It’s interesting to me.

Before COVID grasped the world in 2020, I sensed myself riding the same escalator as most younger people, interested in attaining that which is characteristic of many Americans: having stuff.

You don’t think about it much, but that’s how it is with life when you are young and developing. You are a collector.

You see stuff you like, or maybe sort of like, or you think you might like someday, and you buy it, and then use it as long as you use it, and then you put it away, maybe for use later on, or for someone else to use someday.

When you live in your room as a teen, the closet gets filled.

When you move out into an apartment, the apartment fills up.

You get married, and together you enjoy getting more stuff.

And then if you have kids, you want the kids to have stuff too.

To know the joy of having stuff.

I’ve never really been a stuff guy, I’ve always thought, at least in the sense I actively sought the latest and greatest, or the coolest, or the hippest, or the handiest stuff.

I’ve pretended to be a non-shopper.

But the truth is, I have still been an ardent collector. It’s just my stuff is largely built from things people have given to me.

So now that I am in a house (which is too big for just me, really), unsurprisingly, I have realized the house has filled up with stuff. The shelves I put along the side walls in the garage are full. The closets in my spare rooms are mostly there.

I am still overran with stuff.

But it took one day in May of last year for me to realize this fact.

When my aunt died and we had to go through and box up her belongings, the veil fell for me.

You don’t need much of what you have, most of what you have, if you really got down to it.

Because cleaning out the house of a single woman with no one to give her stuff to made realize I was in a similar boat to that.

In the end, most of my possessions are probably destined for either Goodwill or the dump.

It’s no surprise, then, that during the Year Of Sitting At Home, I took a strong interest in living spaces that were a little different than mine. I became intrigued with the idea of building and dwelling in a tiny home, and many spare hours were spent watching YouTube videos on the small places that people bought or built to live in.

And part of my interest was trying to see how they answered the question of: what could you absolutely live without?

Some people lived in the back of a remodeled van. Some pulled killer tiny trailers they lived out of on the road. Others made buses into home bases. A few people built small cabins out of old, recycled wood and paneling. And a few figured out how to make a basic yard shed a tiny home.

And exploring these varying ideas of living spaces that these people created, I loved the idea of it.

Because I am older, and alone, and living, as a collector, surrounded by my stuff.

And that is part of what you learn as you move into the later seasons of your life.

You are wise to destuff a bit.

I hope to take some steps this year to destuff a little.

Because there is something about finding out about your life when you can live a little living tiny.