There’s nothing like having to move your life to a different country to force you to reassess your cluttered lifestyle, and the extent of your personal possessions. This human magpie used to be a champion of accumulating a lot of stuff over a short period of time. But a few years ago, I was faced with the task of packing up my cluttered life in Japan and moving back to Australia. It was an ordeal, but I did come out with some valuable lessons about living simply.

The space delusion

Space is one of the most valuable resources we have in our lives, and is infinitely easier to use up than to reclaim. Despite knowing this, the reason we allow clutter to occur is often a fatal underestimation about how much space (emotionally and physically) stuff takes up.
The stark realisation happened for me when filling up those packing boxes. All of a sudden, what I thought was a ‘conservatively sized’ wardrobe, had taken up 10 cubic meters and counting. If your immediate thought is ‘my wardrobe is nowhere near that size’, then you may be suffering from the space delusion!

We are not as attached to things as we think we are

As the saying goes, ‘you don’t know what you got until it’s gone’. Well, magpies, that’s a two sided coin. What surprised me most about moving countries was how little I missed (or indeed, remembered) the stuff I was forced to leave behind. This is despite that torn up feeling I had about parting with my collection of UFO catcher prizes, my humorously giant box of chocolate filled koala biscuits, and my 100 kilograms of Japanese fashion magazines. As for the frivolous things I actually did bring back, they remained forgotten in a storage box in my garage for the next five years. Living simply means understanding that attachment to stuff is often not as real as we think.

Stuff does not define you

I’m sure I’m not the only one to express my personality through my stuff. In my Japan days, it was curiosities I’d collected from various flea markets and second hand stores. Was any of it useful or valuable? No. There was just that feeling that these things were a part of who I was. I see now how irrational that was. After leaving 80% of my bric-a-brac behind, I am no less my quirky self than I ever was. Bric-a-brac does not define you. The only thing that defines you is your attitude.

The cost and value ratio

If you can put aside the emotional aspect of it all, the exercise of prioritising stuff can be as simple as a mathematical formula. One principle to have up your sleeve is the cost-value ratio – yes, they are two very different things. You would not (and should not) buy things simply based on cost, so by that logic, you shouldn’t keep things purely based on how much it cost you. It manifests as this overwhelming obligation to keep something for ever and ever simply because it was so dear when you bought it. But does it have intrinsic value? Is it useful? I’d hate to burst your bubble, magpies, but most designer bags will never become ‘vintage’, even if they did cost you two grand. So here’s an equation for simple living: You must only acquire and keep stuff which value is equal to or greater than its cost.

Moving house (or countries) is an opportunity of a lifetime

The motivation to completely reassess your lifestyle is hard to come by. Therefore life changes that force you to move house (or countries) should be seen as opportunities rather than inconveniences. They come with that unique sense of urgency and imperative to take a hard look at what’s really important and what’s simply dragging you down, to make those hard calls. It’s a fresh start, to rebuild from the beginning, better than the last time.