My Own "Story of Stuff"

For those of you who haven't been privy to the ongoing developments in my life, I'll try to get you up to speed:

• I haven't found a job yet. Well I did, but the two offers I got weren't a good fit.
• I'm still moving out at the end of this month, and will be crashing with friends and family until I find what I need out there.
• To that end, I've been liquidating (nearly) everything I own.

It's that last one that I thought I might talk about. I've been on my own for a long time now, and in that time, I've collected a lot of stuff. Much of it arrived in my possession in the form of a gift, the rest purchased by me, but as I'm slowly coming to realise, I use practically none of it.

My DVD collection, which I've been curating for nearly a decade has literally been collecting dust. I have actually torrented DVDs I own due to the inconvenience of the format. My stacks and stacks of books are similarly unused: read once (or not at all) and left to sit on a shelf, a testament to... what, how smart I am?

Stuffed animals, miscellaneous computer cables and hardware, toys, calendars, games, models... all of it: collecting dust. Despite the evident non-use of these things, I have paid to transport these things across the country not once, but twice. Many of the things in my home have been transported from Vancouver, to Ottawa, to Toronto, and back to Vancouver, and stopped being useful only a few days after acquiring them.

This whole process of liquidation has been as much a lesson in how not to horde stuff as it has been one in how to live simply. I've taken stock of what I actually use on a day-to-day basis, and have determined that even if I were to re-purchase only the highest-end stuff in each new place I live, the total cost would be less than $3k... and I can then store everything that matters in only three or four boxes.

I don't know where I'm going yet, that discovery comes next, but one thing is certain: wherever I'm going, it will be with less stuff in tow.