Part of our travel goals include minimizing our possessions to a small storage unit for treasures (a 5’x5′) and traveling on our road trip with only things that fit in our car (a Subaru Forester), and ultimately reducing the items we travel with to backpack and small suitcase for each of us for our international travel. We plan to sell our Baltimore rowhouse furnished as well as our larger items, give/donate as many of them away as we can, recycle, and throw away the things that are garbage (hopefully as little as possible).
Long story short… we succeeded! Here are some pictures of our storage unit and then many of the piles before. If you want more detail, please read on below…
BEFORE (little piles everywhere)
AFTER (ready to sell with furniture!)
This process was really hard because it’s a million little decisions. It’s amazing how much emotion is involved in possessions. I think that it helped the most that we developed a framework. Our framework included that we weren’t going to keep any furniture (selling this with this house, hopefully). We did want to keep treasures that are important to us by considering things that are one-of-a-kind and primarily consist of art created by our talented family members including welded lamps, ceramic totems, and a gold fish painting I love (you know who you are). Then we got sold the big items and donated/gave away anything useful (and in good repair). This included things easily and (relatively) inexpensive to replace like organization totes (I have a penchant for organizing). Lastly, we addressed the kitchen given that we love to bake and cook and knew this might be our most challenging area.
At this point, we started filling our storage unit, to happily realize that we had more room for our kitchen items than we thought! As a result, we updated our framework for our kitchen items to include that we’d keep items that (1) we liked and (2) we’d rebuy if we set up another kitchen. We did have to get rid of things that were in disrepair (RIP our amazing bread maker held together by superglue and rubberbands). This also allowed us to give away things that annoyed us (I’m looking at you, coffee grinder that I could only fill half way and would still grind unevenly).
As far as clothing, we each kept a generous suitcase of things favoring things we really like (and wear often). We kept to layers and eliminated extremes (no super heavy coat or formal wear for us)! We actually started on the clothing before everything else and put clothes in our closet and the rest in our laundry room. This allowed us to take back anything we missed and exchange items, if needed. I followed the capsule wardrobe method and kept to some favorite colors to make complete outfits so that I would feel put together. I also kept a number of dresses and will see if I wear them moving forward (it’s a bit chilly in Baltimore for dresses right now).
We put a bunch of items in front of our place on the sidewalk for people to take (efficient light bulbs, garden pots, lamps, trash cans, etc.). Anything remaining a few days before we headed out was first donated to goodwill, then recycled if possible, and finally we did take a car load to the garbage dump.
It took us a few weeks to get through all of this. On the other side, I can say that I’m so happy we did all of this! It feels lighter and easier to deal with fewer things.
RESOURCES
These are some of the methods I find helpful, but as you can imagine there are so many out there! You can find one that works for you, or try a new one each time. Good luck and know that dealing with stuff is hard and takes energy!
Wardrobe Oxygen Capsule Wardrobes
Project 333 (minimalist fashion)
Marie Kondo, KonMari method (considering items that bring you joy!)
Apartment Therapy Decluttering Cure (try their spring cleaning cure too!)