Embracing Minimalism to Travel the World
The sadness you feel for getting rid of things will eventually turn to joy.
Five years ago, I remember sitting in my home office, sorting through large boxes of collectibles, tearfully upset and anxious as I decided their fate.
Each item represented a part of my life or the people I loved dearly; decades of personal keepsakes, all with priceless memories attached. They included pictures of my children, love letters from my past, drawings from my dad, immigration documents from my mother, and even wooden puzzles over a hundred years old.
There were pieces from all over the world, memorabilia from wars fought, and my childhood toys and gifts since birth, each with something meaningful about it, all with wonderful stories.
And it was time to decide whether to keep or discard it.
The quest for less.
Before selling our house to travel full-time, I read Packing Light by Allison Vesterfelt, along with other essays advocating for the “less-is-more” ideology, and I quickly became obsessed with the minimalist philosophy. It all made perfect sense to me!
As Americans, we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that stuff will make us happy. Our desires for consumption and materialism are so strong that we’ve been trapped on a never-ending hamster wheel, relentlessly sprinting to find joy and happiness, yet never realizing we’re killing ourselves in the process.
Rather than spending our time and money on great experiences, we throw it away to accumulate things that will ultimately be sold at a garage sale, donated to a thrift store, inherited by someone we hate, or discarded as trash in the city dump.
Damn!!!
So, in this process, I realized the following truths:
All this stuff didn’t make me any happier.
I had been severely depressed for years, some of which was brought on by excessive debt from buying crap we didn’t need or have anymore.
All this stuff couldn’t travel with us.
There’s only so much space in a pickup truck or travel van, so options are limited, and why pay for a storage filled with things we won’t need again?
All this stuff doesn’t matter when I die.
In the end, we can’t take it with us, and as already stated, it’s likely to end up on eBay or in the dump.
All this stuff is holding me in bondage.
The mental drain of keeping the special memories alive and protecting these assets was also taking a toll on me. It was time to start letting go.
The painful process of liberation.
It all started by getting rid of the things we no longer needed or wanted, like furniture, decorations, tools, clothes, and household items. This was the easy part, and it also helped us make extra money.
Then we scanned thousands of family photos and documents, saving perhaps a third of them before burning or shredding the rest. There were tears, but at least we had copies.
Next, we worked through our childhood collectibles; some we donated or sold, but the most important ones were set aside in buckets for later. We did the same with our kids’ toys, asking them what they wanted and what they didn’t.
Finally, we had to focus on family heirlooms and keepsakes, with some being easier to say goodbye to, while others we refused to let go of. This was the most painful part!
Each time we went through the process and purge, we experienced mood swings, but we also noticed how lighter we felt. It was as if heavy burdens were lifted from our shoulders and we became much happier. And over the years, I’ve discovered I neither miss nor want any of those items back! There’s never been a day of regret or sadness for letting those things go, and in fact, I wonder why we never started that process decades ago.
However, we still had some unfinished business.
The final purge.
When we left Oklahoma in the summer of 2020, we had no idea how long our journey would last or whether things would work out in the long run. What if we ended up hating the road life?
So we decided not to sell everything. We filled a 10x20 storage unit with our bed, small pieces of furniture, household items, tools, and dozens of buckets of items we weren’t ready to part with yet. Given that we downsized from a four-bedroom house, a two-car garage, and a shed filled with stuff, it felt pretty good.
But with no plans to quit our adventure anytime soon, and $5,000 in storage fees down the drain over five years, it was time to make the final purge.
Months ago, we started the painful process again.
First, I sold my entire G.I. Joe collection — toys that were the center of my universe for many years. Gulp! Within 12 hours of posting it on a collector’s Facebook page, every piece was sold, regardless of whether it was in excellent condition or broken, netting me $800 in sales. I was sad but excited.
Then I turned my attention to the last bit of collectibles, comic books, tools, and antiques in my possession, while Donetta did the same with all her buckets of keepsakes and holiday decorations.
How did it all turn out?
Right now, we have a total of 36 buckets of various sizes, neatly stacked on metal shelves, half a dozen pieces of small furniture, and our bed — all stored in our daughter’s garage and guest bedroom. While we hope to eliminate more of these things, it takes time to work through, especially since we travel full-time.
Parting words of advice.
It’s not easy going through decades of belongings and momentos when you decide to downsize or embrace the minimalist lifestyle, but in the end, you will be better for it.
You will feel sadness and guilt, partly because you are saying goodbye to things that mean a lot to you, and also because you or others invested so much time and money in collecting them. Getting rid of it doesn’t seem right at its core. But it also doesn’t make sense to pay for storage or to hoard items you may never use again, especially when most of it will end up elsewhere eventually.
There’s another reason to consider purging these things from your life: you aren’t getting any younger, and one day you will be gone.
I’ve watched numerous family members, including my dad, die early in life from unexpected causes. These tragic deaths are devastating, but then you add to that the hardships of funerals and settling estates, and it’s unbearable. Seeing your family fight over the things left behind is not pretty either. This is why I highly recommend attending to your end-of-life details before it’s too late.
Maybe it seems morbid to think about, but I promise you, the stress and unhappiness it will bring to your loved ones is more than they might want to carry.
If your dream is to travel full-time, whether you’re living in a small vehicle or a 40-foot trailer, you’ll need to adopt a minimalist mindset. You can’t take everything with you on the road, and you definitely can’t take it with you when you die.
So get started now.