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My partner and I moved from the US to Scandinavia in 2019. We decided to sell everything (house, cars, items) and only take the most essential and sentimental i

My partner and I moved from the US to Scandinavia in 2019. We decided to sell everything (house, cars, items) and only take the most essential and sentimental items with us as checked luggage. We arrived to a new country with literally everything that we owned. That was a complex feeling that I hope to never forget. We could have shipped our belongings, or placed them long-term storage, but the cost and complexity didn’t seem advantageous. It was challenging and emotional to sell everything. But we did and I think we are better people for having chosen to go through that experience.

joshka 5y ago
Did the same sort of move in 2015 with a Suitcase, a backpack and a snowboard bag. Extremely liberating.
stevekemp 5y ago
I moved from Scotland to Finland, which involved a few suitcases on a plane, and a pallet of stuff going by sea. We sold almost everything we owned prior to the move. The things that were carried were things like personal possessions with significant history or memories. Sounds like we approached it in a very similar way to you. There are definitely moments where I think "I need to repair this pipe, I have a pipe-cutter in my toolbox", then I recall that the toolbox didn't get moved with us. But there aren't many things that I miss.
- grumpy-de-sre 5y ago
  I made the move from Australia to Germany with little more than a small suitcase and a hiking pack. Looking back it's not something I would repeat. You've got to be absolutely ruthless about what you sell or dispose of but seriously consider getting a pallet. It took me a long time to replace the stuff I sold for pennies on the dollar. In the end I didn't find it particularly liberating. Though I think part of that is I went from living independently to relying on furnished apartments for a couple years. Living in a place that's not your own can eventually become grating.
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    I'd agree with that. We spent a busy few weeks getting basic things setup (sofa, table, tv, book-cases, etc). Over time I started to get annoyed that because we'd bought things used with no real planning we had different colours/styles/designs all mishmashed together. There was nothing wrong with any of the things we bought, but over time it did become annoying to live in such a state. I can imagine that if we'd moved into a furnished house we'd have had similar views and even less control about replacing things to match. Feeling more like a caretaker than living in "our home".
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Ye I don't get the liberating thing. You need stuff. Screwdrivers, cloth hangers, spoons ... I feel like just ditching it all and thinking of your self as unbound to earthly possesions is self-deception, since you just buy it again. It is acctually consumerism and spree shooping.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
      I think it’s an over correction from being too consumerist. You go from extreme to extreme. I see this with people who didn’t exercise, and now they are all in with the gear and the diets etc. But I wish there were certain things and spaces that were able to be rented. I don’t need a drill all the time. Sometimes I need a workbench and more clamps. There’s a lot of community level optimisation we could do.
      - braincrumbs 5y ago
        Most hardware stores do rent tools. And many towns and cities have tool lending libraries.
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        I think a drill is the one tool pretty much everyone could stand to have.
        5y ago
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  My definition of home after spending 9 months in a van travelling in Europe and the US was something along the lines of: the place where I can keep things that I don't use very often but that feel important to my sense of self. For me personally, one good example of that would be my table saw. I don't use it often (and I certainly did not need it while travelling). But owning a table saw is a part of what makes me feel like me (not to mention it's history in removing part of one of my thumbs). Having a place where the table saw can just be (i.e. not a storage facility) is for me part of what "having a home" is all about. The same would be true of things like my cookbooks. In the age of the internet, I don't even use them much anymore, and I certainly would not take them with me on any bounded-term move. Having on a shelf at home is part of what makes home actually be "home" rather than just "where I'm living".
Quequau 5y ago
I am currently planning a move from Austria back the US and I have decided to sell or dispose of the vast majority of my belongings. I did less of this moving from the US to Austria and when it came time to move this time I realised that I had a significant pile of boxes which, while opened, went unused in the twenty years I've lived here. I also have an extensive library which, while I read the books when I bought them, I have not returned to the vast majority of them. I'm still sort of conflicted about this because it's provoking a lot of complex emotions that I was not particularly prepared for.
- secondcoming 5y ago
  Books are nice to have on a shelf, but a pain to have to move around. I'll no longer buy books until I actually own my home.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I've spent a lot of effort moving physical media around that, today, could be digital. I still have a ton of books, most of which I'll never open again, but I like to think that starting over in today's world I'd have much less of that sort of thing.
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  Maybe you are like me and maybe you are not but I made the exact same decision about my library for the exact same reasons almost a decade ago and while it was liberating for a few years to not have to box and unbox them, I still to this day get sad when I think about it and regret it. I never realized how attached I was to my library, to browsing the labels and briefly remembering the story and its connection to that part of my youth where I read it. Good luck with your move.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    My experience may be relevant: 23 years ago my wife and I moved from a fairly large house near the beach in San Diego to a fairly tiny house in the mountains in Central Arizona. Getting rid of excess furniture was easy (I gave my Eames Chair and standing teak chess board to people I really liked), but I had a huge library. For many years I bought about one book a week from the San Diego Technical Bookstore. I got rid of about 60% of my physical books, so I only had two large bookshelves in my home office. After temporarily moving for work, I cut my books down to half a large book shelf, my wife using the other half. The trick that worked for me was to just keep books that I had a strong emotional attachment to. Some books that I want to refer to I simply re-purchase as eBooks from Google or Kindle. Now half my physical books non-technical (Joseph Campbell, spiritual stuff, favorite literature).
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
I moved from the US to Norway in 2013. I brought nearly 2 suitcases and mailed a tea set. That's it. Everything else I gave away, and for the most part, I'm happy I did that. But to be fair, I moved because I married a local, and they already had some stuff and I was able to replace other stuff as I wanted.
- PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  I did something similar, I didn't have any obligations, so I gave everything to my family/relatives, and just left. There have been lows and highs but it is also very exhilarating. Given, I was living in an island, so moving to anywhere else required airports, which I really dread, but the freedom is worth it. The Shengen Convention is probably one of the best things Europeans have done for the continent.
matttproud 5y ago
Don’t worry. You’ll never forget that feeling of showing up at the airport with all of (what’s left of) your possessions. My wife and I did that ten years ago. I remember those final hours in San Francisco and SFO as crisply as the birth of a child. Emigrating is one of those adulting on steroids things. For those who’ve never done it, there no way to describe how intense it is: the highs, the lows, etc. Doesn’t matter if you are fluent in the destination language; it just is.
- culturestate 5y ago
  > Emigrating is one of those adulting on steroids things. For those who’ve never done it, there no way to describe how intense it is: the highs, the lows, etc. For a long time I’ve wondered if something inside me is wired incorrectly, because I always hear this sentiment among my friends but I have never felt it. Not on the first move from the US to China a decade ago, not on the last one from Hong Kong to Singapore a couple of years ago, and not right now as I think about going to Europe. It just has never struck me as a particularly big thing to move somewhere else.
  - Roritharr 5y ago
    It's a deeply personal thing. I'm contemplating moving the family to another country and the biggest emotions I feel are connected to the financial freedom necessary to move. I grew up in a low-income household, my grades weren't amazing, never got a stipend to study anywhere or go abroad, so being able to make this jump as a result of my own personal development is huge. Luggage or not is beside the point for me though.
    - culturestate 5y ago
      > being able to make this jump as a result of my own personal development is huge. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean here - I got the same "I made this happen" feeling when I boarded that first plane. The part that I can't easily empathize with is the idea that leaving home and going somewhere else represents some kind of cosmic upheaval of your life. I get it, academically, but I just can't put myself in that headspace. To give an example, one of my friends back home is going through a quarter-life career crisis. For a variety of reasons I suggested that he take a couple of months off and spend it in Amsterdam - this wouldn't be any problem for him financially or harm his career progression, but it's just a bridge too far for him personally. When I brought it up, he said "I wouldn't even know where to start." What seems natural to me - grab your passport, book an AirBnB and a plane ticket - is for many people an emotionally overwhelming roadblock.
culturestate 5y ago
My wife and I have been living like this for the last 10+ years; furnished apartments, short-term contracts, day-to-day essentials purchased locally and sold secondhand when we move. At first I found it incredibly freeing - and I still do, mostly - but over time I’ve developed this almost nostalgic feeling for a home. Some place that’s filled with my own stuff where I can at least mentally ground myself. The idea of actually having one still seems almost overwhelming, but the concept sounds nice. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or because my family is, or maybe an unsettled life just gets to you after a while.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  I've been living the same way for much of the past 30 years. I don't want to completely give up my globetrotting lifestyle, but I crave a home base now. I plan to buy something modest to store things in and use as a primary home, but not so expensive that it precludes locking the doors for a year while I travel or live somewhere else.
  - ccity88 5y ago
    If you don't mind me asking, what do you do that allows you to live this kind of lifestyle? Travelling has always been a big goal for me, but making it work with a stable job, and having enough disposable income to afford it is nigh on impossible.
    - dolmen 5y ago
      In the post-COVID world many companies (at least in the tech industry) are moving to flexible office policies where full remote is possible. You don't have to be a youtuber to have that lifestyle.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        Maybe not but you do still have to be in a pretty niche industry.
      - 5y ago
globular-toast 5y ago
"The things you own end up owning you." I'm beginning to understand this more and more lately. The problem is with owning things you can't just replace. This could be either because you can't afford to replace it, like many people's cars, or that it holds sentimental value. Those things end up owning you. If your car breaks down you have to fix it. If you break a cherished plate, you cry. I'm 35 and I still use plates and cutlery that I took from my last student house I moved from when I was 25. The house had accumulated a ton of this stuff over the years and we'd put most of it away in a cupboard. I took some of the better looking stuff. I fully expect all of this stuff to last the rest of my life. If some disaster happens and they all break, I'll replace them with more generic plates and cutlery I don't care about. I think if you can resist accumulating stuff you care about, you will be far happier. Don't attach sentimental value to things. They are just things. Don't buy things you can't afford to replace outright if you need to, like cars. They quickly become liabilities. A big loss of stuff can be very rewarding as it reminds you of what really matters in life. But you should resist getting into the same situation again.
- dolmen 5y ago
  As my parents are aging, I have bad dreams about what I will have to do with their home and all the stuff it contains as souvenirs are attached to each object as this is were I spent more than 20 years. I have my own home that is already full.
  - mlac 5y ago
    Pick out the most important / sentimental items. Have a yard/estate sale one morning. Hire some movers to load up and take a U-Haul to good will or a donation center, have the donation center pick up large furniture, rent a dumpster for the rest. This can be done over the course of a few days or a week if you want more time for any of the steps. It’s better if they start doing it now, and clarify what is essential and “the important stuff they’d grab in a house fire” in step one.
  - cafard 5y ago
    I've been on the edges of three rounds of this--parents once, 2x in-laws. It's rough.
rwmj 5y ago
When people do these moves between countries and take their belongings (unlike the OP), do they have to pay tax or tariffs to the destination country? Or prove that they paid tax on their belongings already?
- Symbiote 5y ago
  It's usually allowed to import personal possessions during a move tax-free.
  - ska 5y ago
    This really depends on the country. Often there are allowances for "reasonable" amounts of personal possessions but sometimes they have to be old enough. I hear some places don't have any allowance at all. And sometime specific things are too much hassle/cost to do at all (e.g. cars).
mxcrossr 5y ago
I did the same five years ago (different locations). The one thing I miss was the blankets I had before moving, I just have never found great replacements. Is there anything you realized was harder to replace than you thought?
dls2016 5y ago
I did that moving from US to Switzerland for a postdoc with two children age 2 and 4. We did leave a tote or two of sentimental items at a relative's house. Good times haha. Edit: And though stressful, it gave me a different perspective of, for instance, people who walk thousands of miles from Honduras with children.
mr_tristan 5y ago
I know this feeling, having moved from the US to Austria, where I lived for 3 years, and moved back, basically selling everything I had twice. There's a shift in perspective with possessions. I'm less attached to anything, but at the same time, I appreciate the nice things I own more. And there's definitely a lot more, stronger opinions, on what I want, and what should be a part of my "home". A bunch of opinions have sharpened unpredictably. Like, I hate grass. I don't want something I have to build an irrigation system to maintain. I like owning a single family home, but I don't want it do be this 'castle' where I'm totally isolated from my neighborhood. I hate big garage doors in front. The front of the house is for the doorway and a porch. The car has its place to the side. Had I not had to rebuild from scratch a couple of times, not sure I'd be this focused.
sergiotapia 5y ago
Moved from Bolivia to Miami with wife and kids with all I owned as well. I recall that time as oddly freeing. I had my pick of how to build my new home. New beds, dining tables, the works. We started out with salvation army stuff because we didn't want to commit to expensive things without even knowing the marketplace here. We were TRULY new to the US. Didn't know a single store except Walmart (from what we saw online). Now we have a very comfortable life but some days I do wish I could light my belongings on fire and start fresh. These days I see things I purchase as liabilities. I bought this super nintendo classic, oh now I have to take care of this thing. There it sits collecting dust. I don't buy many knick-knacks anymore.

joshka 5y ago

Did the same sort of move in 2015 with a Suitcase, a backpack and a snowboard bag. Extremely liberating.

stevekemp 5y ago

I moved from Scotland to Finland, which involved a few suitcases on a plane, and a pallet of stuff going by sea. We sold almost everything we owned prior to the move. The things that were carried were things like personal possessions with significant history or memories. Sounds like we approached it in a very similar way to you. There are definitely moments where I think "I need to repair this pipe, I have a pipe-cutter in my toolbox", then I recall that the toolbox didn't get moved with us. But there aren't many things that I miss.

grumpy-de-sre 5y ago
I made the move from Australia to Germany with little more than a small suitcase and a hiking pack. Looking back it's not something I would repeat. You've got to be absolutely ruthless about what you sell or dispose of but seriously consider getting a pallet. It took me a long time to replace the stuff I sold for pennies on the dollar. In the end I didn't find it particularly liberating. Though I think part of that is I went from living independently to relying on furnished apartments for a couple years. Living in a place that's not your own can eventually become grating.
- stevekemp 5y ago
  I'd agree with that. We spent a busy few weeks getting basic things setup (sofa, table, tv, book-cases, etc). Over time I started to get annoyed that because we'd bought things used with no real planning we had different colours/styles/designs all mishmashed together. There was nothing wrong with any of the things we bought, but over time it did become annoying to live in such a state. I can imagine that if we'd moved into a furnished house we'd have had similar views and even less control about replacing things to match. Feeling more like a caretaker than living in "our home".
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Ye I don't get the liberating thing. You need stuff. Screwdrivers, cloth hangers, spoons ... I feel like just ditching it all and thinking of your self as unbound to earthly possesions is self-deception, since you just buy it again. It is acctually consumerism and spree shooping.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    I think it’s an over correction from being too consumerist. You go from extreme to extreme. I see this with people who didn’t exercise, and now they are all in with the gear and the diets etc. But I wish there were certain things and spaces that were able to be rented. I don’t need a drill all the time. Sometimes I need a workbench and more clamps. There’s a lot of community level optimisation we could do.
    - braincrumbs 5y ago
      Most hardware stores do rent tools. And many towns and cities have tool lending libraries.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      I think a drill is the one tool pretty much everyone could stand to have.
      - 5y ago
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
My definition of home after spending 9 months in a van travelling in Europe and the US was something along the lines of: the place where I can keep things that I don't use very often but that feel important to my sense of self. For me personally, one good example of that would be my table saw. I don't use it often (and I certainly did not need it while travelling). But owning a table saw is a part of what makes me feel like me (not to mention it's history in removing part of one of my thumbs). Having a place where the table saw can just be (i.e. not a storage facility) is for me part of what "having a home" is all about. The same would be true of things like my cookbooks. In the age of the internet, I don't even use them much anymore, and I certainly would not take them with me on any bounded-term move. Having on a shelf at home is part of what makes home actually be "home" rather than just "where I'm living".

Quequau 5y ago

I am currently planning a move from Austria back the US and I have decided to sell or dispose of the vast majority of my belongings. I did less of this moving from the US to Austria and when it came time to move this time I realised that I had a significant pile of boxes which, while opened, went unused in the twenty years I've lived here. I also have an extensive library which, while I read the books when I bought them, I have not returned to the vast majority of them. I'm still sort of conflicted about this because it's provoking a lot of complex emotions that I was not particularly prepared for.

secondcoming 5y ago
Books are nice to have on a shelf, but a pain to have to move around. I'll no longer buy books until I actually own my home.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I've spent a lot of effort moving physical media around that, today, could be digital. I still have a ton of books, most of which I'll never open again, but I like to think that starting over in today's world I'd have much less of that sort of thing.
the_lonely_road 5y ago
Maybe you are like me and maybe you are not but I made the exact same decision about my library for the exact same reasons almost a decade ago and while it was liberating for a few years to not have to box and unbox them, I still to this day get sad when I think about it and regret it. I never realized how attached I was to my library, to browsing the labels and briefly remembering the story and its connection to that part of my youth where I read it. Good luck with your move.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  My experience may be relevant: 23 years ago my wife and I moved from a fairly large house near the beach in San Diego to a fairly tiny house in the mountains in Central Arizona. Getting rid of excess furniture was easy (I gave my Eames Chair and standing teak chess board to people I really liked), but I had a huge library. For many years I bought about one book a week from the San Diego Technical Bookstore. I got rid of about 60% of my physical books, so I only had two large bookshelves in my home office. After temporarily moving for work, I cut my books down to half a large book shelf, my wife using the other half. The trick that worked for me was to just keep books that I had a strong emotional attachment to. Some books that I want to refer to I simply re-purchase as eBooks from Google or Kindle. Now half my physical books non-technical (Joseph Campbell, spiritual stuff, favorite literature).

Broken_Hippo 5y ago

I moved from the US to Norway in 2013. I brought nearly 2 suitcases and mailed a tea set. That's it. Everything else I gave away, and for the most part, I'm happy I did that. But to be fair, I moved because I married a local, and they already had some stuff and I was able to replace other stuff as I wanted.

PartiallyTyped 5y ago
I did something similar, I didn't have any obligations, so I gave everything to my family/relatives, and just left. There have been lows and highs but it is also very exhilarating. Given, I was living in an island, so moving to anywhere else required airports, which I really dread, but the freedom is worth it. The Shengen Convention is probably one of the best things Europeans have done for the continent.

matttproud 5y ago

Don’t worry. You’ll never forget that feeling of showing up at the airport with all of (what’s left of) your possessions. My wife and I did that ten years ago. I remember those final hours in San Francisco and SFO as crisply as the birth of a child. Emigrating is one of those adulting on steroids things. For those who’ve never done it, there no way to describe how intense it is: the highs, the lows, etc. Doesn’t matter if you are fluent in the destination language; it just is.

culturestate 5y ago
> Emigrating is one of those adulting on steroids things. For those who’ve never done it, there no way to describe how intense it is: the highs, the lows, etc. For a long time I’ve wondered if something inside me is wired incorrectly, because I always hear this sentiment among my friends but I have never felt it. Not on the first move from the US to China a decade ago, not on the last one from Hong Kong to Singapore a couple of years ago, and not right now as I think about going to Europe. It just has never struck me as a particularly big thing to move somewhere else.
- Roritharr 5y ago
  It's a deeply personal thing. I'm contemplating moving the family to another country and the biggest emotions I feel are connected to the financial freedom necessary to move. I grew up in a low-income household, my grades weren't amazing, never got a stipend to study anywhere or go abroad, so being able to make this jump as a result of my own personal development is huge. Luggage or not is beside the point for me though.
  - culturestate 5y ago
    > being able to make this jump as a result of my own personal development is huge. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean here - I got the same "I made this happen" feeling when I boarded that first plane. The part that I can't easily empathize with is the idea that leaving home and going somewhere else represents some kind of cosmic upheaval of your life. I get it, academically, but I just can't put myself in that headspace. To give an example, one of my friends back home is going through a quarter-life career crisis. For a variety of reasons I suggested that he take a couple of months off and spend it in Amsterdam - this wouldn't be any problem for him financially or harm his career progression, but it's just a bridge too far for him personally. When I brought it up, he said "I wouldn't even know where to start." What seems natural to me - grab your passport, book an AirBnB and a plane ticket - is for many people an emotionally overwhelming roadblock.

culturestate 5y ago

My wife and I have been living like this for the last 10+ years; furnished apartments, short-term contracts, day-to-day essentials purchased locally and sold secondhand when we move. At first I found it incredibly freeing - and I still do, mostly - but over time I’ve developed this almost nostalgic feeling for a home. Some place that’s filled with my own stuff where I can at least mentally ground myself. The idea of actually having one still seems almost overwhelming, but the concept sounds nice. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or because my family is, or maybe an unsettled life just gets to you after a while.

caymanjim 5y ago
I've been living the same way for much of the past 30 years. I don't want to completely give up my globetrotting lifestyle, but I crave a home base now. I plan to buy something modest to store things in and use as a primary home, but not so expensive that it precludes locking the doors for a year while I travel or live somewhere else.
- ccity88 5y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, what do you do that allows you to live this kind of lifestyle? Travelling has always been a big goal for me, but making it work with a stable job, and having enough disposable income to afford it is nigh on impossible.
  - dolmen 5y ago
    In the post-COVID world many companies (at least in the tech industry) are moving to flexible office policies where full remote is possible. You don't have to be a youtuber to have that lifestyle.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Maybe not but you do still have to be in a pretty niche industry.
    - 5y ago

globular-toast 5y ago

"The things you own end up owning you." I'm beginning to understand this more and more lately. The problem is with owning things you can't just replace. This could be either because you can't afford to replace it, like many people's cars, or that it holds sentimental value. Those things end up owning you. If your car breaks down you have to fix it. If you break a cherished plate, you cry. I'm 35 and I still use plates and cutlery that I took from my last student house I moved from when I was 25. The house had accumulated a ton of this stuff over the years and we'd put most of it away in a cupboard. I took some of the better looking stuff. I fully expect all of this stuff to last the rest of my life. If some disaster happens and they all break, I'll replace them with more generic plates and cutlery I don't care about. I think if you can resist accumulating stuff you care about, you will be far happier. Don't attach sentimental value to things. They are just things. Don't buy things you can't afford to replace outright if you need to, like cars. They quickly become liabilities. A big loss of stuff can be very rewarding as it reminds you of what really matters in life. But you should resist getting into the same situation again.

dolmen 5y ago
As my parents are aging, I have bad dreams about what I will have to do with their home and all the stuff it contains as souvenirs are attached to each object as this is were I spent more than 20 years. I have my own home that is already full.
- mlac 5y ago
  Pick out the most important / sentimental items. Have a yard/estate sale one morning. Hire some movers to load up and take a U-Haul to good will or a donation center, have the donation center pick up large furniture, rent a dumpster for the rest. This can be done over the course of a few days or a week if you want more time for any of the steps. It’s better if they start doing it now, and clarify what is essential and “the important stuff they’d grab in a house fire” in step one.
- cafard 5y ago
  I've been on the edges of three rounds of this--parents once, 2x in-laws. It's rough.

rwmj 5y ago

When people do these moves between countries and take their belongings (unlike the OP), do they have to pay tax or tariffs to the destination country? Or prove that they paid tax on their belongings already?

Symbiote 5y ago
It's usually allowed to import personal possessions during a move tax-free.
- ska 5y ago
  This really depends on the country. Often there are allowances for "reasonable" amounts of personal possessions but sometimes they have to be old enough. I hear some places don't have any allowance at all. And sometime specific things are too much hassle/cost to do at all (e.g. cars).

mxcrossr 5y ago

I did the same five years ago (different locations). The one thing I miss was the blankets I had before moving, I just have never found great replacements. Is there anything you realized was harder to replace than you thought?

dls2016 5y ago

I did that moving from US to Switzerland for a postdoc with two children age 2 and 4. We did leave a tote or two of sentimental items at a relative's house. Good times haha. Edit: And though stressful, it gave me a different perspective of, for instance, people who walk thousands of miles from Honduras with children.

mr_tristan 5y ago

I know this feeling, having moved from the US to Austria, where I lived for 3 years, and moved back, basically selling everything I had twice. There's a shift in perspective with possessions. I'm less attached to anything, but at the same time, I appreciate the nice things I own more. And there's definitely a lot more, stronger opinions, on what I want, and what should be a part of my "home". A bunch of opinions have sharpened unpredictably. Like, I hate grass. I don't want something I have to build an irrigation system to maintain. I like owning a single family home, but I don't want it do be this 'castle' where I'm totally isolated from my neighborhood. I hate big garage doors in front. The front of the house is for the doorway and a porch. The car has its place to the side. Had I not had to rebuild from scratch a couple of times, not sure I'd be this focused.

sergiotapia 5y ago

Moved from Bolivia to Miami with wife and kids with all I owned as well. I recall that time as oddly freeing. I had my pick of how to build my new home. New beds, dining tables, the works. We started out with salvation army stuff because we didn't want to commit to expensive things without even knowing the marketplace here. We were TRULY new to the US. Didn't know a single store except Walmart (from what we saw online). Now we have a very comfortable life but some days I do wish I could light my belongings on fire and start fresh. These days I see things I purchase as liabilities. I bought this super nintendo classic, oh now I have to take care of this thing. There it sits collecting dust. I don't buy many knick-knacks anymore.