Excess and Suitcases.

Dear Reader.

My parents were cleaning out the loft and they found this suitcase

and I really like it. I'm kind of into old stuff at the moment partly because generally I like things that might have a story because, frankly, I like stories and partly because I hope to some day have a house that's like Sherlock Holmes' study but this is beside my point. When I saw this suit case the first thing that came to mind was how tiny it looked to my modernised eyes. I kept asking my parents how could people actually go on holiday with these things they simply said that people would probably just wear the same clothes (or suits) over and and over. Which, with the rise of cars, lifts, suitcases with trundle wheels and generally never having to actually carry our own bloody suit cases, is an ability or habit, humanity as a whole has neglected.

I mean look this is it next to the bag that I took to greenbelt. This is shameful. Keeping in mind that I was sleeping in a tent for only four days and had to drag bloody thing through a muddy camp-site and I this wasn't my only my only bag, it really made me think about how much excess crap I take on my holidays. I actually tried packing this old suitcase and I found just by wearing my trousers twice I could survive for at least six days (at least!) and it didn't weigh that much.

Generally it got me thinking about excess crap there's all sorts of stuff people say things like you should throw away a piece of clothing if you've gone an entire year without wearing it, there was this, frankly cruel program where they take all the stuff out of the person's house and they're only allowed to keep the stuff they can remember it (psychopathic really now that I think about it. There was probably a prize).
There's this quote that I heard from William Morris apparently (thank you wiki quote) that says 

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

which is pretty good advice if you're sorting out your stuff for uni but it just shows a need for people to just go round their house and say "is this useful or beautiful" and "if its not why the hell am I keeping it?" because that's the only point to an object.

But just out side of the whole bush craft stuff where you drop yourself in the Gobi  with nothing but a toothpick, two hats and a ukulele is the fact that we don't need to carry that much around with us any more. With I pads and I phones with pretty much everything you could ever want on them from your favourite novels to your laptop files we're kind of moving away from the time when you have lots and lots of gadgets and you just have one multi-tool piece of technology. There's this idea that "cavemen" were actually much more advanced than we think because every thing they needed to exist could be carried on their person, there's even some evidence that they could carry burning embers in special pouches so they could easily light their fires again and with all these new advances in technology we're kind of returning to just that. We do not need to carry so much stuff.

this is what the case looked like when it was filled.