Murray poses in the moonlight near Santa Fe.

When we left California we had no idea how we would live without all our stuff — now we don't know how we ever lived with it!

We live in a wealthy culture, one in which the price of goods doesn’t compete with the average person’s income. It is an important part of our basic nature to want to acquire things that make our lives easier, and there’s never been a better time than now to get them all.

Shopping as a hobby has gone from being the exclusive activity of the rich to being a self-prescribed therapy for all. Holidays drive us to the stores to consume on behalf of others. It has even been suggested that a lack of enthusiasm at the cash register is unpatriotic. Where does this leave us? Under a pile of "stuff."

One of the most significant discoveries we made on this journey occurred before we even left. We discovered that we had too many personal items. Despite all of our efforts to pare down over the years, when it came time to empty our apartment down to the floor, we found ourselves awash in a sea of belongings. How we got from there to living in a tiny motor home with room to spare is another story. The lesson we’ve learned in the transition is that the "stuff," rather than making our lives easier, was making it harder. We live with perhaps a tenth of the things we used to, and we don’t miss a thing. As a matter of fact, we find ourselves eliminating more material goods all the time.

Do we really need the spaghetti scoop we thought we couldn’t live without? Do you?