How We Gave Up Our Stuff and Became Nomads (Part 1)

I thought the old guy was crazy.

In my twenties, I was heading the music department at a church when the leadership imploded. Bill was brought in to steady the ship. He was a big man with a snow white beard, a gentle baritone voice, and kind eyes.

While telling me about his recent housing move, he said, “You get to a point in life where you wonder if you own your stuff or your stuff owns you.” I smiled politely, but, being young and poor, the idea was foreign to me. I loved stuff. I wanted more stuff.

Fast forward twenty years. Having shepherded the last of our two kids off to college, my wife Lisa and I had officially become empty nesters. We’d always enjoyed travel, so we took an eight-day trip to Greece with some friends to celebrate our new stage of life.

On our return, we watched a Netflix documentary called The Minimalists, featuring two guys talking about the freedom they’d found in getting rid of most of their possessions and living with a small footprint (you can check out their website here).

The idea struck a nerve. I looked around at our big house jammed full of stuff and felt an invisible weight on my shoulders. Consumer culture tells us that more possessions equals more joy, but I wasn’t experiencing that. I felt trapped.

Grabbing a yellow legal pad and pen, I wandered through every room in our house and both garages. I methodically opened every drawer and closet, looked under every bed and at every flat surface, noting each area that needed decluttering.

The results were shocking. We were drowning in stuff, most of which hadn’t been touched in years. The overwhelming thought of doing anything about it made me want to throw away the legal pad and put my blinders back on.

I forced myself to tackle our smallest closet. I hauled everything out and sorted things into three piles: trash, donate, keep. After tossing the trash pile and dropping the donations at Goodwill, I neatly arranged the “keep” items in the closet.

Gazing at the clean, organized space, I felt a small chunk of that invisible weight fall from my shoulders. The dopamine hit energized me to take on a drawer. Then a desktop. Then beneath a bed. I moved slowly from space to space and room to room, repeating the process. I let the growing lightness and sense of accomplishment motivate me to work my way through the entire house.

Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash

It took a year and a half. At times, the task seemed endless, but I doggedly “Marie Kondo-ed” my way through (“Does this item bring me joy? If not, let it go.”). When the final room had been decluttered, I experienced a deep sense of pride and relief. The weight was gone. I felt like I was floating. The effort had been so worth it.

Lisa and I didn’t know it at the time, but decluttering was the first step in our journey to becoming nomads. I’ll share the next step soon in part 2 of however many parts it takes to share the story. We hope you’ll find it helpful. Thanks for reading!