Moving toward a more minimalist lifestyle

Or...some of my stuff didn't survive the move. When we moved out of our house here 15 months ago, we expected to be storing our furniture for 1 to 3 months. And very little of it was mine. I had purged big time back in 2000 and then got rid of literally all my furniture. 

Although I knew I had many more moves in my future, and looked forward to them, I never wanted to go through this again:

Fortunately, I had my own truck. The other one is a 26 footer and it got packed right to the very edge.  And out of all that, this was my stuff:

I had a couple boxes of books and 3 huge suitcases of clothes, but this is what was left behind in storage. Now, my furniture consists mainly of collapsible shelves - 4 very pretty mission style walnut ones that are stackable and a shiny silver metal set. The wooden ones are for my books and the metal ones for my office/computing paraphernalia. I also had a pretty little silver folding tray table I used as a desk for my laptop and a tan padded top folding table I kept covered with a lace tablecloth that I used for all manner of things. 

These were the two things I was most looking forward to getting back so that I could begin working more efficiently in my new location. And they were among the handful of things that didn't survive the move. 

As it is, I'm taking it as a sign to rethink my requirements, just as I've recently begun doing in regard to the technology I'll be hauling around. And, in fact, the two situations actually have some overlap. Since I've ordered a Kindle, I'm giving my bookshelves to my daughter. I'm also giving her my books. I will gradually either replace them with copies on my Kindle or do without

In the meantime, though, I need to figure out what is the absolute minimum I can make do with in the way of furniture. I need a small desk for my laptop and a desk chair. Although my metal shelves survived the move, I'm thinking of giving them to my daughter, as well. 

She could certainly use them in her garage. When I bought them, they were the only ones I could find of the right dimensions. They're 14" deep, which I needed to hold my all in one printer, and short enough to fit under my utility table. But I have neither the printer nor the table any longer, and I will be replacing my printer/scanner/copier with a couple of items from the planonstore.com. First is the Planon Printstik.

Since it's only 1" x 2" x 11" and weighs only 1.5 pounds, I will be able to take this with me when I travel, if I so choose. I rarely print anything these days so, even though it doesn't do color, it's really all I need. Especially paired with a Docupen RC 850. Because this has tiny little guiding rollers on it, and it can cover the entire width of a normal printed page, it should easily fulfill all my scanning needs. And it does do color, so I can even use it on photos. 

There's not a lot of urgency for either of those purchases, because I have access to all of my daughter's desktop tech. But when I begin traveling more extensively, hopefully by the end of March, I can carry a full office around with me for "just in case", without causing too much of an extra burden. 

For now, though, I think I can make do with a much smaller shelving unit. And I'd prefer getting a folding one. They're just so much easier to move around, even though my current one is very easily assembled. I'm thinking of going with this one from the containerstore.com. It will hold all of my silver desk accessories.

So, now I begin what I've come to think of as my year of living minimally. More weeding and purging until I am down to the absolute necessities. It's possible that I will be getting a place of my own in several months, and I don't want to take any unnecessary crap with me. 

As it happens, I spent several hours a few months ago amusing myself with trying to see if it was possible to furnish a one bedroom apartment with stuff that could fit into a mid-sized SUV or min-van. My premise is that it's possible to rent one of those vehicles one way, which would allow me to move myself - easier and more cheaply - wherever I wanted. This is what I came up with. Now, as you can see, the little silver folding shelves are nowhere to be found. There's bronze and black. But, like in the photo, the silver shelves could be used in a bathroom. They're only about forty bucks. And they match my silver desk accessories. 

On the other hand, the room I'm occupying now is done with a lot of gold, so the folding desk and one or two of the shelving units would go quite nicely. Maybe the black. The silver desk accessories would look good on black. And the gold in my room is very light, like a champagne. So maybe it would look okay. 

Once again, decisions, decisions, decisions. I wonder if my daughter would like a whole bunch of silver desk accessories.