We live in a world that has shopping conveniently located at your fingertips. Makes it really easy to turn window shopping into doorstep delivery.
OH Ye Olde Amazon, you are a wicked and beautiful creature. Always tempting my eyes and fingers with a world of shopping. Yeah, at times I’ve been known to be a bit of a consumer. Most of us are. Living in America, I’m fortunate to have a lot of convenience and capitalism surround me. Consumer life is kinda the norm.
However, I’m in the process of changing that mindset and lifestyle. I moved my family into a smaller house a few months ago. Downsizing the overall square footage by 1/3 of what we’ve been living in for the past 5 years. That’s a BIG change. What a difference. Having an excess of actual space is extremely comfortable. But with more space, that allows you to fill that space with more stuff.
However, the backwards growing pains, with downsizing and moving into a smaller footprint with less stuff has been a rewarding challenge.
This recent move got me thinking, how much is too much? What do we really need in order to create a comfortable and cohesive living space. What is truly important, and what can I get rid of?
Just before our move to Texas I wanted a little motivation for packing so I read the “Life Changing Art of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. Such a great little book. I even wrote notes to my new friend Marie. I’ve lent my book out a few times, and everyone said the book was great, and my notes made it even better. I of course encouraged them to add their own notes to my book. LOL Yeah I think it’s ok to write in a book if you own it. 🙂
At that time, I managed to get rid of about 1/3 of our stuff. We left a 1300 sqft home and moved into a “Texas sized home” with a whopping 2400sqft. I felt like George and Weezy. We moved on up. So much space, but really it was too much space. It wasn’t what we really needed to live comfortably. Although I liked having all the extra space and larger rooms and bigger closets was great, but in 5 years, that translated to acquiring more unnecessary stuff.
Don’t worry, I didn’t go in debt to outfit the new place. I’m all about budgeting and planning when it come to furniture purchases and stuff like that.
I think after 5 years of having too much space, we realized what was important to us, and how we like to live. Sure it’s would be great to be in a huge multimillion house with 5000 sqft overlooking Central Park or something like that… but I’m also realistic. I’m not trying to impress anyone with my grand house and all the stuff inside. I’m just wanting to create a comfortable space that we can call home.
I believe it’s important to think about what you value in how you want to live. Deciding to live in a smaller house means getting rid of the unnecessary stuff. Having a lot of added space, is just a temptation to fill it up. Sure it’s nice to look at, but what a PITA to hav to dust and clean! And the closets; Oh the closets. Stuff in bins in the closet. Sure it’s all organized and not bothering anyone. Until you decide to move and then time comes to pack and you’re faced with all the stuff in bins that you barely or rarely use.
For me it just put things into perspective and reminded me to prioritize what I find to be important.
So the big move to the smaller house happened.
Yeah, just a little reminder.
I’m still working through some those reminders.
We’re still settling in. Josh and Lizzy were freaking team players and helped move and pack and transport stuff during our move. Even after getting rid of a decent amount of stuff, we’re still continually assessing how we want to live moving forward. Not holding onto things that for that possibility of “One day I might need this.” Or, the guilt of someone buying something for you, that now you just don’t have a place or space for “stuff” it’s been a slow process and change in mindset.
I’m hoping that this slow change means that it’s going to be a lasting one. 😉
It’s all about how you want to live, not your best case scenario or dream self. It’s about living in the now. No what if’s no maybe I’ll use it later. It’s all about what you’re using in the present.