It’s been a while since I posted anything here. The past year and half rocketed by at a break neck pace with so many changes it’s hard to believe when I say them aloud. To name just a few, our family dog of over 16 years passed away, our SUV was struck by lightning, and Hubby’s mom came to live with us for a while… yeah I know, and that’s just SOME of the changes. Lucky for us, moving here and taking a more minimalist approach towards living our life helped in so many ways. For example, the unexpected cost and time of replacing our SUV wasn’t a massive financial burden or huge inconvenience trying to balance a hectic schedule.
As for our new abode, I’ve poured my heart and soul into making it cozy, comfortable, and our kind of stylish. After trying a super minimalist approach, I decided that really wasn’t me. I need some color in my life, although not much, and a nick nack or 2 can really set a space off. Finding our minimalist style is evolving. I more or less work towards finding balance between just enough and not too much. For example, technically we don’t NEED 2 sets of sheets for our bed but in the event they are soiled in the middle of the night by a sick child, we can just grab the old ones from our cabinet to get us by until we do the wash. It’s also become apparent that decluttering is an ongoing process. If you bring new in weekly, then weekly we should be letting go of the old. When we both worked outside of the home plus played hard on the weekends, we NEVER made time to declutter. We just shoved everything in a closet, under the bed, or up to the attic. Decluttering involves decision making and according to Tim Ferris in the 4 Hour Work Week we max out at a certain number before reaching decision fatigue. I’d burn 50% of mine just deciding what to wear each day in my maxed out, over stuffed walk in closet. We still have a large walk in closet, but it feels calmer now. There is space and I have put some systems in place to make decluttering faster and easier. For example, there’s a box in each of our closets to toss old clothes or items in when its time has come instead of just shoving in back in the line up or in a corner until “one day” when we can get around to clearing it out.
This year has been less eventful, however we’re still picking up the pieces from the crazy of 2017. It feels good to slow down, take a more serious look at our health, relationships, and budget. And get back to writing about how we are creating our unstuffed life.
Living Unstuffed 