Right now I am going through the process of downscoping my stuff to fit into the boat. You wouldn’t think I would have all that much since I currently live in a studio, but turns out that the studio has way more storage space than the boat. Plus, I never cleared everything out of the boat when I left so it was still half full.
This might come as a surprise to some people, but I am not a natural minimalist, despite always saying that I want to live in a tiny house and have all my stuff fit in my car (or previously, in two checked bags plus a carry-on). I have at least a little bit of my dad in me; I can’t help but thinking that I might need this stuff later when I try to get rid of it. Or that it is valuable and was such a great deal even if I don’t have a use for it. Those clothes that I never wear: maybe I will later. What if I gain weight…or lose weight…or hit my head and wake up with a completely different sense of style? I might need this stuff.
I’m really much more naturally a maximalist, which is why I have to limit the space I’m in. That way I force myself to make the required decisions to get rid of things. Moving often also helps. My mom always said that a few moves was about the same as a house fire as far as getting rid of stuff. This is good for the maximalist in me who otherwise would still have the umbro shorts that were my brother’s in third grade (but they still fit, and elastic is overrated), would probably not have gotten rid of the Colorado t-shirt that I used for my job at the dining halls on campus (because that was such a dream job that I want to remember), and might have held on to the rock collection with all the “gems” that I found in elementary school while digging through the piles of rocks at the construction sites on our street. But, fortunately, I have kept moving and therefore have kept pruning things.
I’ve found that the hardest things for me to get rid of, though, are papers. I have a bunch of little notes that I wrote to myself or random thoughts or quotes (we’ll call it a deconstructed journal) and these always seem to come with me from one move to the next. Fortunately, they don’t take up a lot of space, but one of these days I’ll probably bite the bullet and try to digitize them so that I don’t have to carry around the paper. For now, though, I always love when I find an old paper with my handwriting on it and an insight into my mind from years ago.
What items are hardest for you to get rid of?