Alison and I have gotten quite adept at consolidating our junk to a single carload and moving it thousands of miles to new residences. Not only have I accepted the minimalistic lifestyle necessitated by the trifecta of low income, transitoriness, and limited space—I’ve actually grown to enjoy the freedom that comes with fewer possessions and the catharsis of purging my junk. We are an obese society, not just in terms of physical fat but material fat as well. Most of us walk around with the clutter equivalent of spare tires and jiggly thighs, and my itinerant relocating has resulted in a liberating kind of liposuction.

Another aspect of this that we’ve gotten used to, and I dare say even learned to enjoy, is owning no permanent furniture. We move to a new location, then beg, borrow, or buy off Craigslist whatever we need: bookshelves, chairs, a coffee table, a desk. With the exception of fabric-centric items like couches and mattresses—where the unknown variables of previous ownership range from foul odors to sentient bacteria—I’m perfectly content to use only second-hand objects to rest my food, clothes, or rump upon. We buy these items on the cheap, and when we’re ready to move again I have no qualms re-peddling them on Craigslist and recycling them back into the great circle of lower-middle-class life.

The benefits of this pilgrim style living are many, but one of the key downsides I’ve found is that, when we move into our new location, it hardly feels like a home. Stuff—be it furniture, art, decor, or simply the particular arrangement of clutter—is often what makes a house feel like home. We took to California with us only what we thought we’d need and little else. Thus, gone are the bookshelves teeming with varied and colorful old spines. Gone are the drapes and curtains that warm up a lifeless room. We left behind all that we didn’t “need,” but I’m learning that it’s all those needless things that make me feel at home.

So the dilemma now becomes, do we simply accumulate more “new” stuff to populate our empty apartment and transform it into a happily cluttered nest? Or do we open the door every day to a depressingly spare monastery of blank walls and an open floor? Hoarding is one vice that I am able and only too willing to let go of, but I’m starting to miss the pleasant domestic side-effects of being a pack rat.