Less Stuff

My wife and I are in the process of radically changing the way we live, along with the how and the why.

Our kids are grown, and once we started banging around the mostly empty 3 bedroom condo we were living in, we decided that we needed less. Less space, less clutter, less hassle. So, we moved to a 1 bedroom apartment much closer to work. The commute is down to 15 minutes, rather than 60+. And we have gotten rid of stuff. Lots of stuff.

We started out with a garage at the new place, but a couple of months ago we decided to get rid of it, and all the junk in it. Because that's what was in there. Junk. And $75/month was coming out of the checking account to store stuff that we just didn't need. We had already downsized quite a bit, but this was the final push. We felt like if we could live in this 800 sq. ft. apartment, things would be better.

Some things were donated. Some things the kids took. Some things were sold. And some things went straight to the trash. In the end, only a few things ended up back in the apartment.

I don't know if everything is better, but the less stuff we have, the better we feel. True, it takes some getting used to, having less stuff. We're still working on it. Just looking around the kitchen, I think I need to do a better job of sticking to the "one in, one out" philosophy. Nothing new comes into the house without something else going out. Not sure exactly where I heard that idea, but it is making more and more sense.

See, the kitchen is a hard room for me. I love to cook, and I love cooking gadgets. Not that I need an avocado slicer. Or an olive grabber. They're just fun to have. The olive grabber especially, because it's sort of like those coin claw games where you try to get a stuffed animal or other cool prize. Sometimes you just don't know what kind of olive you are going to come up with. Now that I think about it, I can't remember the last time we used it for grabbing olives. Anja uses it to get the cherries out for her vodka collins. Maybe we do need it.

Anyway, we've continued to examine what we need vs. what we want. A lot of this is tied up in our desire to be debt-free. But I will talk about that some other time. So here we are, crowded into our little apartment, and what do we decide to do, but get a dog. Anja convinced me that a Miniature Schnauzer would be perfect. So Sasha entered our lives. Now, dogs are not necessarily considered stuff, but they do take up space. And all their stuff becomes your stuff, and you have to find a place to put that stuff. Looking back, I don't think we got rid of anything when the dog came in. That may have been a mistake. At 4:30 in the morning, when Sasha needs to go out to pee, I can think of something that should have gone out, but then Anja gets up and makes coffee, so I decide the trade-off is ok.

Having Sasha has made us even more aware of how much stuff we have. Like how many objects we have that have cords that dangle off of them. Or how many pairs of shoes I have. It's easy to count them when they all get pulled into the living room and chewed.

Several people we know have started following our example of downsizing their lives once their kids are grown, and they all seem pretty pleased with the results. Once you step out of the mindset about your supposed obligation to own a home that this country crams down your throat, it's pretty easy to get small in your life. You learn want vs. need. You place a value on things that hadn't been there before.

Over the next couple of months, we are going to be carefully looking at everything we own, and seeing what we can get rid of. We want less stuff. Because with less stuff, the stuff you keep becomes more important. With less stuff, you stop focusing on stuff, and start focusing on what's around you, the people, the relationships, the time spent together. The important stuff.