Holding Our Things Lightly

It’s a wonderful thing to know that certain things can always make you happy, but that you don’t need them to still be happy.

“What is an unexpected, favorite thing about being in your new house?” I asked.

She took her time with a thoughtful, matter-of-fact answer: “I guess it’d be how easy the mornings are. The mornings could be really cold.”

You should know that this friend, about whom I could write essays of admiration, has just wrapped up a long season of living in canvas tents. For two of the last three years, she and her husband and four young kids have lived in tents on their property while their home was being built. What was supposed to be a several-month family adventure turned into a multi-year experience, due, I think, to some wacky red-tape issues with permitting.

This remarkable woman knows what it’s like to live very literally outside a comfort zone, to make do, to experience the frustration of things not working out—and to keep going anyway. A fire started very near her new home just last week, and as she drove toward the plumes of smoke, she was anxious only because her kids were at home, not because she was worried about losing her stuff. She’s lived without it for years, and knows she could do it again.

With this knowledge borne of experience, she can hold her possessions lightly. She is grateful for everything they now have around them, certainly enjoys their material comforts, but doesn’t need them. And I’d say that’s a pretty sweet spot to land. My own chapters of living with much less, while less heroic than my friend’s, have taught me some similar lessons.

Years ago—eight, to be exact—I wrote an article called “Oh The Places You’ll Go—And The Stuff You’ll Lug Around.” Yes, I turned a beloved children’s book into a riff on minimalism. But they actually quite relate. It can be hard to go all the places we’re meant to go and do what we’re meant to do, when we’re encumbered by our stuff, by comfort, by certainty, even by our good routines, by the trappings of success. What a phrase, that last one. It’s totally possible to get trapped by “success” and the usually-accompanying lifestyle.

Traveling Light: Episode 1

My Dr. Seuss-inspired piece was about the year I spent in my early thirties, traveling the West. I took my regulatory job on the road, and worked remotely from Arizona, Montana, and Las Vegas. My Honda CRV was loaded—to the gills, I tell you—with all the things I couldn’t fit in my small storage unit. And which I thought I might need or want with me.

The load included a couple boxes of memorabilia from my younger years. Guess how helpful it was to have things like notes from high school classes, ticket stubs, playbills, and every card and letter ever received with me on the road? And how many times I looked at them while traveling? If you guessed “Not helpful at all” and “Never,” you are correct.

After lugging those boxes around for a year, and having them complicate my travels, I could see the contents for what they were—things which were meant to bless me for a time, but nothing I needed to keep forever. I kept or took pictures of the most significant, and discarded the rest, never to accumulate so much trivial stuff again. Our physical stuff can burden us emotionally more than we know, something I discovered when I was physically burdened by it during that adventure.

Back in mid-2022, when I was contemplating traveling for an undetermined amount of time, I considered whether I could truly live without my stuff and the trappings of comfort. What if I missed having all my familiar routines and places? What if I needed something I tucked away in storage? What if my storage unit flooded and I lost everything?

Traveling Light: Episode 2 (Abroad)

Without answers to any of these questions but trusting that somehow everything would all work out, I headed off on my Rome in January 2023. The questions remained, but were much lessened in intensity as the initial months stretched into two years, and I learned I could make do with very little. I’ve acquired things certainly, out of necessity or comfort or because certain things delighted me, but I’ve been just fine with so much less.

My stuff, waiting for the Flix bus which would take it (and me) from Lisbon to Porto.

Everything I needed for my extended European Wander Session #1 and #2 (extended, cold experiences, requiring warm clothing) fit into a carry-on suitcase, a backpack, the best travel purse ever. And sometimes a small supplemental bag which held things I could have worn or hand-carried onto planes if necessary. It turns out you don’t need very much for life to keep humming along.

Traveling Light: Episode 3 (Domestic)

In all my travels within the States—three separate cross-country (and back) treks, staying for extended chapters in Raleigh, Colorado Springs, San Diego County and Montana—the “comforts of home” have fit in the back of my Toyota RAV4. The very RAV4 in which three mice chose to die in, but not before causing $12,000 worth of damage. I digress.

Clothes and shoes and jackets for most potential seasons and occasions. It’s immoral to not have at least one physical book with you at all times, so I have a backpack of books. In my car, I also have a “micro curio cabinet” with a few treasures collected along the way: favorite rocks, a penny from Heaven, a shell from the Wilmington, North Carolina beach.

The smooth rock to the left is my favorite souvenir from European Wander Session Round 1: The most perfect, flat, smooth rock from the beach in Porto.

And I’ve continued to be fine with less. Have I missed the comforts of home? The routines and control of living in your own space with your very own things? Boy, have I ever. Would you? You probably would, too, but you’d also probably be wonderfully surprised at what you learn about yourself, the world, and what really matters in a forever kind of way when you aren’t packing much around.

You realize how little you need everything you think you do, and how much you actually need things like connection. And that connection matters more than having all your usual favorite foods and hoodies and mug and books and sweatpants. Actually, scratch that last one. Having at least one pair of comfortable sweatpants is non-negotiable. Even better if you make friends around whom you can wear sweatpants.

It’s a wonderful thing to know that certain things can always make you happy, but that you don’t need them to still be happy. Comfortable pillows, soft towels, your favorite foods, a heater, fresh raspberries, your beloved water bottle, house plants, a bulletin board for goals if you’re into that sort of thing. Enjoy them immensely? Yes. Desperate need them? Nah. Maybe this “holding things lightly” is a critical part of contentment. I thought I’d developed some of it, but this fortune cookie fortune from a couple months ago tells me otherwise.

What’s something which always makes you happy? Have you ever had to go without it and what was that like for you?

Settling Down: An Update

After so much traveling light, I’m thrilled to share with you that I am getting my stuff out of storage and making home again. Wahoo! It’s high time for this traveling homebody to re-establish a “base of operations” after two years on the road. I could not have had the experiences I’ve had any other way, and I’m grateful.

But every one needs a home, and while it’s worth being intentional about what we own and how tightly we hold it, we’re not meant to permanently go through life rooted nowhere. Utah is a really great state, and I have lots of reasons to be happy to be returning there for a regroup chapter.

And yes, I fully expect to do a fair amount of purging of my stuff as I unpack it. If I’ve lived without it for two years, chances are high I don’t need it. Not included in the purge will obviously be furniture and things every home needs, like glass Tupperware and towels and lamps. And camping stuff—just in case I end up in a heroic tent chapter of my own.

P.S. I’m taking some time off from posting to move and unpack, but will be back with a happy vengeance in a couple weeks!

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