Archives for January 2009

The declining economy and enticing post-holiday clearance sales have us spending too much money on clothing and gear for the trip. Case in point – last weekend we went to REI’s winter clearance sale. Bought two softshell technical jackets, 3 pairs of wicking undies (in cute colors!), 2 SIGG aluminum water bottles and steri-pen attachments. The total? Around $200! The savings? Around $200! That was definitely exciting, I mean who doesn’t love to save money?

Besides purchasing fun gear and clothes, we’ve also begun packing up our apartment. The question is what can’t we live without? What is irreplaceable to us? As we packed up the first load to send to my parents in Philadelphia I realized how much stuff we have. Stuff, that’s exactly what it is. It’s junk that somehow along the way we needed. Books, sculptures, picture frames, etc.. just stuff. We’re opposites when it comes to stuff- I’m a chucker while hubby is a pack rat. You know the types: the chucker who throws out EVERYTHING without regard for its sentimental value, and the pack rat who saves EVERYTHING without regard for its lack of sentimental value. Fortunately we’ve struck a balance in our few years of marriage, but it is still amazing how much STUFF we have!

Going through old boxes can be a painful trip down memory lane. Boxes of old love letters, yearbooks, dried flowers, pictures of friends you never talk to anymore. Boxes of stuff that was important when you put it away, but now 10 years later you can’t remember why you saved it. Case in point, my junior prom picture frame. (I just found that my prom pictures are still online! I’m not telling you where, but oh my god!) The prom gift my Junior Year of high school was a photo frame with weird glittery starts in it and a cheesy saying at the bottom. This piece of acrylic, tacky and obscene as it may be, was so incredibly important to me that I boxed it up for 7 years. I wanted to keep it forever. Going through a box of high school memories last weekend I came across this frame and immediately put it in the “chuck” pile. It got me thinking though. Packing this box several years ago, this cheap frame meant something important to me. Full of pictures, frames and yearbooks, it became clear that I was desperate to hold on to my high school self. Two weeks after I started college the twin towers came down. It was needless to say, a difficult time to be a college freshman in DC. I remember feeling like everything was changing, and I guess in many ways holding on to this stuff was my way of holding on to the past. Years have gone by and thankfully, a stronger more confident me threw that frame away to be recycled into someone else stuff.

What is something you can’t live without?