Hello Medium! This will be the first of a series of short posts that expose some of the lessons I learned while biking around the world. In a previous post, I already jumped into the deep end of the pool and explained why I travel by bike. While I believe these are useful touring tips on their own, these conclusions are meant to be applied to improve everyday urban life.

Biking restricts the amount of things you can carry. The seemingly daunting process of using fewer things made me realize not only that I didn’t need much, but that having excess stuff is more of a curse than a blessing.

Preparing for my first tour, I wasn’t sure what to take and I erred on the side of taking as much as reasonably possible. I spent a significant amount of time and money researching and buying things I thought I needed: from a GPS device to waterproof (and unfortunately unbreathable) pants. Long story short, many thing I bought proved useless in the trip. In the end, I had spent money, space, and energy carrying stuff that I never used for thousands of miles.

Packing every morning was a nightmare. I had to meticulously reorganize my stuff to make it fit in my tiny bags. Reorganizing, I thought, was key to finding what I needed throughout the day more easily. I then discovered that no amount of juggling helps when your panniers are filled to the brim. Oh, where is this one specific little thing I was looking for? Of course, neatly organized right under everything else. Time to dig it up! Dig, use, reorganize, pack, repeat. I probably spent more time looking for and putting away tools than the time I spent using them. If hell exists, it definitely hides in overly-stuffed panniers.

After my tour, and just when I thought I had learned my lesson and grown wiser, I revived my organizational torments when I moved into my new apartment. I purposely chose a big apartment. I wanted space to decorate and furnish. I was living with three other friends and I wanted everyone to be able to host social events.

I thought that ample space was the solution to clutteredness. And I was right. While the apartment wasn’t particularly cluttered, it was in a continuous state of disaster. The flat required so much maintenance, that cleanups were seldom done to completion. The furniture was pretty, but the place always looked neglected (except of course, right before people came over). The stuff that we bought to fill empty space ruled over us.

When we moved in, we bought appliances and utensils that would prepare us to host any social situation: from casual barbecues in the balcony, to fancy champagne dinners. Initially we constantly hosted events, however, the hosting spirits quickly faded when we realized how much work it took to have people over all the time (remember we also had to clean before our guests arrived). When we moved out, I realized that half the kitchenware we’d gotten had never been used. We clearly never needed all that stuff.

From this experience I learned that it is very easy to convince yourself that you need something. Marketing has conditioned us to think we need things, that things will improve our lives. We are constantly told that what we have is not good enough, that we need more to be better. How we’ve come to believe that buying new sports shoes will improve our skills still baffles me.

I found that the more stuff I have, the more time I spend concerned about it. And while I could go on and give the spiel about how consumerism is destroying the planet, I will just say that all this unnecessary spending is wasting your money and — more importantly — your time.