Past weeks I’ve been helping friends moving their stuff to new places. The ‘weirdest’ object I carried out of an apartment in the suburbs of Aschaffenburg was a flail. Quite amazing how you legally trespass and look into ones past..
Anyway, carrying out lots and lots of boxes, couches, old toys, arrows, .. it made me realize that I should take my simplistic lifestyle even further.
At home, last week, I already started in sorting my old clothes (i.g. now to big) and store them in plastic boxes in the basement. Why not giving them away you might say? Well, they can still be handy, and all are pretty new. The main idea is that everything I don’t need in my apartment will be stored in non-paper boxes so everything can be carried out easily. Paulo Coelho, who I discovered yesterday (thanks Julia!), writes some of my ideas down in his book ‘Like the Flowing River’. He mentions that books should live their own life and not gather dust on a shelve. Similar concept, last week I stowed all books in, indeed, another big, plastic container! (BTW, I once tried to give away my books to a public library in Belgium, but they only buy books through official channels..) The main reasons why I do all this is: 1) less stuff to dust, more space; 2) I don’t want to burden anyone extra when I would die. Yes, eventually we all die, tomorrow or yesterday, in a decade, some in a century, but it’s no taboo: I will eventually die.
I live alone in Germany, my relatives are all in Belgium. Imagine the problems my parents might get into getting my apartment emptied, etc etc..
Be sure I don’t want to be a pain in the back, literally, when I’m burned to ashes.
Next year I will make a will, check with laws in Germany as what would happen, etc.. What with my car, for example. Checking things out postmortem is a bit.. difficult.
As a programmer, that is one deadline I will keep!