New Year. New Resolutions. Blah blah blah. I don’t take them seriously because who ever sticks to the promises they make to themselves when they’re half in the bag or high on sugar? So I waxed righteous on New Year’s Day, blogging about being more powerful than a diet. OK, all good points, but yesterday I watched Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things on Netflix and felt a bit kicked in the stomach, in need of serious change – a resolution of sorts.
If you haven’t seen this documentary, go right now and watch it. I mean it. Right now if you can! I sat there with my too-many pillows and piles of blankies wrapped around me, remnants of Christmas dangling from the walls, and I wished my house could just vomit up all the crap I’ve accumulated over the years. I pictured my attic stuffed with boxes of “memories,” which basically means every piece of artwork ever created by my 3 children in their entire lives, just emptying itself out through the windows. How could I possibly throw away that sketch of our family Bea drew in preschool?
Well, I can’t.
And that’s not even the half of it. All the beautiful wedding gifts collecting dust or the dozens of shoes in my closet. No one needs that many shoes! And the books. Yikes. Don’t even get me started.
We moved here to West Hartford when Bea was born and bought the 1700 square foot home because that’s what we could afford. We've stayed here because that’s what we believed in. We wanted life experiences, not house and car debt. Big houses, to us, just meant more space to fill with crap we didn’t need. And, in some ways, we’ve stayed true to our philosophy except that we stuffed the gills of our deliberately smaller home.
The premise of the documentary is that once we let go of all the excess, we can finally be happy. I’ve known of the tiny house/minimalist movement for a while, but hadn’t digested it personally until yesterday.
LET IT ALL GO! Only then can you be truly happy.
#goals
Since watching it, I’ve gotten philosophical these past two days. We are born naked. We die naked (well, sort of). But between birth and death, we spend an awful lot of time layering ourselves with all sorts of consumed goods. I know we can’t walk around naked, but we come into the world with nothing, leave the world with nothing, yet spend our lives trying to “get something”. Maybe a nicer car, a nicer house, nicer clothes, whatever.
So I got up from the couch and started purging what I could.
I know it’s a process. I know that I can’t move into a tiny house tomorrow. But something shifted big for me, and I’m excited about it.
From now on...every single purchase. Is this useful?
No more mindless consumption.
On a side note, I woke up this morning and jumped on my phone like I do. But this time, I noticed the 99,999+ emails that have been sitting in my inbox for years. YEARS! I know it’s not the same as hoarding house junk, but it feels a bit the same. I am happy to announce that I have deleted over 150,000 emails in 4 different accounts, and am unsubscribing from every junk email that hits my inbox.
This barrage of information definitely contributes to the overconsumption.
BUY NOW! SAVE NOW! TRY NOW!
And I'm pretty sure this all relates back to nutrition, and our excess there, too.
Enough.
Will you simplify with me?
