Welcome to our story!

We are: One single mom, three kids, three cats, one dog, 31 feet of living space. We're blogging our tales and adventures here for all to see. How do we earn a living, get along, find privacy, handle the ocassional bad situation... ? I'm Chey, I'm 34 and mom to three kids ages 15, 12, and 2 and I'm putting them all in an RV for the adventure of a lifetime!

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Cleaning Out

Can I just say, we have a lot of crap. No really. We live lightly, it's important to me to do so. I've worked for years to cut down on my amount of stuff, to live as lightly as I can and to practice the principals of voluntary simplicity.

So you can imagine my dismay when I realized just how much *shit* I had accumulated! I was able to weed out two large lawn bags of clothes from my wardrobe alone. Who needs that much?? My kids were just as bad or worse and we've only just gotten started!

This process is so hard. We're renting a very small storage unit which will hold the things we can't take but also can't let go of. Family photos, precious drawings and things from my kids over the years, that sort of thing. My goal is a 10X10 or smaller. Not sure if we'll make it that small or not yet.

Basically all of the furniture except a few of my very favorite pieces are going. I'm keeping my mothers desk, my mothers cedar chest, my wooden futon, and my solid oak bookcase. The rest is all either stuff I don't care about or that is cheap and replaceable anyway.

My bedroom is echoing... it's eerie. I'll just have to live with it for the next month though. We go pick up the RV on the 18th.

I do feel lighter already though. It's so amazing how much junk and crap we carry around with us "because I might need it". I didn't want to be wasteful, so I kept htings that no longer served me under the idea that they migh tone day be useful again to me or someone else or reused in some other way. All well and good but it can definitely pile up.

We live in a moderate home in a moderate neighborhood on n average street and our house is far from full. You wouldn't look at our "stuff" and call us packrats or slobs or compulsive stockpilers. Nevertheless we have way way too much crap! Bags upon bags upon boxes of it! I guess I'm really surprised, and am feeling much much lighter already.

I've purged before, but never to this level and the difference is so amazing. I used to purge what I thought was a deep purging every year or two at minimum, and yet I have already gotten rid of a mountain and still have three or four more mountains left to go!

It feels great! So far so good, we can do this!

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