Progress!

Today is a day I must remember.  If I ever feel like we're just floating along and not quite getting anywhere fast with our simplifying, I will look back on this day and be encouraged.

You see, I've been purging the house for a while now and have taken a few small trips to Goodwill and have sold some stuff, but there was still a very large pile of items in my garage that we didn't need anymore.  It was stuff from the house and stuff from random boxes stored in the garage.  Stuff we've been carrying around unnecessarily for years.  After having said pile sit in our garage for months with grand plans to sell it on craigslist or ebay or whatever, I made the decision to just get it out of our lives.  How long would it take me to go through, take pictures, decide on prices, post online, and wait for someone to MAYBE buy the items?  Too long and I didn't want to wait.  It was over-complicating our whole simplicity goal.  So without taking a second look to reminisce about what was in those boxes, I loaded them into my car.

When everything was finally loaded, I took a step back and what I saw was inspiring.  The back of my station wagon was literally filled to the roof with stuff.  There wasn't space for one more thing.  And my garage?  There was space....wide open free space in my garage.  It was so freeing.  We didn't need all that stuff.  We thought we needed that stuff, but it's been sitting in the garage for months and we hadn't missed a single item. And now it's gone from our lives and our home (and garage) is a better place because of it.

There is still a small pile of higher ticket items that we will try to sell (baby swing, high chair, etc), but the little space consuming, dust collecting knick-knacks are gone.  One more hour of work this weekend and we will finally be able to park a car in our garage.  Yes, it's THAT clean now!

I love results and I love feeling like we're doing something good for our household.  I am encouraged again.