Living Out of A Backpack

My amazing friend just came back from traveling to South East Asia for almost 3 months. She lived out of a backpack, and carried less than 20 items, a few of which she discarded along the way, such as her hiking boots.

It made me think about a post I read at another site. I have been downshifting my life and trying to eliminate having too many material possessions in my life because I feel that it takes me away from what is really important to me. It has not been easy deciding what to donate or throw out, especially because I regretted throwing away a few things. These things I threw away because of the categories I made for them. Richard Kuo’s challenge in his blogpost “If you only had a backpack’s worth of stuff to take with you…or a trunk, or a car’s worth…what would you take?” really got me thinking, and has given me a clearer idea in how to decide what else to throw out.

In any case, my friend said, she probably would not live out of a backpack now that she is back home. However, I told her I was amazed at her journey, and told her that the important thing is that she knows that it's nice to have things, but freeing to know you don't need much to survive and experience life.

On that note, thinking of living out of a backpack gave me some more insight in deciding why I keep things. For instance, in terms of clothing, perhaps thinking about weight, "wrinkle-ability", clothing that can be hand-washed and dry easily, warmth or coolness, clothing that match each other easily, that are flexible as casual wear as well as more formal wear are more important than colors, styles, etc. If you think about it, this is how our human ancestors thought about clothing, except for those for ritual and celebrations. This idea of clothes as being trendy is a fairly new, and misleading concept of the functionality and true purpose and advent of clothing.