Live Aboard (Part 2 - The Boxes)

"What about all your precious belongings?"

These were the opening words to the questions that many people asked us when we told them of our decision to downsize and live aboard our yacht. It is true that in deciding to downsize and alter our current lifestyle we were going to have to give up a huge amount. In coming to our decision we had agonised over how to do this and whether this was the best thing to be doing in the first place. Through each of our lives we had accumulated many treasured possessions that we both felt very attached to. Like anyone else, we had keepsakes that we held onto as reminders of important people and events in our lives. Invariably these keepsakes were stashed away in the myriad cardboard boxes that cluttered our spare rooms, hidden from our conscious memory until such time we had cause to search these boxes and we came across them. Only then did they serve their purpose of fleetingly reconnecting us with the person or event they signified.

I had so many boxes full to the brim of these kinds of physical reminders. I knew what the contents of these boxes were and I knew that if I wanted to look at something specific, I could find it without any problem. The thing is - I didn't ever look for these memories - they were just there - in the cardboard boxes. Over the years and through countless house moves, I have carted these boxes around with me, hiding them away in the spare space of every house or flat that I lived in. All the while of course, every year, I would accrue new keepsakes that eventually would find their way into their own cardboard boxes.

I wouldn't say that I'm a hoarder, but I think I was reluctant to throw things away that contained the slightest hint of holding a worthwhile reminder of a special person or event. In the last twenty years I have kept just about anything that my two children had made for me, painted, drawn, or given to me. Christmas and birthday cards, postcards, letters, a faded cardboard Santa Claus, a stone found on a holiday beach, a pressed flower, a poem, photos (thousands of them), and so much more. All these things found their way into the cardboard boxes from their places on shelves or windowsills - stored for perpetual posterity.

A Christmas card from my Daughter when she was six.

Like all my keepsakes, there was no definitive reason why I chose to hold onto these physical reminders. What eventual purpose were they to serve? Was I planning one day to open a private museum of my life where these things would become key exhibits? Would I suddenly become famous and this personal memorabilia become immeasurably valuable? Would I in my eventual old age, place these items around me to remind me of times gone by?I had no answer - I just held onto these things. It wasn't just stuff linked to my children and my family, it was memorabilia from my school days, my time living and working in Africa, my time with Outward Bound, notable holidays, employment and work through the years, newspaper cuttings, letters from friends, art work I had created, previous pets possessions, my complete collection of photos and slides, teddies from my infancy, pamphlets about sea kayaking kit, hundreds of outdoor equipment bits and pieces (mostly broken), odd natural items like pebbles and sticks, stashes of copper coins, clothes by the bag full, hordes of CDs, and tonnes of books - so many books! There was so much junk - stuff that would mean nothing to anyone else but me. Why did I keep it all?

Certificate from my primary school residential

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I studied the psychology of attachment when I trained in psychotherapy, so I have an understanding of the deeper process of our human need for attachment. For me, these physical memories provided a tangible link to my past, a link that I knew I could reach, touch, feel, read, and look at if I chose to do so by opening the relevant cardboard box and finding them. For example, I might seek to look at the map of the Chimanimani Mountains on which I had marked all the caves that I used as shelter on my mountain expeditions to remind me of the good times I had shared with my Zimbabwean friends on our extensive mountain trips. The things is, I never once did this - but the map has been there in my Zimbabwe box along with the pile of other Zimbabwean keepsakes that I have carefully held on to - the memories from the time when I worked out there in the 1990s. My time out there, though short lived, was an intensely happy period of my life. Living in the UK, I found myself sometimes longing to be there again, in the mountains, in the community, with good friends, and especially the country of my birth. I think it was for this reason that I did not let these physical keepsakes go and why I held onto them for so long.

Despite my apparent deep attachment to these things, I knew that I had to get rid of them. The boxes were in fact a burden - not only physically in that they were bulky and required storage space, but also emotionally in that they helped keep me locked into my past. I would forever hark after the glory days of my younger years without truly living my life fully in the present. I would look to previous events in my life as more important to each one I was creating - whatever that may be. If the truth be told - I understand now how at times my tendency towards a depressive outlook was fed by attachment to the past - the memories lurking in the cardboard boxes in the spare rooms upstairs.

We had made the decision that everything had to go - we were only going to keep absolutely essential precious items - nothing more! This meant that the cardboard boxes and their seemingly precious contents would have to go. I have to admit that it took me a long time to begin to sort through these boxes and recycle what I could from them. I procrastinated until time was against me and there was no other option but to get stuck in and deal with them. Even then I worked slowly though each box - unpacking the contents with reverence and reading every scrap of writing that I found, or lovingly holding trinkets, turning them over in my hands, remembering when I acquired them, the shelf they had stood on in the various places I had lived, who had given them to me.

I adopted a three stage process. First, I would go through the box in its entirety, taking everything out one at a time, reading, touching, looking and remembering. This would create a neat pile of the box's contents. The second step was to sort through this pile and put into the recycling pile the things I obviously did not want to keep. This would leave a reduced pile of things to sort through again. Knowing I couldn't keep all of these. stage three took on the ruthless approach where I would whittle the pile down until only a few essential precious items remained. These would lie there and I would look at them, then without a second thought, I would consign even these most precious memories to the recycling bags. This was the process for all my boxes until they were all dealt with. At the end of the process I realised that I had kept only a couple of things out of the piles of stuff I had been hoarding. In working through my memories I had reconnected with them, given them due attention and thought, and then moved them on. In doing so I moved on too.

There was sadness. I didn't always enjoy the process of letting my precious stuff go but it does feel much better not to be burdened with the physical memories that I hoarded for so many years. The boxes have gone and we live an unencumbered life. Whatever we find we have little use for we pass on to someone else or a charity shop. We now think twice before buying things and invariably we choose not to buy them because we realise that we would be loading ourselves with more stuff. We no longer hold on to things that in the past may have served as keepsakes. We simply keep what we have a use for. We no longer have boxes stored in secret corners with their contents gathering dust. It doesn't mean I value the importance of fond memories any less than before - it just means that I do not need cardboard boxes to store them for me