As I've somewhat already stated, my family has been
on an eco-friendly trend the past few years. One of our more recent
eco-friendly goals has been simplification and minimization...of just about
anything we can deal with at that moment. The idea is to remove the excess
clutter and to just focus on the things in your life that you enjoy...this can
easily lead to a much happier and much less stressful life. However, when you
start doing the research on what the possibilities are, you quickly come to
realize that simplifying your life isn't as simple as one might first think.
Little by little we've been reducing and removing
anything that we don't feel like we really need. As we all have probably come
to realize at one point or another in our lives...we collect a heckuva (they
should really make that a word) lot of stuff (soon to be junk) over the years.
Somehow or another it all ends up on shelves and in boxes...sometimes in the
attic or the basement or the garage. Sometimes we end up buying a larger residence
to accommodate all of the stuff. It just amazes me sometimes how much control
all of this stuff has on our lives.
We first started our household reduction simply by
going room-to-room and just dumping stuff we found that we didn't
"need" in a bag or box. It was amazing how quickly those boxes/bags
filled up. All of those items will soon be sold or donated...which is also a
nice way to make a little extra cash.
The thing that freaked me out the most was all of
the kid's toys. Even though we had had the girls toys somewhat nicely
stored away in little cubbies and such...it just amazed me how quickly we had
accumulated so many things for them. But if you think about birthdays...and
christmas...and then just the random stuff we would buy them when we found something
cool while we were shopping...it all adds up SOOO quickly. It's no wonder that
they rarely ever want to play in their room with their stuff...it was just too
overwhelming...where would they start?
So now...our house has been slightly rearranged. We've
moved the girls stuff into a different, more centrally located room...and we
minimized their things to the point where they actually love to play in their
room again. Now we will probably need to figure out a method of cycling in new
toys and cycling out old ones...but I think the days of just adding and adding
and adding onto the existing base of toys and books and things is over.
Another big step that we recently took...which for
some reason seems to have been looming over our head for way too long now...is
moving towards minimizing down to a single vehicle. Two days ago we finally
unloaded my wife's old Tahoe. It actually sold in only a few hours after we
posted it online...for what we were asking for it...and it went to a woman who
really really wanted a Tahoe. So it felt really good to sell it...not only just
to get it off our backs...but to give it a nice home as well.
We still have two vehicles at the moment...but
we're working towards selling our Camry Hybrid…it should also be a pretty easy
sell. I’m sad to have to sell it because
if I could choose one of our vehicles to keep it would be this one... unfortunately,
it doesn't have enough room for our periodic 6-passenger family requirement. So
we'll stick with the one vehicle that does provide the adequate room. Perhaps
we'll trade it in for a different similar vehicle in the near future...but we
haven't really finalized any details about that...so who knows when that might
happen.
I do want to note that even with the above changes,
that we don't feel like we're anywhere near where we need to be on our road to
simplification. There's still lots left to do...and it almost seems like we
would never really achieve our simplest form...because there would always be
something that we could really just do without. But for now...it feels good to
have finished the portion that we have completed...and it feels good to know
that we're all a little bit happier having done it.
For anyone interested in expanding their knowledge
about ways to simplify or minimize your life, here are a couple of helpful
websites that my wife introduced me to. The first link is a link to the page
for the book Simplicity Parenting…a book about the benefits
that simplifying your life can have on your children as well as helpful ideas
to get the process started. This second link is from a blog-type website with
lots of useful information for simplifying all aspects of your life. Zen Habits is a page from the site that I
found helpful in finding information for simplifying certain aspects of your
life.
I’m sure I’ll be talking more about this subject in the blog from time
to time…so if anyone has any tips or suggestions for other ways to
simplify...or even other websites or books...please leave them in my comments
section.
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