Posted by Kerri Rodley in Declutter Your Life, Simplify Your Life | 0 Comments
Freedom and Opportunity: The Advantages of Owning Less
A great post from the Small Notebook blog:
A life with less clutter
A couple of years ago someone wrote a comment that has stayed with me ever since:
“Two years ago we had a (vague) possibility of going overseas to study, and one of my first responses was “I can’t pack up all of our stuff and be ready 6 months from now!” That was really a wake-up call to me, and I’ve been trying since then to pare down our Stuff, so that we will be ready for any future opportunity.”
I always remember that. I want to like my stuff, but hold on to it with a loose grip.
I like reading about when people have been adventurous and not let their stuff hold them back. Here are just a couple of the many good stories I’ve heard lately.
Rebecca: Three years ago this week I married the love of my life in the UK, two years ago this week we sold everything in our house bar a few sentimental items and the absolute basics, and moved to a ski town in Canada.
It was a really enlightening and liberating experience to reduce our belongings to a few packing cases stored in my parents’ house and two suitcases, and to start completely afresh.
It was humbling to take the things we didn’t want to the car boot sale (yard sale) and have people knock us down in price. It certainly made me rethink a lot of the purchases we made in the first few years we lived together – all those useless gadgets!!!!!
We have now bought a new house in our new home, and, while we do have a lot of new belongings, they are mostly things that make our lifestyle here what we always dreamed of – several pairs of skis for the differing snow conditions, snowshoes, townie/mountain bikes, and a six-month-old puppy! Not all clutter is bad!!!!
Kezia: I recently took the plunge … sold everything and moved to a different country. My story is a bit more ‘off the grid’ because I moved to Syria! As expected, sometimes it gets tough, but more than anything it’s been freeing, exciting, and a true adventure. I’m documenting my experience at Why So Syria?
Meghan: A year after I graduated from college I was working at a job I hated, so I quit and moved to China to teach English and International Politics at a university. I didn’t speak a word of Chinese and had never been there before, but it was awesome anyway. It totally changed my life.
You know what words come up the most often? freeing, liberating, exhilarating…I think I’m going to go get rid of some more of my stuff.
Read more at http://smallnotebook.org/2010/09/13/freedom-opportunity-owning-less/