Things we need and things we don’t

One of the lessons our travel pquickly taught us is that we don’t need too much stuff. It seems we’ve left a trail across the country of perfectly good things we just don’t need anymore that were only encumbering the journey.
In the weeks before we left home we spent days sorting through all the things we’d already saved from being released – choosing which shoes are indispensable, how muuch clothing we’d need, and outfitting the camper with just the right camping gear and pots and pans and dishes. We told each other to take the bare minimum, because there’d be plenty of opportunities to pick up what we needed along the way.
Now we find there’s so much more we are better off without. Ditching some of the extra kitchenwear makes our cabinets much more orderly. Getting rid of things like
our picnic table cover, the extra camp tables and so many other things we were just hauling around saves weight and allows for uncluttered storage, and easier faster set up. From Bryce, we mailed over thirty pounds of stuff away that just might serve a purpose somewhere, but not here.
Moreover, our routine of living and working (or in my case, not working) is more efficient as we release things we were merely dealing with but not using. All the little things do seem to add up to more time to think about the important things.
Shoes are a different matter. It’s ok to wear the same jeans for a week, but there’s a real need to keep the feet happy.
So we’ve pared down at every stop and periodically left cloths at a hospice shop, or camping gear at a free table the campgrounds sometimes have. We’ve found almost no need to buy anything new.
It all makes us reflect on the time and effort we spent collecting and maintaining all the things that in the last year or so we’ve sold or given away.
I don’t miss a thing – except maybe the boat.
… ay god Woodrow, no sooner did I say that than we ran across a couple from NC actually pulling a tiny little boat just like ours to the northwest with a plan to put it in the water and cruise to Alaska. I must say it looked to be a challenge camping in the desert on a boat, but they were doing just that. You can perhaps check out their blog at ‘crazysobs.blog’