This past weekend we began the process of moving any unnecessary items out of our apartment. With only about 9 weeks before we leave our jobs, and 10 weeks before we start our hike, we figure we’ll start making a few of these mini move-out trips to slowly downsize until we’re ready for the full move out. Before continuing, we’d like to extend a special thanks to Casey’s mother for letting us store a bunch of our stuff in her basement. We’ll also be storing some stuff at Casey’s brother’s place, so more thanks there.
The process of beginning the move out marks the beginning of figuring out what we can live without… which is kind of one of the points of doing this hike. It’s a bit surreal to be moving out of the place we’ve called home for the last five and a half years, but it is a bit cathartic to be downsizing. Some of the first things we’re moving out of the apartment are the obvious… extra fans, since we won’t be spending another summer here, Alex’s drum kit, our camping chairs, and all of our christmas decorations. Kayaks and golf clubs are now gone too, since we’ll be on the trail before the weather will be nice enough to use these items again. We also moved out our second TV, which gives Casey’s mom a bit of an upgrade.
I see this as a process that we’ll continue not only during our preparations, but also during our hike. I know as we hike, we’ll figure out what items we use every day and can’t live without, and what items we thought we’d use but end up not really using at all. This whole experience, the preparations and the hike, will give us a chance to figure out what we really need to be survive, and what we really need to live comfortably. It’s so easy to gather a lot of “stuff”, and I know we’re a bit guilty of it. The attitude of getting more “stuff” has been especially on our minds in the last month with the holidays coming and going, followed by this past week of the huge Powerball Jackpot and everyone’s dreams of hitting it big. As we’re beginning to move our own “stuff” out, I think we’re already starting to learn that we can downsize, reduce the amount of “stuff” we have, and still be able to live comfortably.
Anyway, enough with the philosophical discussion on reducing worldly possessions… time for us to get back to planning and packing… only 10 more weeks until we start the trail.
