TRAVEL | MINIMALISM | DOWNSIZE

How to Rid Yourself of Stuff and Finally Get Travelling

It’s not as difficult as you may think.

Having been location independent and nomadic now for over five years makes it almost difficult to try and remember the person that I was before we left Canada.

I was a typical normal citizen of the North American grind and was trying my hardest to fit into society's standards. I bought a house, filled it with a ton of stuff, had businesses, worked my but off, and I was always trying to show everyone just how BUSY I was.

Ya, that’s it!

I now realize that in one word, I can sum up my life before taking this leap: BUSY! I worked so hard at demonstrating my busyness, that I was likely on the brink of burnout when the decision to do this, finally rescued me from the insanity.

I really felt like I was trying as hard as I possibly could, but I still never felt like I was getting anywhere. Sure, on the outside everything looked fine. I had a house and all those THINGS. Things we are supposed to have in our society. But to go with the things, I also had a mortgage, car payments, insurance payments, and a pile of credit card debt to top it all off. Life was a constant circus of working hard so that I could pay the bills, all the while feeling like I was a sinking ship, that was about to go glug glug glug.

One documentary changed my life

On January 11th, 2017, one evening while trying to clear my mind to find an escape from my problems, I set up in my home office to do some creating. My art was therapy for me (and it still is). It never got the attention it deserved because I was always so busy working to make money, but I constantly had projects on the go. Most times it seemed like it was my only salvation in the toxic world that I had somehow created for myself, and I truly believe that if I didn’t have creative outlets, I would have been in far worse shape.

As I sat down to work, I put on the documentary Minimalism to play in the background. It was a fairly new documentary that had just come out on Netflix, and just by the name of it, I knew that I needed to watch it.

My partner and I had been struggling with having too much stuff for over a year. Many times I had attempted to try and rid our house of some of the clutter that was in it, but every time I came away overwhelmed and uninspired. Just the sight of our mountains of things made me feel defeated. It was easier to just look away and carry on as usual than to actually deal with any of it.

But there was also this thing that nagged at me constantly, and that was the want, or should I say NEED, to travel. I had grown up traveling and had done it constantly into the end of my 20s. For many years, it was normal for my ex-husband and I to work 8 months of the year, then travel for 4.

Traveling was part of who I was, but for different reasons, in my 30s, I lost it all. My traveling had come to an absolute halt, and in 2015 when I realized that I hadn’t been off the continent in 8 long years, I decided that enough was enough.

I needed to get traveling again!

At the time of this realization, I was 38. My marriage had already ended, I had taken on a mortgage for a new house because, I surmised, this time it was MINE and I could do whatever I wanted with it. HA! I was determined to live my life on my terms, and for some reason, having a house and filling it with stuff seemed to be the answer at the time.

After realizing that I needed to travel again, and recognizing just how important it is to me, I was sure that I could do both. I was sure that I could travel a few weeks out of each year, and I would be satisfied. But even after taking a 6-week trip to Europe (that I couldn’t really afford) later in 2015, I wasn’t satisfied.

I came home from that trip in January of 2016 and decided that I would start to make traveling a priority again. I just needed to put my head down, work harder, pay off all of my bills, and get going. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Somehow, though, I now realize, that no matter how hard I worked, I was actually doing the opposite of that. I was creating such a mountain of stuff around me that trying to get on top of it all felt like I was scaling Mt. Everest.

The lightning bolt moment

While watching the documentary, I suddenly had a lightning bolt moment. I don’t know what part of the film sparked it, or what exactly was said, but at some point, I actually burst out laughing. I realized in a split second that the EXACT reason that I wasn’t traveling, was because I was surrounding myself with so much stuff.

I couldn’t believe it. “Could it be this easy?” I thought to myself. I stared at the screen, jaw hanging open, and in total disbelief while the world that I had carefully constructed all around me, simultaneously began to implode on itself.

‘But wait a minute, if I have NO house, NO car, NO things, that will mean that I will need much less money to live. That will mean that I will be free to do the things that I want to do. That will mean that I won’t feel trapped anymore.’

Holy shit! I was ecstatic! I was literally vibrating in my chair as the documentary finished. Everything was suddenly so clear in my mind. I finally and miraculously could see a way out of this toxic tunnel that I had built up around myself.

I had entered my overstuffed and cramped office in a state of defeat and worry about what my future was going to look like, but I was about to emerge with an entirely new outlook on life. I had a sense of excitement inside of me that I hadn’t felt in years. It was a feeling of childlike wonder, a knowing that I was about to get my life back.

I was about to step back into my shoes again!

Convincing my partner wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be

But wait just one minute! I had a partner and a life that we had created together. He didn’t grow up traveling and in fact, had only been traveling with me. Yes, he was with me on that fateful trip to Europe, and thankfully he loved it. He made an awesome travel partner and I knew that together we could pull this off, but I had to convince him a little bit first.

Of course, the mood in the air around the house over the last few weeks had been low. We both knew what we were facing financially, and it seemed like an impossible mountain to climb. Like we would NEVER get out of debt no matter what we did.

So, when I came into the living room after having finished watching the whole documentary, and already deciding resolutely that this is what needed to be done, and I really wasn’t going to negotiate, I trod lightly and gently sat down on the couch and said: “Can we talk for a sec?”

Letting out a big sigh, which I knew to mean, ‘oh boy here we go again’ he hesitantly said “Sure.”

I told him what I had learned in the Minimalism documentary, and how I believed that if we REALLY wanted to travel, and if we REALLY wanted to live a life made of our own construct, then we needed to get rid of all of our stuff and make traveling a full-time endeavor.

In the end, I made it very clear.

“I think we should sell all of our possessions and just go traveling for a while. Maybe a year, maybe two, I don’t really know. I just feel like we are running on a hamster wheel here, and we need to jump off.”

And then I sat, somewhat rigid, and waited for a response.

Minutes ticked by as I, watched the wheels spinning in his head, waiting desperately for a response that was anything except “No fucking way!”

But instead, the first thing that came out of his mouth was “But what about the plants that we planted in the backyard?”

My response was something about the fact that there would be many more plants where we were going. A little cold-hearted considering that we had spent 4 summers delicately building a beautiful garden oasis in our backyard, and he had planted plants in the ground that he had been caring for in pots for the previous 7 years, waiting for the perfect place to plant them.

The next comment was “But what about my tattoo shop?” He had only just celebrated a year in his very own tattoo shop. It wasn’t a full-time gig, he was still landscaping to make most of his income, but he had a space rented, and it was his first time back in a shop after leaving the first one he had ever worked in 13 years earlier.

My rather crass, yet problem-solving response was “Fuck your tattoo shop, the whole world can be your tattoo shop!”

Again he sat, shrugged a bit, and thought about things for a bit. I let him process this, hoping and praying that he would see this my way. Silently begging him to agree that this was the best idea.

We sat in silence for another 5 minutes or so until all of a sudden he said “You know what, you’re right! We have to do this!”

I jumped up off the couch and raised my arms in the air. “Really? Do you really think it’s a good idea?”

Then he said the best thing ever “You know what? There is no way that we can’t do this.”

We were ecstatic, and in that split-second moment, as we sat in the living room and looked around at our stuff, we finally, miraculously both saw it as just that, stuff.

And we both knew that it needed to go. ALL OF IT.

How did we get rid of the stuff?

I can’t really explain, lecture, or tell someone how to accomplish what we did. When we made that decision it was resolute. Maybe it’s a testament to our character and how we make decisions, but I can tell you with absolute authority that from that night on, we had one goal in common.

And we could both taste the freedom.

We would lie in bed at night and talk about all the places we would go and the things we would see. We talked about renting apartments in Peru, and how we would have time to get to know our neighbors and the cultures around us. We fantasized about this life that we were going to set out and find, but we knew that before all of that, we had a mountain of work to do.

First, we had to get rid of a lot of stuff. A hell of a lot of stuff!

Start with the easy things

It started out slowly. In the evenings we would just walk around the house pulling things off the shelves and putting them in boxes.

“This can go, that can go,” we would announce.

We started with things that really had no meaning. Decorations that had been around just because, items that we had carried forward in our lives that really weren’t serving us anymore. We had boxes in the basement set up for books, DVDs, garage sale items, thrift store things, giveaway items etc.

Each evening we would scour the house and fill the boxes, bit by bit. And as the boxes grew in number, it got easier and easier to fill them, and our things would have less and less meaning.

However, we also respected our own feelings and if something felt hard to let go of, we wouldn’t. Slowly, over time, we would find ourselves back to those items. If we were then ready to let go, we would. If we weren’t they would stay for the next round. Eventually, we paired everything down to one tote each, which are now stored at our respective parent's houses.

After a while, we had accumulated a bunch of boxes in the basement and decided that it was time to start selling it all. Filling the boxes was one thing, but keeping them in the basement wasn’t getting us anywhere.

Selling on Facebook

Shortly after making this life-changing decision, I started researching other people that had done this, who had sold their former lives and had taken on traveling full time. One of the suggestions that I read was to sell items on Facebook. (This was before the marketplace became popular.)

I immediately started a “Things for Sale” album on my Facebook page. This album quickly got too big, so I made more albums: “Clothing For Sale”, “Books For Sale”, “Plants for Sale”, and “Our Art for Sale” albums. Almost every day I was photographing items and posting them in these albums. We had great success with doing this, but I attribute most of that to living in a small community where the community definitely does support each other.

I also sold items on Facebook using local Buy, Sell, Swap pages. Again, our small community is all about buying used stuff, and if they can get something used, they would much rather do that than grab it new.

On these pages, we had great success selling tools, some appliances, our lawn mower, bikes and other larger ticket items. I have heard that people in larger cities use Kijiji and Craigs List. While there are certainly risks involved with using these platforms, they do present a good way to rid yourself of items.

My advice for selling things in large populations is to meet people in public areas to do the exchanges.

Yard Sales

Over the course of the 5 months of nice weather that we had available, we held 6 yard sales. Things that weren’t selling online, or that were too small to bother listing online, would go into boxes to go into the next yard sales. We priced everything! Normally we used masking tape and just wrote a price on with a sharpie, but it was essential to do this.

Of course, people would haggle (and we normally wholeheartedly accepted any offer), but at least we wouldn’t have to decide prices on the fly. Everything was laid out simply and easy to read. Of course, we had a few boxes with things like books, DVDs, Shoes, etc. where we would just write $5 per item on the box, or make a small sign, but it was always clearly labeled.

Thrift stores

After items had been in two yard sales without selling, they were carted off to the thrift store. Once an item went into the box, we weren’t allowed to look in the box or think about what was in it. It just went. After our second yard sale and our first trip to the thrift store, we were ecstatic when they took everything except a pair of ski boots.

We left the place and high-fived each other afterward.

I can’t tell you how good it felt to do that initial drop-off! Our basement finally could breathe a sigh of relief as this really felt like we had cleared a lot and we could now use that area to start organizing the remaining items.

Give items away to friends and family

There were many items that we had that we did cherish, of course. The best option for these things was to give the items to friends that we knew would appreciate them. Over the course of the process, we would decide that certain items were meant for certain people, and we would set them aside to give to them at some point. Both of us are artists, so this meant that many people got little pieces of our art here and there. I can’t tell you how good it feels to know that some of our art, and our most valuable possessions, are scattered across many people's houses.

Another great idea is to find out if there are families or organizations that are in need of certain items. Bedding, dishes, kitchen supplies, and other basics are great to give directly to people who need them. At the end of our process, we had a ton of pens, highlighters, paper clips, binder clips, and all manner of office supplies. We found a local community organization that could use them and it was a great feeling to give this stuff directly to an organization that we knew provided so much to the community, and we could see how grateful they were to receive them.

Take things to the dump

One of the things we detested was having to take things to the dump. And in the end, we really didn’t have to take that much stuff there thankfully. After giving away free items in yard sales, and to anyone that we could think of that might want certain things, our dump runs were few and far between, but they were still necessary. It was heartbreaking taking items that we still knew had reasonable life spans, but we simply could not find ways to get rid of them any other way.

Donate to a reuse facility

One idea that we had, and unfortunately our town didn’t have one, is a reuse facility. These places take all manner of building supplies, sometimes old tarps, and other items that people simply don’t want to take from you. Often they will resell the supplies at a reduced price to raise money for charities. It's best to research some of those places to see what they accept before carting stuff to the dump.

It all leads to freedom!

At the end of it all, it felt like we had accomplished an impossible mission. We started with an overwhelming amount of stuff, but by tackling it all in bite-sized pieces, we were able to get rid of all of our stuff in a short period of time, and we still brought in roughly $13 000 by doing it. This didn’t include our vehicles which netted us another $4500.

Through all of this, we certainly did have our share of dealing with other people's fears about what we were doing and how we were doing it. But we tried not to let other people's opinions cloud our vision of what we wanted to accomplish. We knew what we needed to do, and we did it.

Really, it wasn’t anyone else’s business.

We accomplished our end goal by reducing our possessions to only those that we carry with us. Of course, it’s really hard to let go of some precious items, and we both have one tote stored at our parents' houses, but the rest travels with us.

We accomplished all of this in 9 short months while both working full-time jobs and also spending 3 months finishing renovations on our house so that we could sell it. We left our town on September 20th, 2017.

Today I can tell you with 100% authority that we DO NOT MISS OUR STUFF! We quite simply live a minimalistic lifestyle. We can pack up everything that we own and carry it on our backs, off to the next adventure, within one hour. Each item has its place, and we are never running around looking for things under mountains of stuff as we did in our old life.

By letting go of that life and all the responsibilities that came with it, we have freed our minds up. Today we are brimming with creativity and are both building a life as full-time artists. The time and space that we have created for endeavors that feed our souls are immeasurable. We are no longer “busy”, at least not in the sense of working, working, working and never getting anywhere. Today we are busy with projects that matter, with doing things that feed our souls and with living a life that is rewarding and inspiring.

We are thankful for each and every day that we made this decision. There will never be regret, and there will never be looking back. Every day brings with it another step forward in our lives toward our goals and dreams, and we couldn’t be more grateful.

So what are you waiting for? If you have been wanting to do this as well, there literally are no excuses. We are two completely normal people, who have decided to live an extraordinary life.

It really is as simple as that.

To learn more about our nomadic journey, visit www.artisticvoyages.com

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