What it’s Like When Your Life Fits in One Bag

The first time I came home from a long trip abroad, it was after a year studying abroad in Malta.

I lugged behind me the big red suitcase my mom had let me borrow, a duffle bag, and a guitar — all things I had thought necessary and essential a year before. It was an obnoxious amount of stuff; much of which I was now looking at thinking, “Why did I think I needed that?”

A few weeks later, I graduated. September rolled around and I had my first real job interview. It went well, but I panicked. “You’d be commuting in to D.C. every day, working at the Ronald Reagan Building,” they said. “Commuting? Ronald Reagan Building? D.C.?” My head spun with stress induced images of D.C’s morning rush hour. I returned home in a youthful, “fuck the man,” sort of mood, examined my bank account, and bought a flight to Geneva, Switzerland.

This time, however, I left the guitar and the big red suitcase, instead filling up the shiny, new, 45-liter Osprey bag that would later follow me around 5 continents and almost 30 countries. For the next six weeks, and many times after, it would become the lump sum of all my material possessions. Little did I know, I wasn’t just saying no to the typical graduate-and-get-a-job process, I was embarking on an experiment on what it’s like to live with less.

Possessions hold you back

In travel, your possessions have the power to hold you back in ways you rarely see in stationary, day-to-day, life. Sometimes, it’ll be in small ways that don’t really seem to matter: you end up taking a taxi instead of walking; you sweat and suffer as you lug a suitcase up five flights of stairs in an elevator-less building. Other times, that suitcase drags you down and keeps you from saying “yes” to an opportunity.

Outside of travel, the way your possessions hold you back is less obvious— after all, you’re not physically carrying them places — but they do. The desire to own more keeps you from saving; spurs you to work more, spend less time on things you enjoy. Accumulation of things means you opt for a place with more space, perhaps slowly inching yourself further and further out of the city. You’re forced to own a car; to give in to the morning commute. Psychologically, you give your possessions more weight and importance than you ought to.

Less=the freedom to say, “Yes.”

I thought about this a lot while backpacking in Europe. I recognized that the big red suitcase and the guitar had kept me from taking a post-study abroad trip (that, and my diminished bank account). I was making up for it now, sure, but I didn’t ever want things to get in the way of experiences. Perhaps it sounds strange that one bag can hold that much philosophical power, but it did.

On the smallest of scales, my backpack and I said, “Yes,” to a lot of opportunities on that second trip to Europe. For six weeks, I hitchhiked around visiting friends or staying with couchsurfers, and I loved that at any moment I knew I had everything I really, truly needed on my back. Inside, I had clothes, a coat, food, a wine opener, a mini flashlight, chargers, a waterproof map of Europe’s highways, snacks, and utensils. Everything was practical and useful.

I felt freer for it and on a larger scale, it influenced how I answered the biggest of all post-grad questions: what do you do now that you’re finally done with school?

Making a Life With Less

Returning home from Europe, I felt the need to maintain this lightness of being. I didn’t want to be tied to one place, with a job and a commute, working to earn money to buy more things. Instead, I wanted to live simply and be free to explore — and so I did. Over the next few years, I lived in several different places, each time with just the essentials. Over time I would spend:

• Six months teaching in Costa Rica; carrying just the backpack and a ukelele
• One year living in Seattle; arriving with the backpack and a small duffle
• One month hiking in Oregon; with only the backpack (which included, this time, my house: a tent)
• Two years doing Peace Corps in Madagascar; packing the backpack, a small backpack, and a duffle for the entire time.
• Three months traveling in Africa and Asia; with only the backpack
• One and a half years working in San Francisco; moving initially with just the backpack, a box of bike gear, and a duffle.

Each time I changed locations, the contents of my bag would change, but there was always one main premise: everything in my bag had to serve a practical purpose, ideally multiple purposes.

If I was going to buy something new, I would first ask, “Is there something in my bag I’m replacing? Or does it serve a purpose that no other item in my bag can serve? Do I absolutely need it, or is this just a want?”

To me, the clearest sign that I had packed perfectly, was if I returned from a trip and noted that I had used every single item in my bag — more than once.

Admittedly, there are times when I’d allow myself to buy something slightly impractical — a nice dress because I was tired of looking scrubby, or a souvenir of some sort because I loved what it represented — but largely I kept the souvenirs to photos, notes, and things I could later eat.

My things are practical, not emotional

The more time I spent moving from place to place with only a bag or two, the more I stopped attaching meaning and emotion to things. The less I looked to things — souvenirs — to help me remember trips. The smaller my list of “life essentials” became.

Instead, the things I carried became just that: things. With the very rare exception of those one or two “happiness items” I’d allow myself (a dress, postcards, a ukelele), everything I owned existed to serve practical purposes. They kept me warm, dry, fed, safe, healthy, entertained, or moving in the right direction. No dead weight allowed.

Slowly, and perhaps because I spent so much of my early twenties hopping from place to place, I began to apply my approach to packing and travel to stationary life as well…

Packing Habits Evolve into Lifestyle Habits

It’s been almost two years since I came to San Francisco, committing to a commute and a full time job. It’s also the first time since college that I’ve considered myself more of a resident than someone who would eventually leave. I’ve given in to owning a bike, a couple of chairs, and more than one dress. Still, I’ve noticed that years of living with little more than a bag or two has influenced, sometimes even dictated, a minimalist lifestyle.

Especially after living in developing nations, where minimalism wasn’t a choice but the norm, and where travelers were more likely to have a bag full of food than outfits, the sheer amount of stuff most Americans own started to seem well, just really ridiculous. After making my own English muffins from scratch on a gas camper stove, or literally forgetting how to work a TV because it had been so long, it was like I had broken free of some spell that told me, “You need this looonnng list of things in your house to be a successful and competent human.” Living with one bag has thus inspired a minimalist lifestyle even outside of travel, and I see this happening in two big ways:

I’ve developed an emotional detachment from my possessions.

Soon after I came home from Peace Corps, I went through the boxes of things I had left in a closet at my parents house. They just didn’t feel like “mine” anymore.

I had lived for so long with function as a main priority, that I was able to look at (most) items without nostalgia and get rid of all the “just in case” items. The “it’s cute but I never wear it,” items. The owning for the sake of owning items. Much in the way a writer learns to cut even the most beloved of sentences because they serve no function, I learned to purge the pretty, useless items of my youth.

I’ve begun to think of my house as I would my backpack

As such, I keep up with the same process of buying things now as I would while traveling or packing.

For example, if I’m thinking of buying something, I ask myself “what purpose does it serve that nothing else in the house is serving? Is it replacing something? Do I need it or want it?”

When it comes to clothes, I still find myself buying clothes in the way I would choose which pieces to put in my bag: I go for quality pieces, neutrals, avoid redundancy (i.e. owning two black t-shirts) look for easy to layer items, and items that I would wear often, versus every once in awhile.

The Life Packing List

For a while, it was at a point where I didn’t even own plates — just a few bowls and a cutting board that doubled as a plate when necessary. I didn’t actually need them and by throwing that “list of things you need to own as a normal American adult” out the window, and by creating my own “life packing list,” I’ve continued to reduce as much as possible the needless items in my house.

I’m a huge believer in the idea that you need a smaller bag to pack smaller, so why not apply that to where you live? Unsurprisingly, I’ve got a tiny house and I love it; it means every corner is purposeful and intentional.

Making a Life With Less

Most of us travel to explore, learn, and create memories. But there are always side effects to our wanderings; things we learn about ourselves along the way.

How many people travel in such a way that they live for an extended amount of time with just one bag? How many people ever detach themselves for long enough from their material life to recognize what they really, truly need in life? Because said people grow up and live a life attached to material goods, do they continue to forever live a life where they feel they need more things? Do they confuse “want” and “need” too much?

For me, one of the most significant lessons I learned from traveling and moving around constantly was how to live a minimalist lifestyle. Living out of my backpack multiple times has taught me what things I actually needed. It’s taught me to do exactly what I need to do with less — no kitchen filled with single-task appliances, no ugly scarves I never wear. Things became interchangeable, replaceable. Money became a means towards experiences, not possessions.

In the end, all I need is that one bag.

photo credit: quite peculiar

***

On Your Terms is a publication by Tortuga, makers of the ultimate travel backpack.