![]() I try to look past that first thrill and imagine the rest of the life of that gadget – taking up space, restricting future moves to new homes, causing your worry and pain when it eventually breaks, then finally sitting in a landfill for 100,000 years as it burdens the next 3,000 generations of humans. The Sharper Image Digital Bluetooth Wine Bottle Opener will get you drunk while fostering a futuristic vibe at your parties. When presented with a spiffy new object, most of us think only of the present pleasure it may offer. The tricks that work for me are as follows: So if you haven’t done so already, you might want to change the way you think about new stuff. Instead, I’m currently sitting under a shade tree, 9 years into retirement and casually typing these thoughts into a thin silver laptop which will promptly be folded closed whenever my family wakes up so I can make them breakfast. Without it, I’d be in a cubicle under fluorescent lights on this fine Monday morning in June, furiously typing brackets and function calls into a compiler, still 26 years from the finish line. These dollars feed back into your freedom, allowing you to live wherever and however you like.Įven a vague and fuzzy adoption of minimalist principles can make a huge difference. And financial ones too: with less stuff you can live larger in a smaller space, which frees up hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime. There are mental benefits: a clearer mind so you can focus better on the experiences and people that mean the most to you. Minimalism – Isn’t That Just for New York City Millenials?Įven a casual embrace of Minimalism will bring great improvements to your life, so in reality, every smart person should be dipping their toes in its refreshing waters. In the most recent three years, a stricter approach has delivered much better results. After all, most of my own junk turned out to be from my earlier adulthood, when a high income teamed up with a large living space to produce a very low threshold for acquiring new things. More of a self-mocking and a reminder that we can do better in curating the things we bring into our lives. So the above should not be read as a complaint. My family is living in the happiest and most fortunate of situations, and I actually love the cleansing and organizing effort of moving to a new house. Various other vehicles, humanoid figures, and swords. A pair of detailed pirate ships that he bought with his own money before realizing that his building kits (most notably Trio and Lego) provide longer-lasting entertainment. An enormous honking driving “Turbo Rig” that got a few laughs around his third birthday. I have fiercely avoided buying battery-powered plastic toys throughout my son’s lifetime, but somehow these things have still entered our life by the dozen thanks to the generosity of others. How could I let go of something so cute, made by my big Sis 35 years ago?Īnd all that is before we get to the real source of Stuff: kid-related objects. ![]() Plus a well-stitched horse head that my older sister made in home economics class sometime in her early teens. Then there are the sentimental items like photo albums, mementos from high school romances, cute candle holders that never seem to work in your current house, a once-fancy Yamaha player for the antique digital media known as “CDs”, several hundred discs written in this format, a translucent skull with a strobe light mounted inside (?), and a wooden devil pitchfork that I made hastily for a 1997 Halloween costume that somehow never gets lost*. We’re already up to one medium-sized box. Why do I still have these? Two pairs of rollerblades (his and hers) have a similar history. I haven’t skated since I left Canada in 1999, so these particular bits of life baggage have tagged along for 15 years and 5 US addresses while never seeing a patch of ice. ![]() There’s a pair of underused Men’s hockey skates. How did we end up in this odd position?Ī deeper archaeology of the debris has revealed some useful details. Even now as we try to ruthlessly triage the stuff between sell, donate, recycle and trash bins, the torrent seems unlimited. Storage rooms, closets, and nooks full of it. Despite our best efforts to live a sensible, frugal, and minimalist life over these past eight years, we have somehow still ended up with an absolute shitload of unnecessary crap. ![]() The new house, while still sporting plain plywood countertops and missing some frilly extras like doors and trim, is finished enough to sustain life so we decided to make the jump as early as possible.īut the rush to empty and clean the old place while simultaneously compressing our lifestyle by 1000 square feet has been a very revealing exercise. It is finally Moving Week for the Mustache family, and we’re right in the thick of it. ![]()
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