Last week Sam and I started minimalizing. We have made our way through our bedroom, our kitchen, our living room, and our entryway. We had a lot of stuff we were not using! We are putting together a garage sale for the majority of our things, whatever does not sell at the garage sale, if it is something big, we will post it on marketplace, if it is small, we will donate it. The goal here for us is to get rid of our possessions that are holding us back but we are not using.
They said in the book by Fomio Sasaki, when you have too many things, you do not know where to start. You get overwhelmed when you try to do menial tasks, such as cleaning or picking up. You have too much stuff, which over powers your brain and you are not sure where to start. Sam and I noticed this big time when we started minimalizing last week. It was very difficult to start, we had so many things, we did not know which room to start in or what category of items to start with.
One afternoon, Sam and I got home from work and were fed up with all of the things in our house, so we just started making a pile of things we wanted to get ride of. Now we have gotten a lot of stuff out of our house and in the garage to sell in a few weeks. We are finishing up a duplex, which begins renting July 13th, so we have had to focus more time on prepping that. We have been minimizing but we should have the duplex done by the end of this weekend, and we will be focusing on minimizing for the following month. I have come to the realization, I do not need all of the things I have.
Currently, Sam and I own a 4 bed 2 bath house, with a 2 stall garage. We have 2 roommates, so this keeps our place pretty cluttered. Along with this, I have two 2 stall garages at some of my other properties that I have all of my tools and a lot of random things stored. I have a lot to go through and a lot to get rid of. I would like to get down to 1 set of tools and sell my tools we use for work to my business. Currently I have duplicates of almost everything and I do not use the majority of the duplicates, it is a waste of space and a waste for the tools. I could sell them and send them to a better home, where they will actually get used. I have already sold my car hauler trailer, that I bought 2 years ago to buy and sell cars. I am cleaning out my job trailer and making a maintenance van, so I can sell my trailer and truck. Then I will downgrade to a car and the business will have a maintenance van with all the tools we need for our daily work.
The car I buy, I will make sure it can still haul a little trailer, since I do a lot of random stuff like that but I do not need a truck as my daily driver. This will help save on gas and maintenance. People will not be asking to borrow my truck to move people (this happens a few times a year and will be nice to not have to worry about anymore). I will not do as many dumb projects or help my friends pick stuff up from marketplace because I will not have a truck to do so anymore. I am not opposed to helping others, but it will be nice to not be used because I have a truck and tools. Once Sam and I accomplish downsizing all of these things, we will be finishing up our house. While finishing it, we are going to look at downsizing to a 2 bed 1 bath house for just us. It would be quite a significant change for us, since we have always had roommates.
If we downsized houses, it would be our first time without roommates in both of our lives. We would have only our stuff in our house, garage, and yard, which will be a lot less than it was a week ago. I like the idea of the bigger space because Sam and I currently live in 1 room, have 1 room as our office, and then use the common areas of the house, like the living room and kitchen. If we do not have roommates, that negates 2 rooms, which will save on heating and cooling, and it will be 2 less rooms we feel we will have to fill with stuff.
This minimalizing lifestyle is something I have heard of in the past but never considered. I always thought I needed materialistic things to get me through life. After evaluating my life, I have realized, these materials do not have to describe me. I can get by fine without them because I do not use most of them for years at a time. I am very excited to spend more time making memories with Sam, Mimi, our friends, and family then acquiring more materials and continuing to work my life away. I am going to do things that make us happy and start enjoying some downtime and hobbies.
Here is to a better life with a lot less materials!
Your life Tutor
-Shaun Tutor
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