I made the move from Australia to Germany with little more than a small suitcase and a hiking pack. Looking back it's not something I would repeat.

You've got to be absolutely ruthless about what you sell or dispose of but seriously consider getting a pallet. It took me a long time to replace the stuff I sold for pennies on the dollar.

In the end I didn't find it particularly liberating. Though I think part of that is I went from living independently to relying on furnished apartments for a couple years. Living in a place that's not your own can eventually become grating.

I'd agree with that. We spent a busy few weeks getting basic things setup (sofa, table, tv, book-cases, etc).

Over time I started to get annoyed that because we'd bought things used with no real planning we had different colours/styles/designs all mishmashed together.

There was nothing wrong with any of the things we bought, but over time it did become annoying to live in such a state. I can imagine that if we'd moved into a furnished house we'd have had similar views and even less control about replacing things to match. Feeling more like a caretaker than living in "our home".

Ye I don't get the liberating thing.

You need stuff. Screwdrivers, cloth hangers, spoons ...

I feel like just ditching it all and thinking of your self as unbound to earthly possesions is self-deception, since you just buy it again. It is acctually consumerism and spree shooping.

I think it’s an over correction from being too consumerist. You go from extreme to extreme. I see this with people who didn’t exercise, and now they are all in with the gear and the diets etc.

But I wish there were certain things and spaces that were able to be rented. I don’t need a drill all the time. Sometimes I need a workbench and more clamps.

There’s a lot of community level optimisation we could do.

I think a drill is the one tool pretty much everyone could stand to have.

I own a drill and would probably advise the same thing. But I clearly don’t use it more than a few hours a year.

True. But also true that you can't really do quick, impromptu fixes if you have to rent the thing.

Most hardware stores do rent tools.

And many towns and cities have tool lending libraries.

You need them sure, but you don't need them to be _new_ screwdrivers, clothing hangers or spoons.

When moving, I sell leftover things to people who need them. And then when I arrive, I buy things second hand from people who no longer have a need for them.

Sure, it was the "moving with just a briefcase" I was commenting on mainly, not getting rid of superfluous stuff - which of course by definition you don't need.

I was thinking about a job opportunity that would involve a move recently and started to feel ridiculous when I realized how much of my apprehension had to do with all my stuff, much of which was boxed up and hadn't been touched for years. Then I read the Kondo Marie book and started doing it. An unexpected side benefit is you come to appreciate the possessions you do want to keep a lot more when you separate them out from ones you're keeping around "just in case" that you didn't really want.

There's absolutely an element of truth here.

My definition of home after spending 9 months in a van travelling in Europe and the US was something along the lines of: the place where I can keep things that I don't use very often but that feel important to my sense of self.

For me personally, one good example of that would be my table saw. I don't use it often (and I certainly did not need it while travelling). But owning a table saw is a part of what makes me feel like me (not to mention it's history in removing part of one of my thumbs). Having a place where the table saw can just be (i.e. not a storage facility) is for me part of what "having a home" is all about.

The same would be true of things like my cookbooks. In the age of the internet, I don't even use them much anymore, and I certainly would not take them with me on any bounded-term move. Having on a shelf at home is part of what makes home actually be "home" rather than just "where I'm living".