Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Our Story - Part 3

We started slowly. At this point, I don't even think the word minimalist was in our vocabulary. We just knew we wanted something different. We did not want to be like the average consumer, buying things on credit and paying them off long after we'd forgotten what we bought.

We were finding articles on "tiny living" and living with only 100 items. It seemed so radical, but we loved reading about it.

I remember one day I was dusting a decorative shelf in my living room that had several tchochtke items on it. I realized it was a giant waste of my time! Why do I even have this shelf? I carefully looked over the items on it and realized that I didn't really even like or enjoy any them. I bought them because they were on sale and I had an empty space on my wall that I thought needed filling. I took the shelf off the wall and never looked back.

We started poking around on-line looking for any information we could find on minimalism. I found the book The Joy of Less: a minimalist guide to living by Francine Jay. I bought it on my kindle and devoured it within a few days and urged Ryan to read it.

Our journey had begun. Over the next week or so, we tackled one room at a time. We took loads and loads of things out to the alley for trash, gave things away and sold things on craigslist. Anything we hadn't used in a year or didn't like was removed. It was incredibly freeing.
Thus began our journey towards minimalism. Every day we work hard at becoming one step closer to our goal - living only with what we need.

Thanks for reading!

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