Sunday, February 28, 2010

Minimizing Your Life

I often wonder if we are strange for wanting to "run away" from our typical American life. I mean here we are in our late 20s and we have so much stuff. We have a house, two cars, a flat screen TV, clothes, bikes, boats; by all accounts we are firmly entrenching ourselves into the middle class. Yet all we feel is that we have to get rid of it all and change the way we are headed.

We've been taking steps in the past year to reduce our consumption and the amount of stuff that we own. Last spring we had a big yard sale and managed to trim some of the fat. We've also been donating clothes to goodwill and the like. Still so much more remains.

There is a minimalist movement going on in the country now that we've recently been paying attention to. Maybe you have heard of the 100 things challenge? The idea is to reduce your worldly possessions to 100 items or less. To us it sounds very liberating. I mentioned it to some people at work and they seemed somewhat intrigued, but couldn't image in doing it themselves.

So, this spring we will be having another yard sale, maybe two. In some ways we'd love to do an estate sale where people could just come into our house and buy our things as if we had died. That would certainly make it easy.

What doesn't go in the sales will be donated to charity, and when we move south we'll take the smallest U-Haul possible. One thing about living on a boat is that we won't be able to re-accumulate this much stuff.

2 comments:

  1. Hey guys,

    We don't know each other but we have a lot in common.

    My husband, Matt, and I are in full preparations for throwing off the bowlines in pursuit of our own dream of cruising about the world within the next year.

    It's encouraging to see other young, aspiring cruisers out there living this dream. We admire your drive, tenacity, and resourcefulness along this journey and are learning from your experiences. Thank you for sharing them here along with your perspective on living a more simple lifestyle. We are certainly in support of such a "rightsized" way of life.

    Would you mind if we listed your site as "other cruisers we follow" on our site?

    Fair winds,
    Christie and Matt Butcher of s/v Kaleo

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  2. Christie & Matt,

    Thanks so much for your kind comments. We'd love if you linked to our blog from yours. I will definitely be checking yours out!

    -Bill & Trish

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