Pondering: The cold truth of white goods

White goods ruin all the fun.

In my twenties, I didn't own white goods. When I wasn't living with my parents, I lived with people who already owned white goods, or I housesat.

I worked jobs I didn't care much about, but they paid enough for me to scrape by while saving for travel. I didn't even have to save much. When I flew off for my first overseas trip, sans parents, I had AUD 1500 in my pocket for a year. My parents flung me an extra thousand out of pity.

All I needed to worry about was packing my bags. I didn't have to store anything. All I owned sat in my bedroom, plus some pots, pans, plates and cutlery. My parents stashed my gear away for the duration. I didn't even think to say 'thanks'; it’s just what happens when you're young and unburdened by the need to pay ongoing bills and store big things like fridges and washing machines.

Upon landing in the UK, I toured and found an admin job in an Oxford University research centre. The work was interesting, the people were fascinating and best of all, they provided free meals served in their Harry Potter-esque dining hall (once we’d walked the long way around the college lawns since only students and robed academics were permitted to step upon this green carpet of privilege).

While I didn’t earn much, it was enough to pay rent (I lived in a rabbit warren above a shop with some other backpackers), food, a few treats, and to save for a tour of Western Europe. Once I’d scraped together the bare minimum, I purchased a Busabout ticket and spent a couple of months on the continent, lugging my backpack through France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. It was epic, and I am still staggered at how much I experienced with so few funds.

Then, it was back to Oxford where I worked for an entertainment company. They owned the Apollo theatre and thanks to them, I saw my first West End show. Free tickets near the front, thank you very much. Then I travelled around Ireland, kicked about in the UK for a bit longer, and returned to Adelaide, Australia.

A year later, I secured a job that was the most dismal of my life, punching numbers in an unventilated shoebox for a small car audio business. But, credit where it's due, its overwhelming absence of any appeal, combined with my recent memories of adventure, meant that within a year, I was on a plane to Thailand.

Still, no white goods were in my possession at this stage.

From Bangkok to Chang Mai, I kicked along the dusty roads, eating pineapple wedges on sticks, exploring temples, scurrying away from three-legged feral dogs, learning to cook green chicken curry, and rafting past a Buddhist monastery as trainee monks waved at us from the trees.

Then, it was back to England to earn more travel funds, until I realised that it'd feel like reading the same book twice, so a few days later, I boarded a flight to Ireland, where I worked as a barista in Dublin. I ate from their kitchen and saved my earnings while living off the tips.

I was renting a room from a couple of Russians. They didn't provide linen, so I bought some sheets and towels from the local St Vincent de Paul. I didn't want to spend money on anything I knew I'd have to leave behind.

Still, not a single white good.

Two or three months later, I'd earned a tidy stash of Euro coins and banked them

I met with my then-girlfriend and her mum to tour England and France together. Thankfully, her mum was a lovely and generous soul who treated us to us many hearty meals and comfortable rooms along the way.

Next stop. Cambridge.

We found a room with a med student in Cambridge, UK, who also had her own white goods. My girlfriend got a job in a wine store. I stumbled into a gig managing an odd little shop decked like Aladdin's cave with furnishings and ornaments from Morocco and beyond.

We worked, explored the UK and worked some more before returning to Australia via Canada and the USA (Seattle).

My glorious decade of being old enough to be independent, yet not burdened with any responsibilities that I couldn't offload to my accommodating, patient, and loving parents, were whittling away.

I went back to work and, a few months later, broke up with my girlfriend.

I moved back in with my parents and used their white goods for a few weeks before looking to rent my first "just me" unit.

Then, it happened.

I found myself without white goods. I could do without a washer and dryer; a laundromat was nearby.

Dishwasher? I never ate at home. It was toast and eggs when I did, so an electric dish cleaner was a pointless luxury. However, a fridge was required. ** sigh **

I would've bought a bar fridge, but I needed enough freezer space to store a tub of my favourite ice cream (priorities, people) and bar fridges weren’t up to the task. So, a few hundred dollars later, I had a slim, white, energy-sucking box plugging me into domesticity and responsibility.

Then, the big adult purchases rolled in. Furniture, furnishings, linen and a television… along with rent and all the bills that attach themselves to an adult who’s accumulating ‘stuff’; like barnacles upon a jetty pile.

Packing a single bag and taking off, across the world, without a cushioned bank account and solid strategy was now out of reach. My expendable income was shrinking at an alarming rate and would have disappeared if I hadn’t become so adept at living frugally.

I’d scraped some savings together. Enough to fund a re-location to Melbourne to be closer to my new girlfriend The entire move cost more than a round-the-world plane ticket. However, given that I went on to marry her and we’re still together nearly 20 years later, I calculate that it was a worthy investment in money, energy and time.

Since then, we’ve taken many adventures together. New York, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Oslo, the Arctic Circle, Tokyo and more.

However, our trips haven't been longer than a month at any given time.

We've both been freelancers who don't accumulate holiday leave, so anytime we leave our office, we also abandon income, however, our bills and responsibilities never abandon us. Bless.

Also, we own white goods. The whole kit. They're plugged into our home that’s filled to the brim with furniture and all the other bits'n'bobs that seem crucial to our sense of home and well-being when we're staring them down in the shop.

We own our home along with some investment properties … and a dog. More appropriately, the dog owns us. We adore our baby boy. Our hearts are permanently squished between his puffy wee paw pads. Leaving him breaks our hearts.

We are both restless nomads, and this world of possession frustrates us. Yet, we keep buying and anchoring ourselves to this small patch of ground.

Our dream is to abandon it all and travel the world together. I'll be the freelance travel writer and photographer, and my wifey will attend to our travel and living logistics. It's a proposition that pleases us both (it goes without saying that this wouldn’t happen while our boy is alive and waggy-tailed-well)

Then, we think of the headache-inducing work required to achieve this. Unplugging and storing the white goods, furniture, and rooms of “stuff”. It'd be easier to lock up our home and leave it to gather a film of dust until we breathe it in and sneeze it out upon our return. It’s achievable, but it does eliminate any hope of spontaneity.

Of course, we could sell it all and start again upon our return. We know people who have done that or at least tried. Even they have items they refuse to sell and have had to arrange storage until they're ready to settle into domesticity again.

Currently, we're packing our bags for a month-long trip around Scandinavia. They're overflowing, and we must cut back our contents to provide spare space for purchases. This is proving to be a first-world challenge that begs me to question any plans to minimise the contents of an entire house, a lifetime of memories.

… and you know, it all started with a bloody fridge.