the right stuff (knowing, buying, and organizing) - #6

“You have too much stuff."

We’d invited a friend over for dinner, and this was bordering on the first thing they said when they came into our treehouse in Topanga. I remember it because Ben and I talked about it relentlessly after they left and then in perpetuity. A lot of stuff? Us? Stuff?

My senior year of college, I rented a house with five other friends. The day we were deciding on bedrooms, I couldn’t be there. I had to go to class or work or something. It didn’t matter; I knew if I participated in the conversation, I would only try to convince them to give me the biggest room — better that I just stay out of it. But I came home from whatever I was doing to find I didn’t need to do any convincing at all; they just gave me the biggest room. Not because I was deserving (I wasn’t) or because they loved me (though they mostly did), but because I had the most stuff and they didn’t want it pouring out into the rest of the house. (They had lived with me before.)

This is still the best consequence for bad behavior I’ve ever faced. But true consequences weasel their way in, and when ten months later I was moving from a spacious house in North Carolina to a literal hotel room in the British Virgin Islands, the stuff became stuffocating. I can’t remember whose Suburban I borrowed, but I brought at least ten trash bags of clothes to Goodwill. I remember unloading them in the back parking lot and seeing only money. How could I have wasted so much money on clothes?

The culling stuck though. I went to the Caribbean with three suitcases and came back with the same three suitcases and a tan. When I landed in DC after a somewhat harried departure from paradise, I moved back in with a few of the friends from that college house, hiding my things in the laundry room until I found my own place three months later. (They’re very good friends.)

For the most part, aside from a very bad obsession with cheap shoes, I kept it light. I moved too often to accumulate. New York, 100sqft room. Boulder, 300sqft apartment. Santa Monica, 200sqft apartment. Moving in with Ben, 400sqft spider box, semi-filled with actual boxes Ben had never unpacked. (Men.)

And then, we moved to the Treehouse. It was 3 stories of difficult-to-use space. There was one door in the whole house: the bathroom door. There was not a single closet. But there were shelves everywhere. And so our things went on the shelves.

When I was at my most concerned with potential wildfire damage, I took a detailed video of every thing we had in the house so we could claim it on insurance. I’d read in a most deliciously paranoid article to even account for what shampoo you might have in the shower. We had a bottle of Aesop Dog Shampoo given to us by an incredible friend, and I thought, surely that’s $20 right there. (I looked it up: it was $39 at Neiman Marcus.)

This detailed inspection led me to one conclusion: that friend we had over for dinner had at least two closets. And they were rude.

I knew every object in the house, and it was mostly books, hats, and water bottles. It was not a lot of stuff! (Although it was a lot of water bottles.) I very confidently picked a moving van that was 16 feet. That’s what we moved to Colorado in, one 16-foot truck.

Which brings us to the cabin. The cabin encourages cozy behavior, but enables spacious function. When we first moved in and I had my desk in the bedroom, my rotation between desk to bed to couch to kitchen to bathroom was the same footprint as the tiny-living-Treehouse. There were now two whole floors of the house I didn’t even bother with, six rooms I didn’t go in unless I was looking for a cat, and seven closets. Seven! As far as we could tell when looking for a home, there were no small houses in Western Colorado. They’re all massive. Every house on the market was like a whopping 3500sqft, and I kept asking, “who cleans it???” like my mother was already dead, inhabiting my body.

But spaciousness allows for one of (my) life’s sweetest pleasures: not more stuff, but more survival stuff. You wanna see stuff, dinner guest? You’re about to see some very useful stuff.

The essence of survival stuff is obviously preparedness. I want, whatever the circumstance, to be prepared. When I’m considering my survival stuff (my set up, if you will), I start with my circumstance. It’s not going to flood here. We’re never going to have a tornado. We don’t really need go-bags in the same way we did in big wildfire country. Here’s the outline of what we need to consider:

Avalanche closing the canyon

While this is not a surprising event here, it’s not exceptionally common. Maybe 2 or 3 times a year? And it’s mostly cleared up within a few days. This is low-level-prepping, but we should already have everything we need to be trapped in the house for a week, and that includes a week without power.

So here that means food that keeps, for us and all the animals. We’re beginning this. Our food habits will evolve a little; we don’t have the same access to produce here as we did in California. We got an aerogarden (from a new friend!!!), we have a somewhat dilapidated interior garden on the ground floor where the original owner used to grow tomatoes. We built a massive pantry cabinet, we’ll be moving the fridge that came with the house into the basement, as well as buying a freezer box — I think we’re gonna have food. Our water supply comes from the town, so we’ll likely maintain water access, but in case, there’s always camp filters, iodine, etc. And the creek.

For heat, we have electric baseboard, and the uhh massive fireplace. We’ll be getting a generator (TBD which kind, could write a whole essay on that) but the first priority is actually to make the house as conducive to heat retention as possible. For us, that means chinking the logs. You can see neighbors walking by through some of the holes in our house. We’re going to do an interior chinking (mortar, essentially.) Most logs are around 14 inches in diameter, so the r-value of our home is probably around 20. These logs are massive. But where there’s daylight, there’s a breeze. Thankfully we can spend all winter doing this section by section, and I think it’ll even add a little extra charm to the walls. This should take the insulating value up to like 23, at my best guess. Plenty warm.

In addition to that, we’ve already completed most of the blinds orders for the house. Those will be useful for keeping the heat in on whiteout days, and keeping the sun from burning the absolute shit out of our plants on the sunny days.

Also, if you’re ever cold in your house, this does the trick. I have never been warmer in my life.

The front of the house is made up mainly of large south-facing windows — any day with sun and the house is hot if you keep the doors closed. All in all, we don’t worry about heat. There’s always baselayers and blankets.

Avalanche conditions behind our house

Technically we are just outside of the avalanche zone. Our neighbors have a massive wall behind their house to help lessen the impact of an avalanche. They’re in the zone. But in the event that conditions were just so, we might stay at a friend’s. This is highly unlikely. Our neighbors have only left their home due to avalanche fear once. And these are serious people.

Snowstorm when we’re in the car or avalanched out

The usual. I mean, there’s a lot of usual to have in a car here, some of which we have, some of which we’re giving a kidney to REI for. A way to contact someone without reception. Extra warm clothes. Snow gear. Flares if you slide off the road. Blankets. Fire starter. Knife. Ice scraper, shovel, kitty litter or sand or rock salt. (Though probably kitty litter. I used to keep litter in the car in LA for the cats anyway in case we had to evacuate.) Ropes, chain, jumper cables. Snacks. And here, snowshoes. If we get avalanched out while we’re getting groceries or going skiing or whatever, snowshoes are a great way to get home. (Though if we’re out skiing, we could just skin’n’ski back.)

Also probably goes without saying, but 8-ply tires and chains when necessary. A winch if you’re wild.

In the wilderness

Most of the risk in the wilderness is accident injury. You slip while running, you catch a root while riding, whatever. Even if you just sprain your ankle, if you’re 10 miles in, that’s going to be a seriously challenging 10 miles out if you don’t have a way to contact someone. When I’m really alone out there, I carry sharp rocks when I run. It’s not for anything other than to just give me the illusion of control. In theory, if a mountain lion attacked me, this could be useful. But you’re about 4000 times more likely to die from a car collision than a mountain lion. And there aren’t grizzlies here. There are black bears, but animal safety with everything we have here is pretty basic: give them space, move slowly, never get between them and their babies.

For gear, it really depends what I’m doing and where, but on my typical mountain bike ride or hike, I bring the SPOT (which allows for two-way satellite messaging, or just sends a general SOS with your signal to call for emergency services), plus my knife (I have a Gerber Airlift, a very basic folding knife), lots of water, lots of food, extra layers depending on where I’m going, extra sunscreen, my whistle, my ID and health insurance card. Obviously some of this changes based on what adventure you’re on, but this is my standard if I’m alone. If Cooper’s coming, dog treats, mini bowl, extra water, and potentially his boots or jacket depending on where we’re going. Lots of “depending” happening here.

That’s kind of it.

And that’s kind of a lot of stuff.

But this time, we’re the ones with closets.

Also, these “disasters” are pretty benign. We live 25 minutes from Telluride. The med center there is partnered with an air ambulance company. Half the people in this town have their Woofer, which we intend to get. Avalanches have basic safety protocols and learning the conditions and terrain makes all the difference in your personal safety. The most basic concerns are injury and cold, and the most basic solutions are access to help and warmth: things we already own or are in the process of buying. (Send me your favorite winter gear recs.)

So what does this all mean for the house? We need to build some stuff. We need to outfit the garage to hold Ben’s workshop, a mechanic station, a gear station, boxes for storage and for backup pantry items. Oh, and closing off the garage to the other side of the house. We need a wall before we can put anything against it. We need to build an outdoor shed, a firewood store, and a greenhouse. We need to fill the gaps, insulate the floors, and we need to build an extra day into the week to get this done.

Most of this will absolutely not get done this year, but you never know! I can be very industrious when planning for the worst. Especially when the worst sounds pretty fun.