Downsizing
We’ve been living in Pennsylvania for a little over a week now. We are currently staying in a small, but very nice, one bedroom apartment in someone’s basement. Now this is a bit of a change for us, since we just moved out of a huge, three bedroom apartment (yeah, we really lucked out with that one). It is already furnished for us, which is great because most of our stuff is sitting in a trailer in storage. Not much use to us there.
In the months leading up to our move, Judah and I had slowly been rummaging through all of our accumulated stuff and getting rid of anything we felt we didn’t need anymore, and we donated some pretty sizable boxes to Savers. As we packed up all of our belongings into the trailer, I breathed a somewhat self-righteous sigh of relief: “Ahh, at least we don’t have a ton of junk we don’t need. Livin’ the simple life…”
And now after just a week and a half of living in a small apartment, without most of our stuff, I’m beginning to rethink things. I only have about half of my clothes (maybe a little more) and my closet looks great! I can actually see all of the clothes in it. It makes picking out an outfit so much easier. Our apartment in general is SO much neater, because we just don’t have a ton of extra things to pick up and put away all the time. We only have exactly what we need. Granted, there are definitely some things that I miss, like my keyboard, my sewing machine, basically all of my craft stuff, and more than a few kitchen items. But there are so many things that I really don’t miss, like… that thing… that… I don’t even remember…. See? I don’t even know what I miss! That tells me that it’s probably not that important to me, and we might need to do more de-junking as we unpack. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to me because I’ve only discovered it about a thousand times before: not having a ton of stuff is freeing!
Being in this small apartment has taught me that maybe we don’t need as much space as we think we do. And we really don’t need all of the things we think we need. I don’t think I’m ready to jump on the “tiny house” or “shipping container home” bandwagon (seriously, Google those), but it’s time to rethink things.
In the months leading up to our move, Judah and I had slowly been rummaging through all of our accumulated stuff and getting rid of anything we felt we didn’t need anymore, and we donated some pretty sizable boxes to Savers. As we packed up all of our belongings into the trailer, I breathed a somewhat self-righteous sigh of relief: “Ahh, at least we don’t have a ton of junk we don’t need. Livin’ the simple life…”
And now after just a week and a half of living in a small apartment, without most of our stuff, I’m beginning to rethink things. I only have about half of my clothes (maybe a little more) and my closet looks great! I can actually see all of the clothes in it. It makes picking out an outfit so much easier. Our apartment in general is SO much neater, because we just don’t have a ton of extra things to pick up and put away all the time. We only have exactly what we need. Granted, there are definitely some things that I miss, like my keyboard, my sewing machine, basically all of my craft stuff, and more than a few kitchen items. But there are so many things that I really don’t miss, like… that thing… that… I don’t even remember…. See? I don’t even know what I miss! That tells me that it’s probably not that important to me, and we might need to do more de-junking as we unpack. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to me because I’ve only discovered it about a thousand times before: not having a ton of stuff is freeing!
Being in this small apartment has taught me that maybe we don’t need as much space as we think we do. And we really don’t need all of the things we think we need. I don’t think I’m ready to jump on the “tiny house” or “shipping container home” bandwagon (seriously, Google those), but it’s time to rethink things.
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