Get Rid of All of Your Stuff

If you're going to be truly portable, you need to get rid of all your stuff.

This isn't the same as moving house, or even moving country as I was, because you're preparing to keep moving for an extended period of time. You are dividing your stuff into: get rid of it, store it, or carry it.

Getting rid of it is great. There is a certain lightness of existence realised when you can go from "I live here" to "my life is in this suitcase" in a couple of hours. In the last century, the cynics told us this was a world obsessed with material things. This century, it's the digital things we're hung up on. You can do without the rest for a while.

Storing it is where we admit we are attached to some of our possessions and we don't plan to travel forever. It's also a handy get-out clause for all of us without the guts to throw away everything we should.

Carrying it is the category you shouldn't bother to think about much at this stage. These are the things you can fit in a bag or two and walk with unaided to the airport and it will take time to refine. For now, just think about the things you'll need while you're moving out and the things you'll need access to in the following days.

I have enough to say about these that I'm going to split it into a couple of posts. Here's the leader.

Get rid of it

Most people find this hard to do (myself included) and end up hanging onto more stuff than they need. Here are questions that may help you whittle it down.

Do I use this?

If it seems useful but you haven't actually used it in 6 months, chances are you don't need it. Try to be brutal. If you use it all the time, then it's no use in storage: are you prepared to actually cart it around with you all the time?

Is it replaceable?

Yes, you are sure you will need it. However, you're not sure when and therefore you are not sure where. Is it something generic, easily replaced? If that seems like a waste of money then consider: what it will cost to transport and to store it properly; how much could you get by selling it; how much it will cost to get it where you need it. If Amazon can just sell you a brand new one and deliver it wherever you need it for free, isn't that worth something?

If I store it, will it still work when I need it?

A lot of things become less useful over time when they're stored away. Some physically deteriorate (especially if not prepared properly) or some things - especially technological things - date badly. Or it may simply be that when you need it, you'll need it quickly and you won't want to travel to dig it out of storage. These things - whatever they're worth, there's just no point keeping.

But it's of great sentimental value!

Those little nicknacks you don't really need but can't bear to throw away - the present from your grandmother, the rug you bought on holiday, the special postcard, that painting your friend made for you. That's fine - just try to keep it to the small things! Store them all away where they won't clutter up your life - until you give up your travelling ways (in about 40 posts' time?) and you can take them all out and help you form a home.

And remember - you will have just a few things that are quite unique and remind you of people, places and times that you may never see again. Discard your stuff, but not your life.


And there are a couple of special cases...

Books, CDs, DVDs

CDs are already on the way out as I write this and (unlike vinyl) as a physical object they just feel cheap and can't claim to be a definitive reproduction in any way. Sell or give them all away. Sign up to Spotify (though I have moral qualms) or if you really must and have time, rip them all to MP3.

DVDs will surely be dead in a couple of years time and they won't be replaced by Blu-Ray, you'll just be streaming them. Chances are you already have loads of movies and TV series on your hard drive. By the time you want these again, they'll look like beta-max. Get rid of them and get them from iTunes, LoveFilm, Netflix or simply BitTorrent when you want them.

Books - these are different. In some sense they're already obsolete but the design has barely changed in hundreds of years and people still think a physical book is special. Buy a Kindle or the like, because you really cannot carry many books any other way. The pulp, ditch. Any expensive, work-related books, put them somewhere easily accessible if you can. Store the rest and, like me, dream of a beautiful library in your future.

Paper

You will have various official bits of paper, receipts, manuals and - if you're anything like me - hundreds of bits of paper with possibly-incredibly-important scrawlings on them. Bear in mind that manuals can usually be found as PDFs on the Internet. Also, consider getting a scanner and reducing papers to a JPEG.

How do I get rid of it?

As hinted above, there are loads of ways to get rid of your stuff when you've decided to do so, some of them even without losing it: you can sell it, give it away, bin it, recycle it, scan it, rip it, summarise it... Like compressing a data file or a video, how far you can compress it partly depends on how much time you have available.

I was lucky enough to have a popular office mailing list where people often posted things they wanted to sell. I sold everything from electronics to furniture that way. Also, if you are in contact with whoever will move into your place when you are gone, ask them if they want anything. Give them a discount rate, since the very easiest thing to do with your stuff is to leave it exactly where it is.

My experience

I can honestly say, a couple of years later, that there's nothing I got rid of that I regret. That means I didn't throw enough stuff away!

I have not yet set up a new home, so in theory I might one day be glad of... the huge old projector I never used, the amplifier and speakers that I liked so much, the whisky cabinet that was my favourite piece of furniture, the expensive mattress. But I doubt I'm going to much care. The projector was already very old. The amp and speakers were pretty standard items really, which I would probably enjoy shopping to replace. The whisky cabinet was from IKEA. A mattress is a real pain to transport or store.

What I can say I should have gotten rid of: all my computers. This was obviously a weakness for me at the time, based on the idea of lots of small, low-power computers set up around a house doing useful or cool things. So I boxed up and sent back a couple of old laptops, two mini-PCs, one or two flat-screen monitors... Then this was added to the similar stuff I'd already had stored away in the UK. When I finally came to go through these boxes some months later, it became a running joke for me, as to how many computers the next box would contain.

None of those mini-PCs, laptops or screens have been any use to me since and they'll soon be museum pieces - I would have been better to simply strip out the hard drives and give the rest away. To be fair, I did not expect to be without a house to use them for so long, when I was packing. But, after all, the Raspberry Pi has been invented since then!

Also, I kept far too many books that I did not really care about, just because I thought they'd help complete my dream library. Turns out, after being portable for so long, I hate the idea of owning any book (or anything else physical) that I don't really think is useful or awesome.

The things I'm reminded of are the reindeer-skin rug I bought in Stockholm, the posters and paintings, the statuette, the books. These things I look forward to unpacking one day.

YMMV


Read on to find out what to do with the stuff you're left with!

[Updates]
1/09/12: Expanded "My experience" section
20/01/13: Added re books