Nearly five years ago we sold our home and went vagabond.  As a part of this we liquidated most of our belongings, primarily by donating them to Goodwill and the like.  Our goal then, which we succeeded at, was to reduce our possessions to the point that they could fit into  5’x6’ self-storage unit, which at the last minute we supplemented by leasing a bike storage locker from the City of Portland.

Ever  since then these two storage units have played a pivotal role in our itinerant lifestyles.  On an average of twice per year we return to Portland and execute another iteration of The Shuffle.  When we arrive in Portland we remove things from storage that we use in town - our city bikes, the laptop, clothing, and on and on and on.   when we leave again we more or less reverse the process.  We’ve run this playbook about a dozen times now and it’s definitely feeling old.  It’s tedious and stressful, and getting more so as time goes on and the storage unit has gradually gotten less well organized.  

A lot happened over the last nine months on the road, but one thing was that we came to the realization that we don’t really expect to buy another home someday; and if we do, we don’t even know where it would be.  We feel less certainty that we would eventually settle in Portland again, or even necessarily in this country.  We think we’ll be pretty happy to stay in temporary furnished housing of one sort or another indefinitely.

So why are we still storing and dealing with all of this crap, Team Anderson would like to know?  Even with our greatly reduced inventory we’ve got furniture we couldn’t bear to part with five years ago, and boxes of books, and clothing we’re not likely to ever wear again.  We returned to Portland resolved to begin the process of significantly downsizing again, and were excited about the prospect of diving into the storage unit and ruthlessly tossing things out.  At a minimum, our short term goal is to free enough space so that we can put our city bicycles in with everything else and quit leasing a bike storage unit.  And, of course, if we have less junk in this 5’x6’ box it will be easier to manage The Shuffle twice a year.

So now we’re here, but in fact we’ve hardly made any progress at all.  It turns out that arriving jet-lagged in the middle of the winter with a list of other higher priority tasks to compete with (doctor and dentist appointments, hair cuts, getting the bikes in for maintenance), simplifying the storage unit just kept slipping down the list.  Especially since we’re here for such a short time anyway we decided it will be easier to deal with in February when we’ll be here for a whole month.

But there’s at least some progress to report.  I threw out a half-dozen or so pair of old shoes and some old panniers, which frees up at least some space.  Also, I’m throwing out two old bike shirts I haven’t worn for years that I’ve kept around for sentimental reasons.  I’ll never wear them again because they’re too faded and worn, but I’ll keep the memory.  I don’t need to keep the cloth itself.  Photos will suffice.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got other old bike shirts I haven’t worn for years, buried somewhere in the storage unit - there’s the purple one from Segovia I got back in 1997 that I’m sure must be taking up space somewhere as one example, but we’ll stop here for now.  Pretty good start!

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Patrick O'HaraNot the famous Basque team Euskaltel! That's a hard let go!
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonTo Patrick O'HaraHmm. You could be right. Maybe I should go dive into the dumpster before it’s too late.
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1 year ago

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