During college, I was doing an internship in a small town in New Mexico. The interns were all living together in a small trailer. When we went to Albuquerque for a work-related weekend trip, the place was broken into.
We think it was some teenage hooligans based on the items that were taken. They broke into the back of the trailer, and took a lot of my roommates' things. In my room, they rifled through my underwear drawer (gross) and took my jewelry box. Strangely, they left my $1K road bike (guess the neon pink was too much?) and the thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment in my closet (I was the tech geek so I had our project equipment). They also took the beer that was in the fridge.
Other than the shock of knowing someone had been going through my things, the only thing I was upset about was the jewelry box. Not because I buy anything expensive for myself, but because both of my grandmothers do and I lost most of the jewelry that they had given me. Since then I refuse to buy any "nice" jewelry. Costume jewelry works just as well, no one has ever commented that they notice I'm not wearing "real" jewelry, and I don't feel bad if I lose it... Like last week when I accidentally dropped my ring down the toilet at work (not a western toilet, so no, I couldn't get it out).
I did splurge on kitchen equipment because I LOVE to cook and there is not a day that I don't look forward to being back in the US solely to have access to it. However, I highly doubt your average thief would go after my incredibly heavy enameled cast iron dutch oven.... I also have pretty nice furniture for a 20-something, but most of it was bought/gifted used or at significant discount. Still, this post reminds me to plan on doing a full inventory when I move back home.
