Getting rid of the stuff

Prologue: I wrote this post in 2019 after coming back from living in the US until COVID hit. It was a turning point for me to go back to the basics and live with as little things as possible. I am not a nihilist and still enjoy esthetics and owning things, but I did manage to cut back drastically in unnecessary items.

Over the past 10 years I have lived on my own in many different ways. I started in a student home with shared bathrooms. Then I moved to several students rooms with no shared facilities. I thought I needed the privacy. On the other side I really liked travelling to hostels and campsites where I thought the shared facilities had so much charm. Maybe it was a feeling of freedom I always appreciated but because of circumstances I always chose the option with more privacy in my day-to-day life. I’m not sure. This is a thought to explore another time.

With all that moving around from room to room, student home to student home and even moving all my stuff to my home town in between studying for a gap year to Australia, I collected a lot of stuff. Unnecessary stuff really. I liked to decorate all my rooms with all sorts of stuff. Cute pillows, candles, ornaments, blankets, coasters, kitchen equipment, and so on. Aside from the stuff there were the clothes, shoes, accessories and the furniture.

I can’t even count how many times I promised my parents this really was the last time I was moving, but I just loved change too much so I kept looking for new places to go. After graduating it was time for the last move of my student years and take the final collection of my stuff back to my parents place. I would move to America one month later for a brand new adventure. When I started packing that time I got to think: “how? How did I every collect this much stuff and what did moving it from place to place ever bring me?” I made drastic cuts in my stuff and even in my furniture and clothes and ended up with an amount of stuff that could fit in a pretty small van.

Still, this didn’t feel like the clean slate I was looking for and during my time in America I felt the urge to clear out some more. I started investing in quality material only, got rid of damaged clothes and donated a ton of stuff I didn’t use anymore to charities. I only kept outfits that felt like me 100% and I held on to a small tote bag of “memories” like pictures, gifts and souvenirs I can put up wherever I decide to move to in the future. I ended up coming back with what felt like only essentials.

Coming back home after 8 months, I continued this lifestyle in my old room at my parent’s place. I cleared out my old wardrobe and got rid of 2 more garbage bags full of clothes and other stuff. I moved in with my brother with exactly one suitcase and some furniture we collected from his and my parent’s place.

So now, after 10 years of moving around I haven’t found the place to settle permanently yet, but at least I have a clear head and my stuff is not scattered all over the place anymore. I am sure that I will find a more permanent place in the future and I will definitely start a new collection of stuff, I just need to try to stick to my new mindset. I know what I own and where everything is. And most importantly: everything I own is valuable to me.

Xoxo, Domi