Simplifying

I still can't believe that we are actually doing this...  Together, Wayne and I have made the decision to downsize and simplify our life.  We are leaving behind a 2600 square foot home with a three car garage that is packed to the gills full of everything you can imagine.  We have so much stuff that we can't even park a car in the garage.  We have been married for seventeen years and during that time, we have accumulated a staggering amount of stuff.  We have collections of every kind, one of each of damn near everything...  How did this happen???

It's mostly my fault.  My "collecting" habit started when I was a kid.  I loved to collect... Stickers, elephants, dolls, cassettes...  After I got married, I developed a scrapbooking habit.  My dirty little not-so-secret.  My scrapbook corner turned in to a scrapbook room which developed in to LITERALLY half a U-haul full of paper racks, custom furniture built to hold it all and box after box after box of one of each of everything.  Looking at it now, it turns my stomach a little to think that I was actually proud of having so much stuff.  What was I thinking?

Now that I have kids, I have the tendency to buy them one of each toy... Hey Brady, let's collect Cars... Making a game of hunting store to store to find one of each.  With Dustin, it was Disney VHS tapes, then Beanie Babies and with Makaylah, it has been tiny Disney princesses.  Once you start one of these collections, it's almost impossible to part with it.  There's some sentimental value there, memories of the hunt. 

How do you emotionally disconnect yourself from stuff?  Everywhere I look in my house I see an item that triggers a memory.  Do I use this stuff?  Hell no!  Do I dust it?  Unfortunately.  Do I have room to enjoy my home?  No!  Do I spend my weekends cleaning and cleaning because we have too much stuff and too much space?  Yes...  I'm tired.  Tired of stuff, tired of not having time to do what's important because on top of my stuff addiction, I am a clean freak.  I won't have company over unless the house is cleaned to perfection and when I can't keep up, I cut myself off socially because I can't stand the embarassment.  It's a viscious cycle. 

The cycle continues... The more room I have, the more stuff I put in it.  When the stuff gets out of control, I bag/box it up and move it to the garage because I can't bear to part with it.  17 years of this has created an unbelievable trainwreck of a mess.  I have tried to downsize unsuccessfully several times before.  I have gotten rid of literal truckloads of things on many occasions and yet, I am still left sitting in the middle of an unmanageable gargantuan amount of stuff.

So how am I going to overcome this problem?  I started by downsizing myself...  I took control of my health and have lost more than 60 pounds since Spetember 2009.  This was a big first step for me.  The manifestation that I can successfully downsize has boosted my confidence and led me to the realization that my big butt wasn't the only thing I needed to part with.  This month, we traded in two cars for one and we are now a one-car family.  Yikes!  It's been tough to get used to, but guess what???  We're doing it and somehow it's working.  Baby steps.  So here's the plan:

We are moving our family in to a 1700 square foot condo.  Upside:  This place is beautiful and I absolutely can not wait to live there.  It's on the 17th floor and has breathtaking views of the Las Vegas strip.  You can literally see from the Wynn to the Tropicana from the living room.  Downside:  There is not a garage and our only storage is a 4x4x6 "cage" barely big enough for some holiday decorations and maybe a suitcase or 2.  2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, a very small kitchen and a great room.  That's it...  

How are we going to do this???  It's not going to be easy.  We're all going to make some serious sacrifices.  But I have faith that what we will gain in quality family life will be well worth anything we "sacrifice" in the way of personal belongings.  How much stuff does one family really need anyway??? 

My plan is to post every day on the progress we are making.  Downsizing myself has made my life so much better, I can't wait to see what downsizing my stuff does for me!