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Thursday, January 1, 2009

2009... A Simpler Life?

Hey! Happy 2009!

Today in hopes sparking a trend through the rest of my house I cleaned out my computer cabinet. Now that I have 3 kids and I live in a house with just 3 small bedrooms, the computer is in a computer armoire in my living room, gone are the days of an "office. The computer cabinet was wreaking havoc, things would literally fall out and you would have to "tuck it all in" to get the doors to close, so today I did some purging, I say some because I still need to sort through some of it, but nonetheless it is cleaned up. Hurray!

For some time my husband and I have been talking about getting rid of our "stuff," actually it is usually him saying "can we throw all the junk away?" and points to some spot in the room. But I do agree... some days I look around and just want to dump it all. Some days I just get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in my house (and for the record I tend to believe I do not have near the amount of stuff that most people do), and I don't have a big house. I can only imagine what it might look like if we had more space to fill!

A friend and I have had many discussions about dumping our stuff, leading a simpler life. I have also started seeing a lot more about it, reading more about it. It seems to be a trend right now, although a good trend. Do we need SO much stuff? Does stuff make us happier? Does stuff improve our lives? I bet many of us would agree the answer to all of this is...NO, yet we all keep buying more stuff to fill a void that many of us seem to have. Do we need such big houses? Do we need to drive brand new cars? Do our kids need ALL the new toys and games? Why has our society turned into a nation that seems to not be able to say no.

In light of all the mortgage messes out there I really am thanking God that we don't live in a house that we can't afford. I can handle our old house with only one bathroom, if it means I get to HAVE a house. No, where I live has not been hit that hard, but you never know what the future might bring.

I read an article the other day talking about living the simpler life and in it the woman had lived in this massive house with her twins, she downsized to a 1 bedroom cottage in the woods, by choice, (not that I would want to share a room with my kids) but what she said was "In our old house you could go hours, even days without seeing or talking to anyone, in this house we HAVE to interact, we have no privacy, but we are closer, spend more time together and are happier for it." This really spoke to me for some reason because I've been in those houses where you could go a great deal of time and never have to speak or interact with your family, and why would you want that?

So the computer cabinet is my starting point, starting to purge, get rid of the clutter of my house and my life, dumping the junk literally and figuratively. Also for the record, I am not really good at this simple stuff, I do tend to buy too much, I am a major factor when it comes to the amount of stuff in my house. I am far from perfect or even close to leading a simple life (just look at my driveway strewn with toys in the summer), so I am not passing judgement on anyone or any of you, I am just saying this is the life I would like to lead. Wouldn't if feel great to live in a house with just the stuff you need and truly love and enjoy without having to manage, clean and pick up the crap all the time?

So if you drive by my house and see things flying out the windows you'll know why!

~Molly

2 comments:

Robyn said...

Oh how right you are! Happy purging! ;-)

ewheatley said...

You know I was just talking to someone tonight and I don't want to mention names. But she was mentioning that she has just left someone else's house ealrier. And everytime she goes there thoses kids have something new. And that lady finally spoke to that other lady and said" Do you feel like you are always buying something to feel a certain void?" I think you are right. Apparently this woman has been shopping every day since the day after Christmas. There are too many of us who are spending way above our means and need to be living that simple life.