Eliminating Excess.featured

Over the last three years, we have gone from

• two people living in a four bedroom house to
• three people living in a three bedroom house to
• four people living in a two bedroom apartment

As you can imagine, that didn’t happen without serious, sustained commitment to downsizing.

Jeff thought I was crazy when I started talking about minimalism. So I began with myself, and I began with the easy part. I went through everything that I owned and gave away anything that I didn’t regularly use. Seeing the extra space in our formerly crammed closet and bathroom, he agreed we should apply the same principles to small household and kitchen items. Then to decorative items that had been bought primarily to fill large rooms. We downsized his wardrobe. And baby items we didn’t use. At Christmas we got rid of ornaments that had been fillers while we built a small collection of meaningful ornaments. With each round of decluttering, we felt lighter and gained momentum.

Then I heard about the minimalism game. The idea is to get rid of one item on the first day of a month, two on the second, etc. By the end of a 30 day month you will have eliminated 465 items. When we started, Jeff didn’t think we had enough things left to do it. I didn’t think we’d notice a huge dent. We did it twice. And probably more times since then although we haven’t kept track. It was finally at this point in the process that family members began noticing how open and uncluttered our house felt. I’m embarrassed to say it took many more than 1,000 items to get to that point.

I like to tease Jeff that he can’t remember anything we got rid of during the game, to which he responds that he remembers getting rid of an orange button up shirt. And that’s honestly all we remember. One shirt.

The biggest mindset shift I made during our early days of downsizing was letting go of purchase guilt. We had our share of cheap, filler items, but we also had a number of nice things that we simply didn’t need. We had spent money on them and turning around so quickly to get rid of them felt wasteful. We decided to give them away as much as we could to family and friends and organizations who were in a position to get better use out of them. And the guilt I had felt over an unnecessary or bad purchase turned into contentment at seeing someone else find use in the item.

I also came to the realization that none of this would make any impact if I kept buying new things. I stopped going to stores I knew would tempt me and unsubscribed from emails and catalogues. Without a constant barrage of marketing, the urge to consume plummeted, but it didn’t die. I love beautiful things, and I love home decor. We’ve been committed to this lifestyle for over a year, and I have to continually catch myself to avoid accumulating the same items again. Every day, I make a conscious effort to remember that I’d take Rome and Machu Picchu over a new chair or the perfect rug. Peaceful, guilt-free days outside and a ten minute nightly cleanup over a throw pillow or candle. Any day.