I Need It?

Getting ready and gearing up for the voyage to Asia-land, I am once more forced to be reminded of how few possessions I actually...possess. I have started taking inventory in my brain of things that must be sold, donated, given to others, trashed, burned, and forgotten. 

It seems only yesterday I left for Thailand with Jess. The contents of my bag included two tank tops, one pair of shorts, toothbrush, camera, Malaria pills, a bikini and a bunch of underwear. For the sake of measurement, I call this level zero (the bare essentials for life as a stinky, hairy travel rat). Then onto China where a bikini would not be choicest item to wear in -30 degrees, and seeing as how clothes were so cheap and sparkly, I couldn't help but amass a wardrobe full by the time I had  to leave. This is when the first round of my ownership awareness took place. EVERYTHING I owned was not going to fit in my little Thailand backpack, nor the cheapo Chinese suitcase I bought for the occasion. I had gone beyond level zero to at least a healthy level 5 (The stuff I brought with me, plus winter essentials and many pairs of jeans...mostly sequined with some sort of grammatically incorrect message sewn into the butt pockets). I have a bit of a shopping problem.

It's at times like this when I think back to my teenage years, my closet vomiting clothes on itself, a sea of t-shirts and jeans so deep that it disguises the colour of the carpet. I remember my mom tearing into my room like a wild bison, two horns prodding each pile of clothes, bringing them up to my nose so close I am afraid she will gore me. "DO YOU USE THIS?! DO YOU NEED THIS?! WHY DID YOU EVEN BUY THIS?!"

Thank you Mom. Unwittingly, these violent moments have bestowed me with one of your greatest seeds of wisdom, how to get rid of your shit.

"Do you need this?" is probably the most helpful phrase in history when it comes time to part with possessions. It didn't mean "I NEED this blazer, it goes with those grey pants I have." To me, it meant "I NEED  this winter coat. It's fucking cold and I will get pneumonia if I don't have this."Using need as a gauge, I was ruthless and I fit everything important inside my bag, with room to spare. If I could implement this philosophy into my eating habits, I'd be a rake.

Having done this once before, I am quite happy to part with a large trash bag full of clothes long forgotten, books, nicknacks...etc but what I am realizing as I go along and make this inventory list is that now I have a lot of memories in the form of stuff. A little elephant from Thailand, photos and notes from my kids in China, the little light that Tony bought me from IKEA, the wooden fish I got for the kitchen as our first house decoration. I was in the midst of trying to find a balance between being ruthless, sentimental and practical. I couldn't bring myself to cast away kilos and kilos of the stuff I want to treasure. "Need" was starting to take on a different meaning and it is no longer a fail safe method for packing a bag.What I NEEDED was a different approach.

I told all of this to someone recently and she replied "the things you own end up owning you." I know she meant it in a negative way, but I couldn't help but think "genius." We've got 6 weeks to go before we need to pack our bags, and it's going to be a pain in the ass, but every little thing we bring is going to count. It's going to travel with us and tell our story and then tell it to us again one day when we've forgotten. Our memories are going to own us and represent us, even it means many painstaking hours of folding everything mini sized and vacuum sealing our underwear to fit it all in the suitcase. And when the check-in clerk at the airport asks me if I packed my bag myself, I'm going to think of a really, very witty response.