Downsizing has been a life long practice for me. My relationship with things has been tenuous since I can remember. I have two sisters which means I shared almost everything with them in my early years. Hand-me-downs were common between us. I didn’t have this word when I was younger but I’ve been a minimalist most of my life. Mainly due to my navy brat status (easier to move less items) but also because I saw how suffocating having too many possessions can be growing up in my parents’ home. They filled our home with lots of things. There was stuff for old hobbies that they didn’t have time for anymore as well as so many papers and books. Their possessions actively lost their value around me and became mistreated “stuff.” Books stepped on and the spine broken. A misguided step could lead to something broken or a cut foot. They both were too exhausted to tackle any upkeep on organizing or just moving on and letting go of the possessions that held no value to them. Our family was drowning in stuff and I followed their example at first by gathered things around me in my room to the point I couldn’t see my floor. I piled it so high with dirty clothes, books, toys, candy wrappers, old school papers that it was precarious to walk around in there.

This was our norm and I felt powerless to change it. It started to become unbearable when I saw other families living in clean, orderly homes. I wished I lived in the type of home we met in for our weekly Girl Scouts meeting from the moment I was in there. It was so pristine and provided a calm space for our wonderful Girl Scout Troop leaders to guide us. My Girl Scout leader’s home was so unlike my own. My childhood home was filled with tension and stress about not finding the desperately needed item in the clutter on the kitchen table or in the living room’s paper piles. I was angry that our home wasn’t a place I wanted to bring friends to hang out. I resented that “stuff,” suffocating our living spaces down to small TV rooms with sitting for just the five of us, walkways, bathroom and most of the kitchen. I vowed one summer as a girl to not live like them anymore and started to keep my room organized but dusty. Their choice to live around so many things taught me that possessions can become unvalued “stuff” so quickly that it’s not worth having much.

Matthew was not a minimalist at all. He was one of Amazon’s best customers for a while. He would have packages arriving at work and eventually to our apartment weekly if not more often. We were lucky that our little apartment had so many nooks and crannies for all of these things. But it became apparent as we were preparing to move into our first condo (when we thought we would buy one) that we couldn’t move all of this stuff to our new place. We had to be discerning and examine them for their value to us now as adults moving into the next step of our lives. We also had to be reasonable about the items usefulness in our current moment. If we hadn’t used it in the last few years and it wasn’t outdoor stuff, it was gone. Lucky for us, Matthew was prepping us for our next adventure without even knowing it. We ended up using so many items we found as we organized and removed items that no longer served us.

I took countless trips to Goodwill to remove all of our old clothes and other items I didn’t want to try to sell at our yard sales. I even found a completely free bookstore in Logan Square that would take all of our unsold but not worth keeping books. We enjoyed meeting people on the boulevard that would give our possessions and plants new homes.

Our “customers” were as diverse as our beloved neighborhood Logan Square was during our ten years there. We had the plant enthusiasts, general yard sale purveyors who saw my ad on Craigslist, people walking along, enjoying the sunshine in Chicago spring. A man on a double decker bicycle stopped after I waved to him from our spot on the boulevard and he ended up buying $50 worth of stuff. It’s amazing the positivity that comes our way when we’re putting out positive vibes. Noemi was our most loyal customer; she stopped by at all three of our garage sales! She even offered to have us drop her name to get special service at the restaurant she worked at. Another sale that brought a large grin to our faces was a trio of Gen Zers that bought most of our CD collection, over flowing from our stuffed CD binders (Remember those? Oh the mix tapes they were filled with). The lanky 20-something exclaimed “Oh sweet, the soundtrack to Remember the Titans.” We were so lucky to have such nice people stop by and support us into our next steps. They helped us move out of our apartment, one plant and one CD binder at a time.

The downsizing has only continued on the road. We can see with more clarity what we have, what we need and what we’re not using. Our extreme minimal space forces us to ask hard questions of the things we keep beside us on our journey. Does this item bring me joy and serve more than one purpose? If an item meets those requirements, it stays. Well beside the obvious uni-taskers: toilet, refrigerator. We only have 45 sq ft in our lil Pearl so everything is in full view and has to serve us daily to stay.

We’re not the only people that downsized to live on the road. After we had been on the road for a few months, we met a couple while camping in Traverse City, Michigan in September 2021. They found the same freedom as we did when purging their possessions. To their surprise, they discovered that none of their children wanted their things as they were downsizing. The couple realized that only they found significance in their possessions. Once the owner is gone or devalues the item it becomes just another thing to add to the pile of stuff to deal with.

I concurred with them, things are “just stuff” until a human finds value in it and chooses to possess it. Matthew and I had filled our one bedroom apartment with things that felt like stuff holding us back. It was so freeing to send our things off to new homes at our garage sales or dropping off items at Goodwill. I’m sending my positive vibes to the recipients of our old stuff. I hope you’re still getting along. Living small just works for us. It was a hard transition (INCREDIBLY HARD) but was well worth it.

Signing off from Tonto National Forest,

and Love Always,

Rachel