Taking Inventory

These blue-grey walls bear no resemblance to the mismatched artwork that used to fill our bedroom with familial spirit. A single picture now hangs on each wall, reflecting the minimalist aesthetic we adopted to stage our home for sale. A beige Berber carpet, usually covered in bins and boxes, holds only a few pieces of eerily tidy furniture. Beside the walk-in closet, one lonely nail disrupts the veneer of perfection, awaiting a masterpiece that will not arrive—at least on our watch. 

In less than two months, Sheila and I will hand over the keys to this quiet three-bedroom townhouse where our kids grew from pre-teens to adults. Over the coming weeks we’ll undergo a massive game of keep-or-give-away, forcing us to answer questions like: Do we really need two industrial office chairs with built-in swivel tables? Can we find another kid who will love the street hockey net in our carport as much as our son once did? What portion of our to-be-read lists can actually be read within a human lifespan? Which board games will we end up buying again if we part with them now? And is it finally time to retire the electronic piano I bought in 1987?

While our exact destination is to be determined, it’s clear that we will be downsizing to a smaller home in the nearby metropolis of Vancouver. At least we don’t need much to thrive—a lesson we learned during the year we lived in a camper van, when our family relied on a small set of kitchenware, a few stacks of clothing and linens, and a closetful of tools and games. Yet despite our experience with tiny home logistics, we’ve never quite shaken the innately human tendency to fill whatever space we have with stuff we rarely (or never) use.

Although I tend to accumulate material goods gradually and unconsciously, I shed them with ruthless efficiency. I feel a small thrill whenever I drop off a trunkful of high-quality castoffs at a thrift store, or find a new home for a once-treasured object. Even dumping a truckload of garbage at the landfill is a guilty pleasure. There’s something about culling stuff that generates a rare sense of efficacy—that kind of sweat-it-out productivity that makes a slice of pizza and a beer taste like a 3-star Michelin meal.

This shedding process is also making me take stock of the intangible—like the digital debris that washes over me in a constant stream of bings, pings, banners and dots, flooding me with a murky sludge of practical content and utter nonsense. In a sea of algorithms and artificial intelligence, it's becoming ever more challenging to differentiate between the useful and the absurd, and it's increasingly difficult to stay on top of all this information. I try all kinds of tools and hacks to manage the words, numbers, and images that fill my computer and cloud my head, but far too many of my so-called solutions only serve to further complicate my life.

I recently took inventory of my digital footprint in an attempt to cull unnecessary apps, subscriptions, and content. I discovered that I use at least 7 messaging apps, 5 e-mail addresses, 4 social media platforms, 3 video conferencing tools, 4 file sharing systems, 3 spreadsheet applications, 5 document editors, 3 web browsers, 2 phone numbers, 2 task list managers, 6 interconnected calendars, and a time-tracking app. I also have more than 900 browser bookmarks, 467 saved passwords, 68 iPhone apps, and 15 gigabytes of saved e-mail messages. Amazingly, this is just an average electronic footprint in our tech-centric world. Calculate these figures by a few billion humans and the collective numbers are staggering.

At least digital clutter is measurable, unlike the truly intangible: ethereal entities like relationships, commitments, expectations, and beliefs. In moments of intense transition, I spend a lot of time considering hard-to-answer questions like: How difficult will it be to adapt to life in an urban apartment? Can I live in a high-rise building, or do I need to keep my feet closer to the ground? Will city life engulf or reject me? How long will I reverse commute to maintain ties with my band and part-time job? Will we ever move back to the Sunshine Coast, or will life take us in a different direction? And which friendships will stand the tests of time and distance, no matter where we go from here?

Perhaps all this pondering is little more than procrastination. Or maybe it’s the most important part of our decision to trade small town life for a chapter in the big city. In either case, these nearly empty walls remind me of the void that awaits us this fall—a void that will surely welcome new opportunities and friendships. But before we can explore all the city has to offer, it's time to take inventory. Then we'll need to roll up our sleeves and deal with all our stuff—much of which lies hidden in our overstuffed crawl space, beneath the façade of this carefully staged existence.