Life's Excessive Baggage

[hanster]

My first post in EDF Forum! I was up all night trying to think of a post that will prove worthy of my posting ability and finally at 5:40 AM I've succeeded! (Just joking. But I am up due to insomnia/paper)

Now, I don't want to come off as complaining about having too much stuff. But sometimes I just wish I can throw away most of the stuff I have in my room and just live a simple life, without having to worry too much about my appearance or cleaning a lot of crap. I don't know. Maybe this is a standard phase all young adults go through. A time ago a wise man tells me that back in the days all an immigrant student has is a desk, a lamp, a bed, books, and about a week's worth of clothes. That's it. And now I look around my apartment room, filled with a lot of things besides those items mentioned and probably could do without. I've talked to my roommate, who's also a 2p2er, about throwing EVERYTHING away and start a clean slate (no not like a criminal but rather just have nothing at all). This idea was teased again when I was reading "items you can't live without" in OOT. Now I am wondering...

-What are some things in life you couldn't do without? Family? Friends? Pets? (I think pet is a really interesting question. Can you do without having a companion that you can't exactly communicate with?)
-Things you can do without. Luxury items such as expensive red wine, cigar, fine dining, nice clothes. Do you do them because you can or do you do it because it is a personal fulfillment?
-The gray area: Internet, for one.
-Religion belief: I am atheist, like the dude now. But I see my personal philosophy leaning toward Taoism/Buddhism everyday. Basically, the belief is you come to life with nothing, you leave with nothing. Everything in between is just dust.

Hopefully this does not come off as a complete rant.

[ChipStorm]

Hanster, ever read "Walden?"

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh."

[Aloysius]

[ QUOTE ]
Now, I don't want to come off as complaining about having too much stuff. But sometimes I just wish I can throw away most of the stuff I have in my room and just live a simple life, without having to worry too much about my appearance or cleaning a lot of crap. I don't know. Maybe this is a standard phase all young adults go through.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hm - I'm not sure (I'm 30, can't recall if I went through this phase). But I think (depending on the motivations behind it) it's certainly a good impulse.

Perhaps this is slightly off-topic to your OP Hanster... but I think we are all very impacted by our physical environments. Accumulation of lots of stuff in a disorganized, haphazard fashion I've found is very distracting and detracts from my overall efficiency.

In general I try to toss stuff I don't need as quickly and as frequently as possible. It's really just about being organized and having solid reasoning behind one's purchases. I find this assuages the feelings of being weighed down by material goods, or being trapped by them in some fashion.

-Al

[Emperor]

I have some excessive emotional psychological baggage and cynicism. I'd love to get rid of it or get a storage unit for it. Any suggestions?

[adsman]

I've changed countries and locations a few times in my life so far, and every time I've had to get rid of just about everything I had to do it. They only leave you a 20kg baggage allowance for Europe. Usually my list came down to somethig like this:

Clothes for a week.
My rafting gear, (needed for work).
Four or five books that I could read over and over again without getting bored with them.
Some music, (back in the day it was CD's, now it would be an ipod I suppose)
A laptop.
Hip flask.
Cigar cutter.
Some photos.

That's it. I've got much more stuff than that now, but if I had to do it again the list would stay pretty much the same. This was down to necessity though, not choice. But perhaps your situation is a necessity as well, albiet in a slightly different way.

[ElSapo]

I think the urge to shed physical belongings can be powerful at times.

I remember in college how jealous I was of exchange students who would show up with a laptop, clothes, a few books and some CDs. Their life - impermanent as it was at the time - just seemed so simple.

Now, that was about ten years ago and I still feel that way sometimes. But I think both the need to acquire and the want to feel unencumbered are natural emotions. But as I get older, it gets harder. When I moved to D.C. seven years ago, I showed up with a backpack and a box. When I leave in a few months, it will take a truck.

[IronFly]

After I get some other things squared away (surgery) I'm going to start selling my old/used/no longer interesting stuff on Ebay. But overall, I don't feel like I have too much stuff (or too little).

[El Diablo]

han,

I get this feeling all the time. I often don't get motivated enough to do anything about it until I move, but from time to time I try to get rid of stuff that I've just sort of accumulated. Each time I go through this process, I become a little more discriminating about what type of things I purchase/keep. The end result is that over time I find myself with less and less stuff but more and more high quality stuff and stuff that is actually important to me. Obviously all of the above is regarding material possessions.

I definitely go through a process like this with friends. I spend most of my energies spending quality time with a small handful of people who I become good friends with. It's easy to fall into a trap of hanging out a lot with whoever's around the most, but I find that rarely leads to friendships that really mean that much. Instead, I focus on making time for the small handful of people I really want to spend time with.

In terms of what I really couldn't do without, there's really not very much at all I couldn't do without.

[surfinillini]

After moving to/from Vegas and realizing how much "crap" I had I got rid of most of it. I sold some, gave some away to friends and my brother and donated the rest for a nice tax write-off.

Most of this "crap" was electronics (stereo/tv/x-box/ps2), other stuff was old clothes and other little [censored] I picked up along the way that I just didn't need anymore. I really enjoy the fact that I can pack everything I own and need in my car and gtfo if I wanted to move somewhere.

-clothes
-laptop
-ipod
-books and a few files
-hygeine stuff
-jumprope and a few other small workout devices

and thats pretty much it. If you don't watch TV do you really need anything else?

When I buy a place soon (w/in the next 2 yearS) I really want to adopt a minimalistic approach to decorating the place. Not necessarily drab but very open and minimal.

No I know OP you had more of a point to your post than just material baggage but I think elimintating excess material goods opens the door to relieve more heavy emotional or psychological baggage.

[octopi]

As a woman, I've predictably collected far more many pieces of clothing than I could ever hope to wear...but cannot let go. I think mostly this is because I think of it as 'losing money' or wasting it. After renovating my bedroom a few summers ago, I also started deleting portions of my wardrobe and really paring back. Some I sold on eBay, but most of it went right to Goodwill/donation centres. It's gotten easier and it's spread to other things.

I can live without books, as pretty as I think they are and how much it pleases me to sit next to a bookcase. But I also love the library. And online resources. But I need the internet. Not tv, though, because the internet can fill in the blanks.

I find that if I think twice about something before aquiring it (this goes with clothes or anything purchased but also with donations and gifts from friends) it really goes a long way. I would love one day to live in a minimalist home and just bask in the zen-like glory. Or shave my hair off and live in a bikini and hammock in southern Thailand.