Over the years I’ve digitized most of my personal belongings based on an idea that I got from reading the book Being Digital (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995) by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder and former head of the MIT Medialab.

I learned that the real value when everything is becoming digitized – information, people, and things – is no longer ownership but access. We no longer need to own and store everything because what was scarcity is now becoming abundance.

A few things I’ve intentionally digitized over the past 25 years:

• Scaled back my wardrobe to everyday seasonal essentials

• Sold off and donated all paper books, started to borrow books from libraries, and built up my digital reference library of almost thousand books

• Digitized all music, movies, and documents, and donated the physical copies

• Shifted to Internet banking and got rid of physical checks

• Sold off and donated all my furniture

Until then I was on a mission, like everyone else, to collect physical stuff that I thought I wanted and needed throughout life. Reading that book changed my thinking and I joined a tech startup to learn more about this new brave world.

The first things I digitized were music and movies during the early days of Napster and before Netflix, and as the Internet developed I added everything from documents to cars (via car sharing) and housing (via house sharing).

I realized that the fewer things I had the more location independent I became – both for work and leisure – and that opened up to new opportunities to travel the world, live anywhere, and explore the early life of a digital nomad.

I was curious about the idea of living in this world without owning anything but the absolute necessary everyday essentials so I scaled back everything until I only had what would fit into a 30-liter backpack and began traveling full-time.

My iPhone, when I still used one, became the remote control for my life anywhere I was in the world. I learned that I could access anything I wanted anywhere and lost the need to hoard and store things I might need in the future.

The benefits of this kind of lifestyle is that you can have the most modern gear and apparel for your essential needs, live a more sustainable lifestyle, have no need for costly storage space or storage units, and spend less money.

The money part is important. When I shifted from ownership to usership I got more control over my expenses and my burn rate dropped significantly. And it became easier to scale expenses up and down pending income and economy.

That is now over a decade ago and although I travel much less these days, I still believe in fewer better things. Maybe not to the extreme I’ve taken it as a lifestyle experiment, but definitely as a way to simplify life and live more sustainably.

Today I live what’s called a circular lifestyle, where things move in and out of my ownership as my needs for usership shift. I only try to own things that I actively use, buy preloved when I can, and repair and upgrade when needed.

But during the past 25 years I’ve kept one cardboard box tucked away filled with pre-Internet paper photos, important documents and diplomas, photo slides, and postcards and letters from the time people actually wrote snail mail by hand.

I kept this box for a number of reasons:

• I couldn’t let go of the physical manifestation and memory of my past

• I didn’t have time for the time consuming process of manual digitization

• The scanning tools where clunky and not very high quality

• I had a place to store my box so there wasn’t an urgent need to take action

• I felt that I needed to keep this box to pass onto my digital native kids

A week an ago I picked up the box and began to go through my last physical belongings after having digitized everything else. I was curious of what I had in that box and I wanted to see if I could get rid of it all and still keep the memories.

“Memories are important because they shape our identity, allow us to learn and grow, and connect us to our past, present, and future. They provide a sense of continuity, help us navigate new situations, and allow us to build relationships. Furthermore, memories play a crucial role in our cognitive function, mental health, and overall well-being.” – Google Gemini

Collecting stuff throughout our lives, even hoarding, is a way to save memories and remind us who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. But the true value lies in our memories and not in the stuff we keep that we never use.

When I opened up the box I was quickly reminded of things I’ve remembered but also things I’ve forgotten about my journey throughout life. As I went through all the photos and read the letters my perspective on who I am grew deeper.

It became quite an emotional experience going through my pre-Internet life and probably why I’ve postponed digitizing these last copies of my past. New mental doors were opening and new narratives emerged about who I am.

I was reminded of the many opportunities I had, the choices I made, and the life I’ve lived. Many of these memories are now helping me to make improved decisions for the next decades of my life – to learn, grow, and excel from.

But I was also reminded of the importance of taking the time to send postcards and letters, sharing stories from near and far – today a lost art. It’s something I still do via the Internet but might shift to paper in the future.

Once I had explored what was in the box I categorized the items into the following categories: