The Fine Line Between Prepared and Overloaded

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Moving forces you to take inventory of your life in a way few other moments could. I was working in the garage today, feeling bitter about past decisions and wondering how two people who once lived in a small condo managed to acquire this much stuff in only seven years. If I kept this up for another 30 years, I could easily see myself becoming an old, grizzled curator of random, rusty junk straight out of American Pickers.

Going from a condo to our first house, with 1.76 acres of property in another state, was quite a change to say the least. We had a few tools, but no landscaping or mowing equipment. We needed to buy a whole bunch of stuff just to maintain the house and property. Then came the gardening infrastructure, tools, and seeds. We were ambitious—listening to self-reliance podcasts and hustle-culture voices, and looking forward to things like raising chickens, starting a small orchard, and making mead.

When the pandemic of 2020-2021 rolled around, supply chain issues were at the forefront of our minds. It was difficult to ascertain when so many items we took for granted would be available again. When our parents were downsizing, we said “yes” to all kinds of stuff. “We might need this one day” became the go-to excuse for filling our garage up with tools, ladders, lawn tractor accessories, and even more gardening equipment in case good food became scarce. Like many others, we were seriously considering backyard chickens even more at that point.

What also made everything far easier to say yes to was the fact that we lived on a rural property. There was so much space! You could turn it into a small permaculture paradise if you wanted to. At least, that was the dream. We fantasized about it regularly. We experimented with microgreens and hydroponics. I even learned about aquaponics and seriously considered creating my own setup.

As 2022 came and went, the supply chain started to regain some semblance of normalcy. As fun as it had been to be intoxicated with possibility, the hangover phase began to kick in. As I’ve mentioned in other articles, I was attempting self-employment from 2019-2022. That would have granted me the flexibility to delve into all of these rural delights, but once I had a standard job again, the demands of routine maintenance began to eclipse my waning free time. I started to resent how much of my life was being consumed by maintaining such a property.

Even up until last year, we were still entertaining fantasies of being able to eventually run a permaculture orchard/farm. We even took a permaculture design course online. As much as we love the outdoors, gardening, plants, etc., it looked increasingly like work we didn’t actually want to take on. We already work incredibly hard. We’re no strangers to it, but it seemed like an incredibly risky endeavor to start in our forties with a ton of upfront costs and very few guarantees. It was becoming abundantly clear that we were better off using the skills we already had, rather than potentially starting over from scratch.

Fast forward to today. We are moving to a property a quarter of the size of our current one. I will no longer need a lawn tractor. I will no longer need to maintain such a large, complex machine. I will no longer need several different filters, oil types, or tractor accessories. Just a push mower and its incredibly simple maintenance routine. When you’re no longer looking at seemingly infinite possibilities, all of this superfluous stuff you’ve kept in the garage starts to look less like preparedness and more like a collection of big, fat liabilities you have to keep out of the elements. All of a sudden, you’re looking for ways to get rid of it all.

When I was cleaning out the garage today, I was feeling bitter. Like a fool. Why did I allow my garage to fill up with all of this crap? It’s frustrating because much of it is still useful. Much of it still works. Some of it may even be better than what is being sold now. But useful to whom? Useful for what? For instance, a pneumatic nail gun is a perfectly good tool if you are framing, trimming, building, or regularly doing that kind of work. But what am I going to do with it now? Build a barn? That’s not happening. The longer you hold on to some of this stuff without having a future in mind for it all, the more depressing it becomes. No one likes to see wasted potential in people. Objects are no different.

Sure, I could use all of these tools. I could make repairs myself. I am handy, but that doesn’t mean I should do everything myself. I need to pick my battles. If I’m working full time, why should I fill up my weekends with even more busy work? Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of what I accomplish around the home. There is satisfaction in being able to look back at a job well done. But capability can tempt you into taking on more busy work. I have hobbies I’d like to invest my time in while I still have the energy and desire to enjoy them.

My hat is off to everyone who owns a rural property, who runs a farm, or who has quit their office job to make that lifestyle work for them. I really mean that. There’s nothing wrong with rural living. For some people, it is exactly the right life. They have the energy, skills, the support of a large family, equipment, patience, and temperament to make it work. I think if I were in my 20s and getting a head start, it might have been a different story. When it all came down to it, a quieter, slower-paced environment than a city was what I needed. More time outside was what I needed. A little more space was probably what I needed. Being overly ambitious with a rural property that was just too much for a couple of people was not what I needed.

The more you own, the more it owns you. Sure, if you have some hand tools you may use once every few years, that’s one thing. But if your garage is filled more with possibilities than useful objects, those possibilities become liabilities. It’s the same notion with life. Too many possibilities, too many unknowns, and too many open paths can ironically become limiting. When you’re young, you can take many paths. You can dabble, try things, and wander around a bit, especially when you’re not sure where to go. But when you’ve lived a certain amount of life, built a certain set of skills, gained more experience, and become more in tune with who you are and what you want, it becomes important to take inventory of your assets and liabilities, literally and figuratively. You need to shed old skin to keep growing. Sometimes what you need isn’t a huge change, but a small, lateral change. A few tweaks in the formula. Remove a few things here, add a few things there. Make gradual, careful adjustments before you tip the scales. Sometimes your choices aren’t completely wrong. They just need some tailoring.

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