For 7 months we lived out of 5 suit cases (2 roller boards and 3 duffels).  We went from short-term apartment to short-term apartment; hotel to hotel and later, after returning to Seattle, family guest room to family guest room with only the things in those 5 bags.  That all changed on October 11th.

On October 11th at 8am PST, we were reunited with our storage unit and all of the stuff within it.

Stuff don't live here anymore

We put said stuff into a big yellow truck and drove it from San Francisco to Seattle.  By the way… there are a surprising amount of mountain passes on highway 5 in northern California and Southern Oregon – they aren’t big, but they are big enough to make it impossible to faster than 45 MPH in a 22 foot moving truck.  Expert tip:  it takes WAY longer to drive long distances at 45 MPH than it does at 70 MPH.

Surprisingly less powerful than it looks

We now are settling into our new apartment (which is even more awesome than we had anticipated) and are thoroughly overwhelmed by the unbelievable volume of stuff that we now have.  There is stuff everywhere.  It is unclear why anyone would want or need so much stuff – and keep in mind, that we got rid of a lot of stuff before we left for Argentina!  We are thankful that we have so many closets in which we can put all of this stuff… we have 10+ more boxes full of stuff that we see absolutely no point in unpacking.

What's in them? Who cares?

It seemed commonplace before we left, but after 7 months of living with very little, we are now on stuff overload.

This reminded me of a blog that I started following awhile back about “the art of minimalism” called Far Beyond the Stars (I originally found this blog through the post “27 Reasons why you should never have a job” which is worth reading).  This guy quit his job awhile back and decided to live life as minimally as possible.  Apparently he has been able to live with just having 57 things (this includes each article of clothing!)… check out the list of what his 57 things are.  I’m impressed.  And, I can absolutely see the kind of freedom that this type of lifestyle would bring.  Our closet full of unopen boxes probably has over 1000 things in it.

Anyone else experimented with minimalism?  How many things do you have?

p.s. Anyone need a 5 piece bedroom furniture set in Seattle?  I’m not kidding…