Or, wardrobe, actually. Closets aren’t much of a thing in Abu Dhabi.
I want to say I’m good at living a semi-minimalist lifestyle. I’ve moved enough in the past few years that I’ve been forced to go through everything I own multiple times. Every time I do it, I shed more and more. Yet somehow, after two years of living here, I’ve again managed to collect too much stuff.
I recently had the opportunity to offer some of my books for sale, and there’s a charity here that accepts clothes donations. So I decided to go through everything.
Clothes are pretty easy for me to get rid of. In just a few hours, I had over half of the clothes I own in a pile, ready to purge.
I felt pretty good. The stuff didn’t fit or I didn’t like it, and I knew I was never going to wear it. I felt a little bit guilty because of the money spent on those clothes originally, but otherwise I was doing okay.
Books are an entirely different matter, and deciding what to get rid of caused a great amount of distressed. But I did manage to part with a good-sized stack. I made 91 AED from selling some of them, too.
My room feels a little bit easier to live in now. I still can’t comfortably fit everything I own into a van that’s tricked out with a stove and refrigerator, but that day is coming. Maybe it’ll even happen by the time I can afford the van. I can dream.
Daisy M. Hall 