midlife drive

Facebook | Kevin Seney Author of “midlife drive”

That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff.
That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff.
If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house.
You could just walk around all the time.
A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.

~ George Carlin

I used to have a pile of stuff with a cover on it. But, then my “estranged wife” decided that it was “her cover” and I needed to remove my stuff. Suddenly, there I was… I had a lot of stuff, and no cover!

So, I rented a storage unit for my stuff. I had lots of stuff. And, I paid $330 per month to store my stuff.

Two years later, I figured out that the cost of storing my stuff had exceeded the replacement cost of the stuff, and that it would be cheaper to just give all my stuff away.

It sounded like a simple solution, but it was not as easy as I expected.

You see, you attach a lot of emotional value to your stuff. To rationalize the attachment that you have to your stuff, you remind yourself of the original cost of the stuff, and you find yourself thinking, “I might need this stuff someday. I had better keep this stuff.” Well this went on and on.

I was getting nowhere.

I started going through my boxes one at a time. Many of the boxes had not been opened for years! But, I was determined that there might be something I would miss terribly, if I just dumped the boxes in the dumpster.

After a few hours of sorting, I was a mess. I just could not let go of my stuff.

What is the hang up we all have with our stuff? Memories? Well, I discovered a solution to that…

I started taking pictures of my kids kindergarten artwork, and stupid trinkets of the past, and then throwing them away. I decided that if the value of that scrap of paper, was in the memory, then I could store the memory on my computer, and throw the paper away! This got me moving forward again. But, I still had a mountain of stuff.

I started giving some things away, and quickly the word spread, that there was “FREE STUFF” and without much effort, a crowd of strangers appeared and started carrying my stuff away. What this resolved for me, was the “value dilemma” because now someone was going to use my stuff, and it was not going to waste. More progress.

I started with a 10 x 30 storage unit full of stuff. My goal was to drive away in my RV and leave nothing behind.

It was difficult. It was emotionally draining. It was like erasing my past. Not sure why it was so hard, but it was.

The one thing everyone seems to miss most after a fire, is their pictures. So I kept the photos, and finally said good bye to my stuff.

I drank more than my share of the cooler of beer. I even broke down and cried over something really stupid. It did not seem fair. But, in the end it was over. All my stuff was gone.

It took a few days to recover, but as I got beyond the experience, I began to feel a sense of freedom, that I have never experienced before. I felt light. I felt like I could go anywhere! There was nothing holding me back.

I guess I do everything to an extreme. That is just me. But, the experience of unleashing myself of the burden and responsibility of all of my possessions, and feeling for the first time such an amazing sense of freedom, left me wanting to getting rid of even more stuff! The less stuff I have, the better I feel.

There is a valuable lesson here.

Less is better. Try it!

Facebook | Kevin Seney Author of “midlife drive”