Living full time in my rv is an ongoing adventure in down sizing. There is a limited amount of storage space and rig weight is an important safety issue. If I stay parked a month or more it seems things start to accumulate.
Down sizing? Here are a few questions to ask.
1. Does it add value that I can identify?
2. Am I keeping this just-in-case something occurs? Is this a duplicate? Duplicates are often the “just in case” option.
3. Is it digital clutter? I steady have to manage digital clutter.
4. Are these photos and papers really important? Are they still important if they once were important? I no longer print photos and I regularly toss out papers.
5. Is this trash? Is it damaged? The seemingly never ending flow of trash requires attention from the source to the home. I try to select less trash at the store. I feel the need to reduce the incoming flow.
6. If it no longer fits it needs to go.
7. Is this for an abandoned hobby or past phase?Recently I tried to toss my small collection of leather pieces. I just couldn’t do it this time. It’s a past phase. I have some jewelry making supplies that need to go too.
8. Has this items useful life expired? I’ve been culling my clothes. Some are showing their age: really faded or tattered or maybe holes in them.
9. Does this make me feel worse?
Some things are conflicted. Tools and coats are “just in case” items but still add value. More than one shirt is helpful. Spare batteries. Necessary.
QOTD: Want to communicate with trees? “Slow your whole body and elongate it into tree-time. Go … like a child, playful and with reverence. Pay exquisite attention to every nuance of the entire scene with all your senses wide open.” —Written by Red K Elders,
I appreciate each of you. Your visits, likes, and comments mean so much. Stay safe and well out there in the CCE. Seems Covid is coming back with a vengeance.
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While I’ve been enjoying my ice-o-lation in Paradise I have been into photographing bottle caps.
The last one in this series. I drank this Shiner Bock and posed the cap on an old wooden picnic table.
Except for the Shiner Bock, these caps were all on the ground in Paradise. I saw them and photographed them on my morning walks. The Shiner Bock cap was disposed of appropriately.
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“As this figure moves across the stones, he steps lightly and non-seriously, and at the same time absolutely balanced and alert. Behind the swirling, ever-changing waters we can see the shapes of buildings; there appears to be a city in the background. The man is in the marketplace but at the same time outside of it, maintaining his balance and able to watch it from above. This card challenges us to move away from our preoccupations with other spaces and other times, and stay alert to what is happening in the here and now. Life is a great ocean in which you can play if you drop all your judgments, your preferences and the attachment to the details of your long-term plans. Be available to what comes your way, as it comes. And don’t worry if you stumble or fall; just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, have a good laugh, and carry on.
The past is no more and the future is not yet: both are unnecessarily moving in directions which don’t exist. One used to exist, but no longer exists, and one has not even started to exist. The only right person is one who lives moment to moment, whose arrow is directed to the moment, who is always here and now; wherever he is, his whole consciousness, his whole being, is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now. That’s the only right direction. Only such a man can enter into the golden gate. The present is the golden gate. Here-now is the golden gate. …And you can be in the present only if you are not ambitious–no accomplishment, no desire to achieve power, money, prestige, even enlightenment, because all ambition leads you into the future. Only a non-ambitious man can remain in the present. A man who wants to be in the present has not to think, has just to see and enter the gate. Experience will come, but experience has not to be premeditated.” – Osho.com
At times I manage to be present. I rarely voyage into the past. The future catches my mind on occasion. I prefer spontaneity and now here-ness. It’s my practice. It’s my one precious life and I don’t wish to miss it be wandering in the no longer existing past and nonexistent future.
Card of the day
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Check out my office I’ve been collecting things there for 30 years.
All this (other than the furniture) has to be cleaned out by the end of this project. I know it is hard for you to believe, but I’ve done a lot in there all ready.
The Garage
Garages tend to become storage areas and mine in no exception. Gotta be cleaned up. The stuff has to go. How does your garage look?
The Shop
Almost all of this has to be tossed, donated, sold, or sent home with its owner. There are some tools I’ll take with me on the road and I’ve already taken away some large items.
What do you think? About average? Worse that most?
I’m facing a common problem. When I look at the magnitude of what has to be done I’m overwhelmed and do nothing. The ‘How Much I Need to Accomplish’ story my mind tells me keeps me from doing anything.
How do you deal with this situation? This is what I am trying?
I try to ignore the big picture and just look at one little thing. If I can stay in the present and focus on that one thing I can usually get that done.
“How do you eat an elephant? …Bite for bite.”
The incremental approach isn’t usually the most efficient approach.
Sometimes I can’t seem to pick out one thing to do out of all of it. That is what often happens when we have too many things to do. In that case my default is to do the closet thing to me or go find things to throw away.
I know to break large jobs down into small manageable pieces. I’m still in the process of making and prioritizing my lists with measurable goals and a timeline. However, I don’t want to fall into the trap of spending all my time planning and none of my time doing.
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.~ William Morris
What if you have a stroke/heart attack (pick a catastrophic illness)?
How can you leave your job?
How will you make ends meet?
What about the cost of fuel?
How will you survive?
At your age how can you sell and give away all your things?
What about security in your old age?
Where will you live when you’re too old to live in a motor home?
(One of my personal favorites) What if SOMETHING happens? Something is never specified it is always the nebulous unknown thing.
Of course I know that is a load of crap. There are a lot of people my age and older living full time on the road. None the less, there are times when I hear my own mind asking the same questions. There are times when my self limiting thoughts are difficult to silence.
I have to remind myself that one is never too old to have dreams and to pursue those dreams.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Launched this project
Car is fixed and out of the shop
Got some boxes and put them in the shop. Later I’ll fill them and donate some of them to charity and others (tools) will be things I’m keeping for the road trip.
Sorted through some papers. It is amazing how ‘important’ papers accumulate. Then somehow they move from being important to being garbage while they are safely filed away.
Threw some things out that needed to go.
I maintained my other projects.
Worked on the jeep window problem. Just a little more to do on that if I am lucky.
Not a lot I know.
If I don’t pick up the pace I won’t ever drive away in a motor home. I am not going to beat myself up over it though.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. ~ Lao-tzu
My Eclectic Life 