New Year, New Home part 5

Moving is a pain in the butt. I like to think that I don't have a lot of stuff, but when you move, you find out just how much you have. I definitely have less stuff in Hong Kong than I did in Minnesota, but it is still too much.

I came to Hong Kong with a suitcase and a backpack. If I knew then what I know now, I would have brought less. Most of the clothes I brought were completely inappropriate for Hong Kong. I even brought a big winter coat. That just seems ridiculous to me now. Most of the clothes I wear now are from Hong Kong anyway.

Lily & Kevin came to Hong Kong with three or four suitcases, two carry-ons, and backpacks and bags. Like a lot of expats, they brought everything they thought they would need. Like most expats, they found that they did not need most of it and ended up buying the things they needed here. Now they have a crazy amount of stuff. Every time I take a trip out of Hong Kong, I bring back souvenirs and gifts for other people. Every time they go out of Hong Kong, they bring back gifts for others and souvenirs for themselves. They have boxes full of trinkets from their travels.

We also had to move Ryan's stuff. He did not bring nearly as much to Hong Kong as Lily & Kevin, but he has bought more here than I have. He left most of his stuff here when he went to Fuzhou because he never knew how long that would last. He has been there for almost two years now, but he still sees it as temporary. Now he is buying more stuff there.

We decided to go through each other's stuff and throw away whatever we did not think was necessary, but that was never going to work out. If I suggested throwing out Kevin's golf clubs and all the junk that goes with them – balls, tees, gloves and a bunch of other crap – he said he might start playing golf again. He has not played in all the time he has been in Hong Kong. I think he should at least sell them to someone who might actually use them.

Kevin wanted to throw out Lily's CD collection. She has I don't know how many thousands of CDs. We could not even count them. It is endless boxes and boxes full of CDs. Obviously, music is good and nobody suggests she do without it, but all of the songs on all of those CDs can be put on her computer. It would probably take an extra hard drive, but at least that hard drive would be a lot easier to carry. These are not rare, unusual prints of hard to find LPs. These are garden variety CDs from China and Japan.

Lily wanted the throw out most of my Disney stuff. When you work at Disneyland, you get a pretty good discount and I went a little overboard when I started working there. Kevin thinks it is all junk and Lily is not impressed by anything she sees every day at work, but I think some of it is cute. I'm not going to work at Disneyland forever and someday I will want some of this stuff when I look back on this time. People are always saying they wish they still had Disney things from 20 or 30 years ago that Disney does not make anymore. Maybe I will feel the same way in 20 or 30 years.

In the end, Lily got rid of a few boxes. She kept all of her CDs, but she threw most of the old clothes she never wears anymore. Kevin kept his golf clubs, but threw out maybe 10% of his stuff. I was the most drastic. Though the new apartment is much bigger than the old one, I like the idea of having less clutter. I threw out several boxes of Disney stuff, almost as many clothes as Lily and pretty much anything that had been sitting in a box since they moved into my tiny apartment. If I never used it, I don't need it.