Shedding stuff is not easy

I’m sitting in my favorite place – a noisy café, tea at hand, life going on all around me in the form of unceasing chatter and loud, loud music. Monday I drive down to Portland to get the Airstream, and am spending my days until then busily packing things away in my storage unit. Every item must pass muster before it takes up valuable space in my little 5x10 box – does this item really need to be saved? To be maintained? So far, most of my storage space at this point is dedicated to wool and alpaca, which is more reasonable than you might think, as fiber is very squishy and can be made compact with equal measures of determination and animal fiber obsession. I may yet be able to downsize to a smaller unit.

What constitutes a needful thing? One of my most memorable moments traveling was getting lost in a small Turkish village with a group of Scottish tourists. We were all carrying backpacks, full of snacks, guides and extra clothing, had on wristwatches and other pieces of jewelry, and had still larger packs stashed at our hostel. We navigated mud huts no taller than an average human that housed whole families in one single room. Many didn’t even have a door. We saw a young woman picking vegetables in a wood with a donkey to carry her harvest – our guides told us that this donkey was shared among the whole village and was considered a source of wealth. Our guides slipped away to have tea and left us to wander, and wander we did – aimlessly. We walked by this house and that, and were greeted as we passed each yard by a woman or a child. One ancient tiny woman sat in her yard and waved at us, calling “Hello tourist!” One thing was consistent – all the villagers were trying to offer us tea, some waving toward their houses and calling “Tea! Tea!” I was struck by the dichotomy: Here we were, obvious westerners with all our requisite apparel and gear, being offered tea and hospitality by those who seemed to have so little to give. It would be arrogant to say that these people had nothing to offer – of course they did – and I wished I could say that we accepted tea and got the pleasure of experiencing a village visit. We didn’t – we were lost, we were deviating from an invisible schedule to never get lost, and did not want to take the time to stop and experience another culture. Knowing what I know now, I would make a different choice. I would have subdued my panic – it hardly would have been the case that our guides would have left us in this tiny village forever – if anything, they wouldn’t have gotten paid. I suppose it was a lack of control in a strange place that made us hungry for the comforts of our bus.  Looking back on that, I see that owning things has absolutely nothing to do with what wealth is. I’m talking about Real Wealth – riches not only of the material, but of mind, body and spirit as well. How many can say that they are wealthy in a way that really matters?

I love looking at pictures from photojournalist Peter Menzel’s pictorial Material World, which shows families from all over the world in their homes with all of their material possessions on display. The American family, among others from more developed countries, had loads and loads of things to arrange for the photo shoot. Oddly, I don’t think these pictures are accurate – I think typical westerners have more things than the people portrayed in the book. Later documentaries (such as Affluenza and The Story of Stuff) show us literally drowning in things, with garages, extra rooms, and multiple storage units overflowing with more items than we could possibly use in a lifetime.  Contrast this with a family is a less developed part of the world whose possessions take up the surface of one small table, and yet they enjoy health and family companionship just as the rest of us do.

Which isn’t to say that I’m any better. I’m as well trained a consumer as any American advertising company could want. Until, that is, I stopped watching TV. Owning a lot of things has always rankled me in a way I could hardly describe. In a way, I often feel owned by my possessions, especially when I can’t immediately find an item I want at a particular moment. Why can’t I find it? “Too much stuff in the way” is always my answer.

And yet, I have difficulty getting rid of many things. My Vitamix, which I use almost daily. My new ice cream maker, because who doesn’t like homemade ice cream? Never mind the ridiculousness of lugging around an ice cream maker in an Airstream.  Never mind that the amount of gas money I would save by not hauling and maintaining an ice cream maker would likely buy me a pint of ice cream on the rare occasions that I do eat it. I suppose if I dig I realize that I’m not only giving up on the idea of having freshly-made ice cream when I want it, but also bragging points for being such a rugged individual who makes her own ice cream. Ego takes up a lot of space, too. And the books, always the books. Never mind the public libraries that are everywhere, are free, and don’t yell at certain patrons when I turn my books in late…again.

Inspiration abounds about those who have embraced the simple life and are walking the talk: Tammy Strobel with RowdyKittens.com; Dave Bruno of www.100thingchallenge.com/; Joshua Becker at www.BecomingMinimalist.com. I applaud these people in following their own hearts and minds and for doing the very hard work of ditching their stuff in a stuff-centered society. As for me, if I am very brave I will give away the suitcase full of clothing that don’t quite fit (but are so adorable…I’ll be able to wear them if I just lose 10 pounds!...), as well as my little soft case full of makeup.  Maybe then I’ll feel a little less like a tool of every marketing campaign ever and more like a thinking, independent individual.