Bangkok To Krakow

Where to begin? In the kitchen or the office? With stuff to keep or stuff to sell? Reduce, reuse or recycle? Let’s start at the beginning… Six months ago we started the process of deciding what to do with all our stuff. Being on the move for the last 10 years we didn’t really have that much. However there was enough to have us question our attachment to things and the clichéd sustainability of a consumer society, which naturally progressed to thoughts on the source of our happiness. Books and blogs are dedicated to these subjects so we’ll skip the brain dump and cut straight to our experience.

Enter the master alchemist – the mindset. This trip is not only a journey in itself it is also a means to an end, the end being a new beginning in our lives somewhere overseas. With the European borders open and a Polish passport on hand we are grateful for the opportunity to experience some of our life living in the northern hemisphere. So what of our stuff? We could have it sent over once we found our little slice of heaven or, we could keep it in storage waiting out its cold days in a Victorian self-storage facility or, we could get rid of everything and start fresh.

Initially we thought how freeing it would be to rid ourselves of all our belongings and go into this trip with what was on our backs, a fresh start, after all these are just ‘things’. However, as we started going through everything, sentimentality and future usefulness crept in. So began the painstaking process of what we actually thought about our stuff and what we would ultimately do.

In the end we realized several things. Firstly true to our gypsy ways, only about half the things we possessed we actually owned so it was very easy just to give these things back. Secondly, stuff has no real worth on its own. Value comes from within us. Whether it’s monetary, sentimental, status or happiness. And because happiness does not exist in things but in you, you can choose to be happy through things or experiences or through nothing at all. And lastly that getting rid of stuff for the sake of getting rid of stuff is still being attached to things. So here we are today in a mindset of being separate from our things and able to filter painlessly into the following categories.

• Things that we are keeping for later because they are either beautiful or practical. Beautiful includes sentimental. Practical includes things that we are definitely going to use within the next couple of years.
• Things that we are selling to help fund our trip.
• Things that we are taking on our trip and for Europe.
• Things that we are donating.
• Things that we are throwing away. Makes us cringe to have this category – our trash is not Mother Nature’s treasure. On the positive there are people that are actively trying to change this.

Now with a few weeks to go and several items left to pack and sell we just now realize that our adventure has already begun… six months ago.