So I’ve been away a while. But there’s a reason. I’ve been downsizing my life.
Over the last several years my wife and I have been looking at the cost of “big”. I have lived in a big house (3300 sq ft). There are some days I wanted to chop off the top of my house. So about three months ago we decided it was time to let go of “big” and try on “small”. We sold our house and essentially chopped off the top of our house. We went from 5 bedrooms to 3 and down to 1700 sq ft. My kids even share a room.
And we love it.
When we began this process I began to process the emotions of how much I am my stuff. I bought the house 9 years ago and its sort of represented a pinnacle moment in my life. It was the cool house in the great neighborhood. But over time we began to feel the cost of it. More was not necessarily better for us. I began to notice how much we have to store stuff we don’t use more than once a year. Managing stuff requires headspace. It requires thinking about stuff. And as I let it go, I realize I don’t have to think about it. The only thing we have to do now is sell a lot of our old stuff. It fills my garage because we lost essentially four rooms.
As we moved out I noticed a couple of things. We don’t need most of our stuff. Downsizing has forced me to ask how much stuff I really don’t need. Yet I coulndn’t find out until I actually let it go. I won’t discover the value of less until I actually have less. Two years ago my friend packed up 90% of his stuff and moved into an apartment for two years. Two years later he gave away most of it. In fact he lived in a small apartment and had virtually nothing. Yet he’s told me several times it was two of the best years of his life.
The second thing I noticed is that smaller spaces are more intimate. In my old house, I began to notice that walking to my over sized bedroom required a long walk. Now it doesn’t. As silly as this may sound, I realized that the “big” creates a huge waste of time and separation. Now everything is closer and more intimate. I’m sure at some points it may feel like we’re on top of each other, but I kind of wonder how much the old space allowed me to hide. Now I can’t.
And as we sold the house, I began to wait for that moment when I would lament what I was letting go. But it hasn’t come…at least not yet. As we moved into our “little” house I began to see that less was actually more.
What about you? What do you need to let go of?
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