Learning To Live With Less

My family is certainly guilty of the mindset that more stuff is better. Unfortunately over the years all that mindset does is create a massive amount of clutter and unrest within the household. Matt and I were constantly after the kids to pick up their stuff and put it away but truthfully there was nowhere for them to put it. After I spent 60 days cleaning out the entire house I made the commitment to bring less into our space.

We definitely belong to a society where you are expected to buy the newest gadget or keep up with the Jones family next door. When I stepped back and thought about it, we were teaching our kids horrible habits to carry them through life. We were teaching them that stuff equals happiness. And it doesn't. Stuff does not make you happy in the long run. Sure that new game system is fun and awesome when you first get it but guess what? There will be a new one released next year and then what do you do with the old one? It cost $350 so you surely aren't going to give it away. So it get shoved to the side and sits there unused and taking up space. Stuff does not equal happiness.

5 Ways We Are Living On Less
1. I stopped buying books. I am a huge reader and so are most of my kids. The collection of books we had in this house was alarming. I went through every single book and got rid of about 95% of them. I have a Kindle Fire HD so I only buy e-books now. All my books are kept on one little e-reader. It's fantastic. Maia and Ty have the Kindle apps on their phone so they don't need the physical books either. I cleared off 2 entire bookcases and 2 closets full of books! That's a whole lot of space that was freed up!

2. I stopped saving magazines just for one article. Instead of saving them I made a magazine binder. I went through every magazine I was saving, clipped the articles I wanted to keep, and organized them in a 3 ring binder with page protectors. I'll be showing you my magazine binder later in the month. I think I sent around 200 magazines to the recycling bin by the time I was done. I wish I was exaggerating.

3. I gave away duplicates of items we already owned. I'm ashamed to admit how many duplicate items we had in this house. When I cleaned out the linen closet I found 18 spare sets of twin sheets. We have 4 twin beds. I kept 4 spare sets and donated the rest. I found 4 hair dryers....2 of which don't even work. What? I have no reasonable explanation for that. Who needs 2 salad spinners? For that matter, I don't even really need one so I gave them both away. Just getting rid of the duplicate items helped purge the house a lot!

4. I sorted through the kids memory boxes. I even had them help me. I'll have a whole post on memory boxes this month where I'll explain in depth how I organize them. It was amazing how some of the things I saved were things that really didn't need to be saved. Let's face it, kids are going to have 18 years of mementos. You cannot save them all. I pared it down with their help.

5. Going through the closets more than once a season. I used to only go through the closets at the end of each season when I was making room for the upcoming season's clothing. But it was completely overwhelming to do 4 kid's closets plus my own. So inevitably I would get sidetracked and the closets would just be full of out of season clothes. Now I sort through clothes every time I do laundry. If something is outgrown or stained it doesn't get put back in the closet. Life is so much easier without 427 shirts to sort through to hang up the 5 shirts I actually wear.

You can see all the posts in my 31 Day series in one location right HERE! New posts are added daily.