Less is More & Stripping Down....

[Henri]

This is great :-)

I'm into this myself. I still have a way to go, but I think really it is more about living deliberately and freely.

With deliberately i mean we should know and consider the yin/yang every time we buy stuff. Is it just a desire for instant gratification or is it something that we really want deep down.

Also the more we own, the more immobile we are, because we get caught by our "investments".

I think it is perfectly ok to buy and have some stuff, just as long as we know the trade of it and are aware of the bondage that might come with it.

I love book and have a lot of them, but have begun to find them at the library instead. Cost: Nothing and you have to give them back :-)

The keywords must be awareness and deliberately living

Janet Luhr has a great program/and a book for this called:
Simple living

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Hans Comyn

minimalism in terms of stripping down to what is really essential is a way of life - and an obsession for me.

It is almost a form of meditation, and cleansing to go through my stuff and get rid of things.

I have been carry-on only for years now,
and I long for the thrill I had when i got rid of most things (tv, house, clothes ...)

I am down to under 10kg, Zuca-bag included, that is

4 tshirts
2 long pants
1 short pants
4 pair underwair
2 pair of socks
scarf
1 warm undershirt
1 suit jacket
1 leather jacket
jewelry, chords, plugs, pen, razor
toiletries (tootbrush, toothpaste, condoms, ...)

I think i am forgetting a couple of things - maybe I have too much ...

2 pairs socks Hans?? How??

And I want that scarf.

[Rocco85]

This is gonna make people laugh, but i now own;

1 pair socks
No underwear
1 pair jeans
2 denim shirts
1 smart suit trouser
1 leather jacket
1 hoody
1 pair brown leather shoes

That's all!! Haha!! Man, gotta get some new clothes, double denim is a bit wrong...

[VictorDorfman]

Love it! Thoreau talked about a generation of men who accumulate dross and know not what to do with it...well, we do...throw it the hell out! ;-)

2 pears underwear
1 pair ragged (but stylish) jeans
2 pairs socks
1 pair dress shoes with Nike soles (Cole Haan)
1 pair flip flops
2 pairs board shorts
2 t-shirts
3 dress shirts
1 fleece
2 ultra absorbent towels made of some kind of crazy synthetic material
1 laptop
1 acoustic/electric guitar
a few notebooks
toiletries/supplements

The guitar is a burden when travelling but writing songs inspired by real life muses is my purpose on this earth, so I'll gladly deal with the inconvenience :-)

[Nick Dufour]

I'm seconding the socks question...how do you get by with 1 or 2 pairs?

And no underwear, Rocco? that is funny, but I did wear swim shorts the whole day and kinda liked the breeze

[JPender]

It has been a little over a year since first posting this thread.

At first giving and letting things go was really easy. I had plenty of things and plenty of material goods that I could give away. After time and as my things began to dwindle I had to spend more and more time thinking about what I was willing to part with. The rate of giving slowed because I had less to give or I at least thought I did.

In a way, the more I began to let go, the more personal it became and the freer I became.

I got down to a very limited numbers of items and things became more personal because, every item that I still had served a purpose to keep me moving day to day or had a huge story that could be told of why I still had this item.

When releasing and giving away the items I was most attached to, I felt a huge moment of being scared shitless of whether or not I had done the right followed by a huge sense of freedom. I realized this was the case because I was also carrying the weight of emotional attachment that I had attached to this item and the past that I had with it.

By releasing these items and releasing the past emotions I had anchored into them I was allowing myself to live more in the PRESENCE.

I did a fair amount of selling to help me along my path, but when it was time to cut cords I also did a lot of GIVING. There was a lot I learned through giving, maybe even more so when I was giving things I was really attached to. I really wanted to give these things with no attachments; the new owners could do with them as they pleased.

I feel that I have learned a lot about myself and my surroundings by adopting this new lifestyle.I feel as though I have a whole new inner strength knowing that I am not attached to the idea of owning things.
The freedom of not being tied to things is amazing!

There is clarity and cleanness to it! I love it!

P.S. ~ to try to answer the question about Hans and his socks...he is a huge fan of http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/index.htm