Sorting, Packing, and Separating: Here We Go Again

(How Much Stuff Do We Really Need?)

We are packing, again, for our next adventure of two months.  Given how many places we've visited this year, you'd think we'd be packing experts. But we are not, at least not in the emotional responses to packing. Of course, this year we've been pairing packing with selling real estate so that combo tends to up the emotional stakes. No matter what,  
packing for long trips brings out our grouchy, anxious sides. 

It all started in Chicago where for six months we sorted, tossed, packed, cleaned, repaired, and donated our stuff and then repeated the cycle as needed. By the end, all we wanted was to go. Have it over. Move on. Vamoose.

But we had stuff and owning stuff means responsibility -- for the stuff and for the decisions about it, including what to leave and what to keep. If one is traveling for months at a time....the stuff decisions before hand can seem endless.

Beyond that, separating from one's stuff is not easy. Making the toss-keep-store decisions evoke all kinds of competing feelings. For us, the big stuff was stored in the Midwest while we lived elsewhere. It's the smaller stuff that caused issues and questionable decisions. I concerned myself with what to do with my lavender suede heels, the dried decorative sticks purchased at an outlet store, extra hiking boots, our 10 year-old ice chest from Walmart, old off-season clothing, random odd bits of our lives. I wondered where to stash them and yet at the same time wondered why these items mattered. 

We traveled from Chicago to Palm Desert, CA in our SUV packed to the roof with stuff, our bicycles hooked to the back. We looked like modern day members of the Joad family. Our stay in Palm Desert was temporary  for we had months of travel ahead of us. Everything we brought with us could not travel with us. Some of it must stay. We must separate.

Our plan was to travel for several months, first to Bend to house hunt, then to Miami, a cruise ship, Europe, another ship, countless hotels, planes, trains and many places beyond. Our portable stuff was restricted to one carry on bag, one rolling duffle, and one extraordinarily large purse or in R's case over-stuffed backpack -- each.  The airlines have weight and bag limits that we must meet. Plus we'd be toting these babies on and off trains, buses, and who knows what for a long time. They needed to be manageable. It was in Palm Desert that we realized we were attempting to take too much stuff.  While we had separated from our home, city, work, and major stuff, we hadn't fully separated from the belief that we needed much more than we really do. Letting go of such a belief proved challenging.

We repacked our bags in Palm Desert, leaving many items behind. In Bend, we repacked again, filling a tote with more stuff for storage. Throughout the months of travel, we both discarded many more items -- shoes, t-shirts, shirts, blouses, make up. We shedded our extra stuff and discovered that both of us managed nicely with what remained. It seemed we had what we needed.

Now we are packing again. You think we would have learned the lesson of just enough, right? For this current trip, both of us want to sneak just a little bit more into our duffles. Stuff one little corner of our carry ons with one more something.  Are we greedy? Hard to satisfy people?
 Perhaps.

Or is letting go of excess and only holding on to what you really need, keeping just enough, a difficult lesson to really learn?