For the past decade we’ve shed most of our belongings to live abroad. We wanted to live more simply so that we could experience things rather than own them. We chose small apartments and systematically shed all of our belongings along the way. It was a bittersweet process of letting go and learning to appreciate the freedom that comes with less.
We are now in the position of having a spacious house with a back garden in our current city. For one reason or another, we have been filling it with kitchen appliances. Our refrigerator was defective and our coffee machine was acting up making coffee only when it felt like it. My rice cooker’s non-stick surface was chipping away and seemed unhealthy to cook with. My Vitamix carafe cracked, my electric tea kettle died and our toaster just stopped working.
When culling before our first move abroad I parted with a favourite 20 year old Kitchen Aid mixer which we’ve just replaced because we have the counter space. Corona virus lock in has helped us to fine tune our pizza making with the purchase of a locally crafted steel pizza “plate” – phenomenal results and much better than a traditional stone.
We decided to check out the Instant Pot with all the rave reviews. We ended up purchasing two and returned both of them. The plastic water catch on each one broke the first day. Just to be clear, we were not aggressive with them and know how to handle an appliance. Seems like a shitty design flaw, especially, if it happened on two seperate units. We decided to go with the Philips brand to speed up cooking dried beans and rice. Loving it so far!
This is all random information about our kitchen tools which I’m sure is not very interesting to anyone else. What’s odd to me is that I am accumulating things again. Is it because we have the space to do so? Many of our items were bought in the UK and are just dying and perhaps coincidental that it’s all at once. I like to cook and I love having these things to help in the kitchen but there’s a part of me that questions what the hell am I doing? Is this what life has come to? Spending money on material possessions, isolating at home and travelling no more. Convenience with lack of excitement. I feel conflicted and maybe if we could carry on life as our pre-corona “normal” it wouldn’t feel so much like self betrayal of all things important to me.
Five Abroad 
I know what you mean. We feel the same struggle. The pull between the past and the future. The acquiring to buffer against needs and the need for simplicity. But is this a new kind of simplicity? Staying home and spending time and money at home