I have been planning recently for an international trip next spring. I have been on-line checking out places to see and ways to travel. I have chanced across several articles recommending that we “travel light.” One of these authors points out we don’t want to be carting our over-packed luggage to day destinations and that some of the airlines are charging extra for checked luggage and that often that extra stuff that you carted half-way around the world stays in your suitcase the whole trip. I think that this advice has application for everyday life as well. And inherent in the concept of “packing light” is packing for the trip you are taking.

When I got married, friends and relatives gifted us with household items they believed we would need for our new life together. We got the usual blender, toaster, china, candy dishes and tableware and a few exotic gifts as well: a glass lamp filled with seashells, a hand-hooked green and pink throw rug and a silver plated chafing dish. I dutifully packed it up and moved it to our 1st apartment. My new husband, a journalist, was just starting his career. We lived in a small apartment, in a small town and he worked at a weekly paper.

As his skills improved, he got a job at a weekly in a larger town and eventually jobs at daily papers. He worked hard and it didn’t take him long to prove his worth. We moved 9 times in 3 years. After the 1st year, I stopped unpacking the seashell lamp and the chafing dish. By the second year I stopped unpacking the china and crystal. By the third year I had stored it in my mother’s basement.

Truth was, when we socialized with friends from the paper, we usually went to a local bar. And if we entertained at home, we served coffee and dessert. I really didn’t need a silver chafing dish. It was someone else’s idea of what a young bride needed. It didn’t have anything to do with my actual life as it was lived.

I don’t move much anymore, I’ve lived in the same area for 20 years, but I still don’t have much need for a silver plated chafing dish. I guess, I could have found a use for it, maybe melting crayon bits for craft projects. Instead I gave it to someone who actually throws parties where it doesn’t look out of place.

I look at the different seasons of my life as different trips I have taken. In my 20’s, I was in and out of college and minimum wage jobs. I didn’t need a large, heavy, matched dining set. I needed freedom and flexibility and low cost. I lived in a series of creatively inexpensive housing arrangements. I had room mates, I was a nanny, I slept on a friend’s floor. In my 30’s, I had kids, got a job on my career path. I needed stability and a bigger roof. I bought a house and a dining room table and chairs. And it’s perfect for now, but I am beginning to think about the next season, the next trip.

After these kids leave home and start their own adventures, I do not want to be moping about the house waiting for them to come home at Thanksgiving. For me, Thanksgiving is gratitude and the joy of being together. We can do that anywhere. We could make it a point to do it differently every year. Rent a cabin. Eat at a restaurant. Work at the breadline. When they leave home, I plan on a new set of adventures for myself, things I couldn’t do when they were little or had daily music practice. I do not plan to let the house, or the dining room set or the flower boxes that have to be watered daily in the summer tie me down.

So while I’m planning my trip to Europe, and driving kids to music lessons and Tae Kwon Do practice, part of my brain is packing for the next trip, figuring out exactly which of my things will be helpful on the journey and which is unnecessary weight to carry. I haven’t got it figured out just yet. Maybe I’ll sell the house, maybe I’ll rent it out. Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps. Whatever I decide, having just the right amount packed for the trip will make it more fun.

As you’ve moved through different phases of your life, what have you decided to take with you? What have you left behind? Let us know in the comments.

(image by geishaboy500 via flickr.)

We are a Midwest, middle-class family of 4 (one adult, three school age kids) with 2 cats that produces less than a 13 gallon trash (kitchen size) bag of waste for the landfill per week.

We haven’t always done this well in diverting our trash from permanent waste storage facilities, and there is always room for improvement, but here is what we are doing now:

Our community curb side recycling program takes 1 & 2 plastics, paper and chipboard, tin and aluminum and clear glass right from our front yard. The cost of this is included in our regular trash service, whether we use it or not. A few years back, I discovered that my mom’s community curb side recycling program will also take plastics 3-10 and colored glass. So now we save those in a box in the basement until we visit her or she drives up for a kid’s music program.

Most of our kitchen waste can be composted, as we have few meat scraps. With the busyness of caring for a young family, I have always been a lazy composter. I have a large tub (a repurposed Tupperware cake storage/transport container) that sits on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. During meal preparation, or as the kids are clearing their plates after a meal, food scraps get put there. Refrigerating it keeps it from attracting bugs or giving off odors until it gets full and one of us takes it out to the compost bin in the back yard.

Here, my laziness continues. I have read the appropriate percentages of lawn clippings to food waste and how often to turn the pile, etc., but I have determined that this is for the compost bin of people impatient for their black dirt. I’m in no hurry. I just keeping piling my food scraps on top, occasionally toss on a few weeds from the yard when I can convince the kids to pull them, and in a year or two or three-Voila! Dirt. My compost bin (came with the house) is cleverly designed with little doors at the bottom, so dirt can be removed from the lowest portion of the bin without disturbing the garbage on top.

When I bought this house five years ago, the former owners left some presents for me: empty paint cans (in case I wanted to touch up the walls before I chose my own colors), a kitchen counter portion left over from a remodel, a storage cabinet 5 feet tall made of scraps of lumber, and also a set of used tires. All of these things I was able to freecycle. As I have remodeled the house, I also found homes for the used carpet on freecycle. The unused radiators went to the scrap metal recycling place.

With three growing kids, there is a continual flow of new and used clothes through the house. I generally limit all of us to a week’s worth of clothes for each season. This keeps purchasing costs down and it makes it difficult for laundry to pile too high. I have identified a recipient for the outgrown clothes from each child. My daughter’s clothes go to a woman at work whose daughter is a year younger and about the same proportions as mine. My youngest son’s clothes go to a different woman at work whose youngest son is slender and can’t wear the hand-me downs from his two big older brothers. We generally try on last year’s clothes at the start of a new season. What doesn’t fit gets bagged up and taken to its new owner.

I have also worked on reducing what comes into the house. We rarely eat out, so don’t have the difficult-to-recycle food containers from restaurants to dispose of. For gift-giving occasions, I request an experience-gift or gift cards. (Last year, I got the 3 day loan of a convertible sports car from a friend! Way too fun, but totally impractical—I had to make three trips to get the kids home from Tae Kwon Do lessons.)

The kids like getting stuff, but they outgrow toys like they do clothes. This summer, we are going to have a toy garage sale. They can keep the money from whatever they sell and get something more to their current tastes. When I think about acquiring something new, I often ask myself, “How am I going to get rid of this when I am done with it?”

We take cloth or string bags when we go shopping. I reuse school supplies as much as possible. In fact, I have sent the same unopened box of watercolors to the same elementary school for 4 years and 3 kids! I take my lunch to work in an insulated container and eat up the leftovers- no waste there.

As I find a ways to reduce what goes into our trash can, I explain to the kids what to do with each item and the reason behind it. They have been composting apple cores and bread crusts since they could open the refrigerator door. I noticed last night as my 12 year old finished up a poster-board presentation for school that he picked up the paper scraps and put them in the recycle bin without any reminder from me. It’s not a big deal—it’s just what we do.

Fawn Hoener shares her home with three of her four children. The oldest is a grown-up, a developmental stage to which the younger three aspire. She is a hospice nurse for love and money, a poet for fun and her favorite hobby is decluttering.