I've given this a fair amount of thought lately. => I'm finding many of the things I feel attached to could be condensed for portability. I'd have to have a laptop, digital cam and cell phone.

Cell phone would help me feel connected. I hate talking on the phone, but it's one of those quick fixes to loneliness, insecurity and fear when you're out of your element. Being able to instantly hear a familiar and friendly voice goes a long way. Digital camera would be critical for me to capture my new surroundings and share them with my family and friends from "home" and also to have something to look back on later in my life.

Laptop: here is where I reformat my life. I could _never_ give up my music collections, but I could survive taking just a few CDs, ripping the rest, and asking a friend to store the physical albums. I'd rip a few movies that I watch often (as to be able to watch on laptop). I could feel secure with only a couple of photographs -- but I could keep hundreds of them on disk to peruse when I'm feeling nostalgic. I'd download texts of many books I've never had time to read. To a lesser extent, keeping in contact with my friends via chatting/email and storing personal contacts (I am not to be trusted with contact information on paper).

As for "making a home", I have a tiny music box stuffed with mementos to go over now and then. And a couple of photographs and sketches. My favorite knitting needles. :) Maybe a tiny stash of tooth-rottingly wonderful Nerds(TM). There are a few other practical things -- perfect boots, comfiest jeans, favorite leather jacket, but if I had to, I think I could disappear with a backpack.

That is, if someone else would deal with getting rid of all of my stuff. ;) I'm not a minimalist, I just suspect almost everything I own could be replaced easily. I could part with almost everything. There are a few things I wouldn't take with me but would have to store somewhere: music, home movies, photographs. Not too much.

This is a fitting topic for me. I have been forced to condense my life twice now. The first time was right before my last semester of college. I ended up making the difficult decision to throw all of my belonging into storage, and move into a tent for my last semester. This ended up being a wise decision (lymes disease aside) because i graduated debt free. I'm quite proud of that. After school i went through one month of treatment for my newly acquired lymes disease (school health insurance) and then made the decision to get rid of more possessions and move into a truck. That truck has been my primary home for the last two and a half years.

The thing that I have not yet been able to part with are my laptop. This is very important for finding jobs, and keeping up with friends. My bike, (my truck is my house, but my bike is my car). And I have a bad habit of keeping an assortment of books on hand at all times. Books are important, but you can only read so many at a time. After years, I finally got rid of my cell, but i'm not yet sure if this is a good thing. Not having phone bills is nice though.

I'm about to spend a few months checking out the living / work situation in central and south america. I'm leaving my truck, and flying to Costa in Dec. This means I will have to leave behind everything except for the essentials. It should be interesting

Having gone through the process, I regret having shipped all the crap that I shipped. It cost an arm and a leg to get it down here, and now, a year later, it is still sitting in storage (for a number of reasons I won't go into here) - the only stuff I really miss is my music collection and my books. The rest I would have been better off to leave behind.

I too have gone through the life-simplification process twice, and both times, I seem to have taken more with me than I ended up appreciating.

A comment about the cell phone comment in this thread - forget taking your cell phone. In most countries, to register a cell phone locally, it needs to be bought either in-country or through the cell service provider that you plan to use. Here in Costa Rica, I had to buy a phone locally for $120, and jump through a bunch of paperwork hoops to get it registered and working. Cheap to operate, though - $13 a month plus 1.8 cents a minute. Don't figure you can use your current U.S. account - in the few countries that allow international roaming, you will pay through the nose for the privilege - $2 or $3 a minute.