Imagine relocating across the country and waiting for the moving truck to arrive so you can unpack your life and get settled. Only the truck never makes it to your destination because it caught fire in New Jersey. Everything you own is now ash, and through the magic of the Internet, you find out that someone actually video-recorded the fiery truck on the highway and uploaded it to YouTube. Burn, baby, burn.
This actually happened to a friend of mine. And he said that after an initial ten-minute freak-out session, he started embracing the idea of starting over with a more simple existence. “Not a bad idea,” I thought.
The Cost of Ownership
No matter what you own, there is a maintenance cost. We can speak in dollars—insurance, taxes, interest. Or even in time—cleaning, updating, protecting. But the hardest maintenance cost for most people is simply sentimental value. We transfer our feelings and memories onto an object and decide we can’t let go because we’ll risk losing the feeling or memory. Before long, we become surrounded by these visual reminders of our memories and no longer have room to make new ones. It’s hard to move forward in your life when your past is crowding your present.
Creative Downsizing
The answer, of course, is to get rid of some of this stuff. But that’s way easier said than done. We often need to be compelled to do this with a move or a lifestyle change. Imagine how much richer life would be if we moved the junk out and made room for new opportunities instead of grudgingly making room only when it was forced upon us.
My husband and I are currently simplifying our “physical” lives down to a couple of boxes and two backpacks. That’s a big change from our starting point in a packed 3500 square-foot house. We’re leaving on October 1 for Ecuador and three-plus years of exploring the world. We’ve been working for a while to get to this point, as you can imagine, and along the way we’ve found a few creative downsizing strategies to help you simplify a little (or a lot) of your life.
1. Have a Reverse Birthday Party
For my thirty-ninth birthday, I picked thirty-nine of my favorite things—things that were special, but not quite special enough to make it into my one box. There was the silk scarf from France, the leather purse I bought on my honeymoon, a cocktail ring with more bling than my lifestyle required, and several other little treasures.
I wrote out a tag for each item detailing its history and why it was special to me. Then I put them all on a shelf in my living room and invited all my friends over for my birthday party. The rules were simple:
- If you find something you like, write your name on the back of the tag.
- If you are the only one who wants that item, it’s yours.
- If more than one person wants the item, a “face-off” would occur and a democratic vote would decide who won.
- In lieu of gifts to me, winners of the items could donate to our trip in an anonymous box on the bar.
