Simplify, simplify, simplify

Life is a funny thing.

As I prepare to leave Florida for Boston to start hiking the AT, I’ve had to face the notion of getting rid of all my ’stuff’, accumulated junk and mementos from five years of living away from home. So I have the spent the past few months holed up in an imaginery stock-taking room, assiduously calculating the sentimental and/or monetary value of every item I own, pulled this way and that in a tug-of-war over whether a particular thing makes the cut into my two suitcases and one carry-on and one box to ship, or whether it gets consigned to friends or the thriftstore.

The minimalist creed (I have too many clothes for that) is not only practical, it makes sense as a sort of spiritual withdrawing, or paring down to essentials, or just mental preparation for when I go vagabonding about with only a backpack to my name. To cultivate that lovely transcendant mindset of doing without the unneccessary and non-utilitarian, I picked up a copy of Thoreau’s Walden at the library, vowing to read it and gain some packing wisdom from the sage who said, ‘Simplify, simplify, simplify!’

So I’m mostly through the first chapter ‘Economy’ and its lessons that possessions do not make the man, and feel myself arming with resolve for an attack on my clothes, books, papers and other accumulated debris, a merciless weeding out of everything that is not absolutely essential. (Well…. essential to a certain extent. I am a girl after all)

Until! I discover a shipping agent that will send my excess stuff home as freight, evaluating the shipment by volume and not weight. And to utilize their services, I’ll have to purchase a minimum volume of 35 cubic feet, which works out to something along the lines of …. 6-8 boxes. Big boxes. And this is still cheaper than sending one as-light-as-possible box by good old postal air mail! So yes, even thought I have a current maximum of about two boxes, I sign up for the deal.

And find myself in yet another tug-of-war, this time between clashing ideologies – the minimalist creed and the oh-so-Singaporean ‘let’s fill up the space, we can’t afford to lose out!’ kiasu mentality. After all, having been the victim of many a packing-induced nervous breakdown (thanks, Carleton), the prospect of sending home ALL I have without anxiety at the airline counter is quite close to chocolate-overload euphoria. So the next thing I know, I’m caught in the contradictory situation of browsing online for cheap backpacking gear sales ( I can always use more gear, right?), checking out internet bookstores, poking around my designated “Give to Thriftstore” bags for stuff I want to take back; all the while perusing a bit of Thoreau on the side.

This is the way this rather paradoxical situation works. I am seriously thinking of buying a djembe from my drum teacher, a purchase I’ve never made in expectation of difficulties moving the heavy drum back home. Now I can. (not too healthy for my bank account, but yes i can!) I am also rubbing my hands in glee at the thought of yet another thriftstore hunt for second-hand but fashionable goodies (Singapore has no thriftstores worth talking about, so I better get my bargain shopping kicks in). So right now, I am considering a compromise position of getting rid of low-quality/no sentimental value stuff in return for good things that I assure myself I will treasure and love and use, pointedly ignoring the idea that this replacement is going to take some $. And I am attempting to salve any consumerism guilt by buying cheap and/or old, and recycling unwanted stuff to the thriftstore. After all, the logic goes like this: The thriftstores are like a library you pay a small fee for using. For only a few dollars, one takes in one or two bags of old icky boring clothes in return for another one or two bags of lovely exciting quirky possibilities!

So, where to go, what to do? I might do just that. Exchange a bag of the old for the new. And if I decide if the old is okay too, then well, at least I have the space for it

Off work in 15 minutes, heading out to shop!