For twenty years, from 1965 until my homecoming to Australia in 1985, I lived out of a suitcase. One suitcase - and a small one at that - plus one of those expandable airline pilot cases held all my worldly possessions necessary to clothe me, entertain me, and enable me to do my work. And even while I sometimes hankered to accumulate things, I would catch myself doing some 'trial packing' halfway through some longer-term job just to make sure everything still fitted into that one suitcase.
For the last twenty-five years, since 1985, first in Canberra and now at "Riverbend", I have been accumulating and collecting things with a vengeance. Even the largest removalist truck would be too small to carry away all that STUFF I now possess (correction: it possesses me!) ENOUGH!!!
I have made the long-postponed decision: I am uncluttering my life!
All that STUFF will be given away to friends and neighbours and Vinnies and the Salvos. And what can't be given away, will be thrown onto a big bonfire of vanities. And what a liberating feeling it is! I cannot hope to ever get back to that one suitcase but I can get it down to at least one average-sized removalist truck which I will order as soon as "Riverbend" is sold.
Then it's back to tropical Far North Queensland where I may not even buy real estate again. The German word for it is 'Immobilien' which says it all: it makes one completely immobile. Rent instead, and move about, and see the world.
