or: Sorting stuff after a trip is the best time to sort it

As seems to have become standard practice for when I return to HK, I am going through my belongings and donating (and this time also likely to be selling) those which I no longer want.

Quite a few people have asked me how can I possibly have anything left to go through since surely I’ve whittled my things down to the bare essentials by now? It’s a good question particularly since as I’ve moved, I’ve also gone through this exercise and once I’m here for a while, I also put a box aside to put in one item per day to also exit my life.

This is why it’s easiest to do when I come back from a trip or if I haven’t seen my things in a while as that’s when my perception of what I need and want makes a natural shift since I seem to value different things then and I don’t need to think too hard about what can stay and what will go. There is less decision fatigue than if I was forcing myself to do this.

This time I’ve approached it a little differently.

My question to myself as I’ve gone through my clothes, shoes, scarves / pashminas (HK aircon is perpetually set to nearly freezing) and handbags was “If I had an unlimited budget, which would I buy now?”. That is, I shopped my wardrobe and have kept those items I would buy now if money wasn’t a factor. It’s not a factor because I already own these things and some of them I will hopefully be able to sell.

One of the things I’ve found interesting this time is how much clothes I have hanging in my wardrobe for office work. Between skirt and pant suits (sometimes I have the skirt and pants for the same jacket); separate skirts, pants and jackets; slip dresses and shirts, I have clearly spent a lot of time in an office environment and I like the classics.

Some of this has now left my wardrobe too.

I only have one wetsuit and it isn’t even in the same country as me.

The same thing happens when I look at my shoes. I have heels that go with all of these outfits and only a few pairs of casual shoes in comparison.

And one pair of booties for diving. These are here with me. So is one set of fins. I have plans… I will borrow a wetsuit!

I have also gone through a heap of stationery. I have a lot of notebooks because I like to write and because I like notebooks. I’ve kept those I’ve filled since some of these may have something I’ll need later and I’ve kept my very favorites of those I would buy again since I’m not able to justify having a billion trillion notebooks. That is only a very slight exaggeration. Very, very slight. I did mention I like notebooks.

I’ve come to realize that I am not going to be a Masterchef. This means I also don’t need all the cookbooks that I had. I had already given others away previously yet somehow I still had two of the same book (clearly I really wanted that one, forgot I had it and yet still have managed to not cook a single thing from it). I would like to be a better cook, I just don’t need quite so many books to get me there. Cooking practice on the other hand is what will get me there.

In a break between doing all of this, I was told about Marie Kondo’s new Netflix series. So I’ve watched that too and now I’m folding some of my clothes differently. Her method does give you more space in your drawers. It also gave me time to think about how much I liked what it was I was folding. Sounds weird but it’s true.

I’ve managed to empty a whole chest of drawers which I will now also donate or sell (I haven’t decided which yet because it’s a great set of drawers however I do know some charities need this kind of thing too) and have saved space in my other set as well as not having anything in a Chinese style console table. I’m undecided if I want to donate that too or keep it and move to another area of my room.

When you only have 50m squared to play with, there’s not a lot of furniture shuffle space and that table is currently in the bathroom. This decision can wait.

In doing all of this, I also decided to unsubscribe from countless emails that I receive each day. I did this yesterday and the difference today has been huge. I rarely opened all those emails anyway but to actually see less in my inbox has made a difference. I then deleted a lot of old emails from these same organizations and that has made it look better too. It’s just neater. Not near Inbox Zero, just less overwhelming than Inbox Infinity.

Next step is the electronics, cords, batteries and these bits and pieces…

* Thanks to The Pretenders for the title to this post.