Simplifying Our Life- The Plan

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Like many, I grew up in a decade and a family that valued consumerism, being told and believing that I should always want more, better or bigger things.  A more expensive car, a larger house, a huge wardrobe, fancy household stuff.  Accumulating all of this stuff was just expected, and sadly, still is.  

While it's taken me a long time, I'm finally at the point where I don't want so many things and am yearning for a simple material life.  In another four to five years, my stepsons will finish school and move out.  There's already empty space in this house that we have no desire to fill with stuff.  We easily have twice the amount of square footage in this house than we did in our last one, yet we have less stuff than we did when we moved in here 2 1/2 years ago.  We're really looking forward to the day when we can downsize and live in a smaller home.

We've been slowly downsizing our possessions over the last few years, but now we're getting more serious about it.  It's not just material things we want to downsize, either, but anything that takes away from what's important to us.

In future posts, I'll be keeping things pretty simple and making a lot of lists of specific things we're doing.  To start, I'd like to share why we're doing this- to maximize what's important to us-

• Reaching & fulfilling our dreams and goals
• Spending quality time with each other and our loved ones
• The Earth and all her inhabitants
• Spending time doing things we love

Our main goal isn't to simplify and minimize everything & anything.  If we love something and find it fulfilling, then spending time, money or effort on it is well worth it. 

To start, we'll be going through our house, section by section, deep cleaning & getting rid of a bunch of stuff.

There are several things we'll be doing with the things we decide that we don't want.  We're not too fond of just throwing something in the trash, so we'll be making every attempt at giving things a new home-

• A lot of our furniture and household items will be stored in the basement for my stepsons to help them get started with their own place.
• We've already donated many things to a local thrift shop and will continue to do so.  We've also donated certain things like blankets, beds and collars to the local shelter. 
• For things of significant value, we'll sell it- on ebay, Craigslist, a consignment shop or at my parent's yearly garage sale.
• We've given certain things to family, friends and co-workers if we no longer need it and they would like to have it, which is something we'll keep doing.
• For things that we can't do any of the above with, if they can be recycled, we'll take them to the local recycling center.  
• If all else fails, we've found that putting something at the end of our driveway with a "free" sign usually makes it disappear within a few hours.   

Of course, we'll still be purchasing things from time to time.  There's certain criteria we'll be using to determine if we really should purchase it, though-

• If it's not a necessity, we'll put it on our "wish" list and let it sit there for a while to ponder whether or not we should get it.   Many things will be taken into consideration, such as how much use we'll get out of it, if it'll enrich our lives and what kind of environmental impact it'll have. 
• If we decide to get it, we have to pay cash for it and will seek out the most eco-friendly option that we can afford.

So there you have it.  That's our basic plan!   Feel free to share anything you've done to simplify your life.  I'd love to hear them !