Downsizing: Prioritizing What's Important

Something we noticed while traveling abroad was many things were smaller outside of the United States. From refrigerators to houses, American stuff was super-sized. Tim and I were not wealthy, but like so many others, we were definitely caught up in the rat race - earning more to spend and have more in a vicious and unfulfilling cycle. But it took a little more than traveling and seeing other ways to live to start to change that mindset.

My grandparents' basement finally helped us start to reevaluate what we needed. It was one of the spooky parts of their house we tried to avoid. After my grandmother moved into assisted living, we helped clean it out and discovered it was far scarier than we had imagined. A child during the depression, she was taught never to let anything go. Even very disposable things we could not imagine reusing, recycling or repurposing lurked there.

A leaky window had allowed rain and a variety of creepy crawly critters to ruin anything that might once have had value. The overwhelming odors of mildew and decay are still burned in my brain. And yet my grandmother held the belief that these were treasures that needed to be preserved. Tim and I went straight home and cleaned out our own basement and garage and committed to sell or donate anything we had not used in the past year.

After our cleaning spree, we felt better knowing we would not be writing our own basement horror story. But then we noticed a new cycle emerge. We were going to Goodwill every other week. While we were not accumulating more stuff, we were still buying it! And getting ready to travel was still a lot of steps - we had not really helped ourselves on that front at all.

So we started looking around our house. We realized it had more rooms we didn't use than rooms we did use. Even so, we had stuff in every room. That realization led me to read some books on organization, essentialism, and minimalism that helped us focus on what was most important to us. Once we did that we were able to move into a smaller home and really begin living much better with far less - and many fewer Goodwill runs.

We're now in a one-bedroom condominium (just the right size for Tim and I). We have evaluated everything from our kitchenware to clothing so we have only what we truly need. As a result, we feel less stressed and spend less time maintaining our stuff. And the best benefit of all - it's so-o-o-o much easier to be on the go. Not only is there less to worry about while we're away, we have more time and resources to devote to travel!