After a decade in Silicon Valley at two startups — one venture backed, one that my partners and I founded, bootstrapped, and sold — we packed up our apartment in SOMA, rented it out and moved to Paris for a six month sabbatical with my wife, cat, and what I guess are my favorite objects:

1. 1 Kyocera black blade ceramic chef’s knife
2. 1 Kyocera white blade ceramic paring knife
3. 1 Thermapen
4. 1 folding digital scale in metric and “standard”
5. 1 pair of really nice chopsticks
6. 1 Amazon Echo
7. 1 original Dropcam
8. my constellation of personal devices – phone tablet watch laptop with Sublime Text electric toothbrush PAX 2 etc
9. 1 pair of suede Vans that I got in Tokyo
10. 8 shirts: 1 oxford, 3 polos, 4 Ts
11. 2 jeans
12. 2 pants
13. 1 Paul Smith three-button narrow lapel grey suit
14. Agnes B. soft navy blazer
15. 1 3/4 length black wool winter coat from The Archive
16. 1 hip length grey wool winter jacket (also from The Archive)
17. 1 Timbuk2 backpack. The ones in the Hayes Valley store say “San Francisco” on them, which I like.
18. 1 Rimowa Salsa Air in white.

We packed everything into a total of three suitcases, two backpacks and a cat carrier.

The amount of stuff we sold, donated, or recycled was absolutely extraordinary. I think it was 70-80% of our total stuff. The whole process was nearly marriage-ruining. Yet looking back at it all, I’m hard pressed to remember the specifics: what was all that stuff?

Fewer, better, things.