a dream

This past holiday season, I visited Houston, TX for a little over a week. Before I left, I had been working on minimizing my lifestyle for about a month. I was thoroughly excited about making a minimalist travel test run.

I decided to pack the largest functioning backpack that I have. It is a medium large REI backpack. This is not a hiking backpack with a frame. This is just a regular old backpack.

I took 2 pairs of pants, about 4 tshirst, a few pairs of socks, my laptop, my camera, my mp3 player, all of the necessary charging equipment, a book, and my purse. My purse was brought along to act as either a small bag to carry a few books or my camera. I wore a medium weight jacket, a sweater, and a polo to the airport.

At the time we were selling my house, so my former room was very empty. It was fantastic. My closet had a few hangers, a single oxford shirt, and a pair of shoes that matched both pairs of my khaki pants much better than my worn out pair of black shoes that I had brought with me. I had the perfect amount of clothes. I had to wash a few times, but frequent wardrobe changes kept my clothes fresh.

I loved having the small wardrobe I still had enough options that I didn’t feel like I wore the same thing the whole time, but I rarely had to think about what clothes to put on. I could see this amount of clothing working in the long term. I plan on traveling after I graduate school, so I am pleased that I could easily adapt to this reduced wardrobe size.

When I left, most of my tshirts were dirty. I didn’t bother taking more than 1 back with me. The polo shirt was worn out, so I ditched that too. This made room for the new pair of pants that I picked up in while in Houston. I also left my ratty worn out old shoes in favor of the older, but less worn out shoes that I wear currently. The best part is these shoes match all of my clothes.

I have returned to my expanded wardrobe, and it makes me a little sad.

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