it the whole year living like this. I think it was actually nice to unclutter our life for a bit. To have just a few essential clothes, books and things was actually refreshing. When I have my shelves of books around me at home, I am constantly reminded of how much I haven't read, so here I grew fond of having only a couple of books, the one I was reading and one to anticipate when I was finished with it. Now with the arrival of our boxes, I've got more books on my shelf than I can possibly read in a year. It was also kind of nice not having to pick what I was going to wear that day. I wore the thing that was washed. It was that simple. I was just sitting on the couch thinking, 'I've got to look through all the clothes that arrived so that I can figure out what I'm going to wear tomorrow. No wonder we live such stressed lives, we wallow in so much abundance that we are constantly having to make choices about which things from that abundance we are actually going to engage with on a day to day basis. I'm reminded of biologist Jared Diamond's book, Guns, steel, and germs in which he explores why western culture was so materially successful. The book begins with a local person living in New Guinea asking him, "Why do you people [meaning western people] have so much cargo?" Cargo is a good word for it. Why do we have so much cargo? Why does it all feel so necessary and essential? When we were packing, why did we feel like we were leaving so much when in reality we had way more than we needed? Nathan said it best, "All we really needed was the Xbox."
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5 comments:
Boy can we relate and living as minimalist is so great, but seems none of us are really willing to give up all of our treasures, baggage and massive inventory in and out of storage places.
For several weeks when we made our move from East to West Germany, we lived in a one bedroom little appartment and the only one in the place that had a private bathroom. We loved it. No need for all of our stuff. It's illogical, but if we did get rid of what we don't need, we'd just go back and accumulate new stuff. Go figure!
Love your blog. Don't get discouraged by the lack of feedback. We talk about it all the time and hear from others who follow it faithfully.-- Love and miss you all so much. - Dad/grandpa
Wow Steve, you really made me feel like we do have way to much stuff..I actually already suspected as much. The mystery for me is why is it that every month we take bags and bags to DI and it doesn't seem to make a dent! Where does all the stuff come from, I think I could write a whole book on this subject. I would make the title "Where does all this stuff come from" pretty catchy don't you think!!
Your experience over there is one that I and the mrs. repeat each year when we go on vacation. We sort and pack, resort and repack and at the end of the vacation we have worn about one third of what we brought.
A Phelps
It's Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Not Guns, Steel, and Germs.
With that kind of attention to detail it is no wonder you are doing better with fewer clothes.
Your personal issues aside, it is interesting what cargo we feel we must have. It is like in the psychology experiment where we are happier when we can only choose from two types of jam instead of 42 types. At the ice cream store, "Chocolate or Vanilla" is much less stressful than:
"White Chocolate and Raspberry ice creams swirled with a raspberry ribbon and loaded with raspberry-filled chocolate hearts and chocolate chips"
or
"Chocolate Fudge ice cream with chunks of chocolate ganache and toffee truffle pieces."
Interesting perspective. I'll start simplifying my life this weekend. But first I need to go shopping for a few more books.
Less stuff is a good idea. I never could figure out why when growing up, my room wasn't messy and my kids had such messy rooms, except for Lori. But thinking back, I had one doll, and maybe one other toy, and not many clothes. No wonder it wasn't messy. I keep trying to get rid of things, but I think they multiply at night.
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