Week XI: Spring cleaning

Rally the troops and grab the brooms. Everything must go. Out comes the sun to shine the light of day on boxes and bags and stacks of papers long forgotten or set aside. My "deal with it later" pile is on notice. I'm stalking the house with my silver hammer, ready to bring it down on the stowaways that have been hiding in my closet and gathering on my shelves. They're all dead.

Clutter is the enemy. Things are nothing but a source of stress. Mo' stuff, mo' problems. I look across my living space and for all its artwork and furnishings, all I can see is the random assortment of papers, craft supplies, and electronics splayed across the low wall that divides the living room from the kitchen.

I have a giant garbage bag full of stuff that's ready to walk out the door, but it's not enough. I need to rid my life of things. I don't want any of them. I feel compelled to condense and cleanse, to rid myself of the objects that inhabit my life. No binge, just purge.

There's a special sort of romanticism to life without material things. It feels like beat poets and vagabonds and the open road. What if I could just pack up and go whenever I felt so inclined? What if the baggage that I carry with me is completely unnecessary? I don't own anything, I just have long-term rentals. Eventually it's all going to disappear. I don't get to keep any of it, not even my own skin. Although I was thinking of offering my tattooed hide to a taxidermist when I'm done with it...

It's been almost seven years since I moved to Charlottetown, PEI. Everything that I owned fit into the trunk of my '92 Toyota Corolla. I miss that car, and what it represented to me - the opportunity to put a lot of things behind me and find my own way. I still miss the east coast. I often wonder about how my life might have been different if I'd stayed there.

Pining for what once was is rarely a healthy activity, and it's not my intention here. The healthiest part of my cross-Canada experience was the freedom from stuff. I didn't have any junk. Just books, a couple changes of clothes, a laptop, and a guitar. I lived in an 8'x10' bedroom quite comfortably, sleeping on a twin bed from a garage sale and studying at a desk I borrowed from my roommate. I have more responsibilities now, keeping a home and caring for my son, and stuff seems to piggy-back its way into my life as a consequence. But it's not the rule. I don't have to let things accumulate. I can get back to that simplicity.

Once I've paid off my student loans, I never want to work full-time again in my life. Maybe that makes me incredibly lazy. Maybe I care a lot more about time than money. Maybe I'd rather play with my son and make music than give 40 hours a week to my occupation. Maybe I don't mind forgoing common luxuries in the interest of conviviality. Maybe I don't ever want a bank to own my life. Maybe I've resolved to avoid the trap of money + stuff = happiness by eschewing the left-hand side of the equation whenever I can.

But how to avoid something that's culturally and socially predominant? I live in one of the most expensive cities in Canada and rent isn't getting any cheaper. Even if I could qualify for a mortgage, the price of houses here is insane. A five year fixed-term mortgage from CIBC would cost me 5.24% if I signed up this week. If I went and bought the house around the corner for its listed price of $422,900, I'd pay nearly $100,000 in interest over a 30 year amortization if my interest rate stayed the same or decreased over the term. Madness, I tell you! Madness!

But what about the equity? What about the credit you can build? What about the tendency of property values to increase over time? Don't you know that historically, real-estate has been one of the more secure investments? Ever heard of mortgage-backed securities? There's a reason those exist, y'know. It's because consumer confidence is high, which is why the price of houses keeps going up! You could be sitting on a gold mine!

Maybe. Or maybe I could be sitting on a leaning tower of debt that's going to collapse any second. In my estimation, this is not a good time to be adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to my debt load. Student loans are bad enough. Once I'm rid of them, I'll be damned if I'm going to owe money to banks, credit cards, the government, or anybody else. I'm done with money. I don't buy the argument that I ought to work to fill my life with creature comforts. It's not worth it. It's a bad deal. It's a trick, and I'm not falling for it.

The question arises once again - if you don't want to pay rent, and you don't want to own a house, what's the alternative? That cake you're holding looks mighty delicious, too bad you'll never get a bite. I say to hell with the cake and its baker. I'm going to avoid spending my life as a servant of debt by ridding myself of stuff, step by minimalist step.

I hope that in a few years from now I'll be re-reading this entry from the back of my converted school bus, parked on little patch of dirt somewhere on the coast away from commuter traffic and city lights. I'll have a little shed for my tools, a coop for my chickens, a garden full of vegetables, and a smile on my face that I can only imagine right now - one that comes from the immeasurable satisfaction I hope to find in living without debt and without stuff. It's my beautiful dream, and now I'm working to make it real.

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