Thursday, October 2, 2008

I'm Here! The Minimalist's Move

Well, I'm here in my new house and in spite of my best efforts to avoid it, I have been stressed out. After all, I thought I was a minimalist! The idea was that I should be able to pick up and move at any time since we are real estate investors and need to be flexible especially in this market! But the new house is beautiful and we're basically moved in. It's a different feeling to be in such a larger house. Ironically, this house is bigger than the one I downsized from when we moved into our row house. However, I am for now resisting the temptation to buy more furniture to fill it up. I just put the wicker garden furniture in the living room for now.

From this move I learned an important lesson. I learned that that moving things into the garage isn't really minimalism! It was the garage that really made the move harder because it was filled with tools, left over paint, and everything that I had pitched from the house to make it minimal.  To make matters worse, I have moved into a house with a garage filled with the remnants of various people's belongings who lived here while our son renovated the house, as well as building materials and tools. But I'm not going to freak out. I'm just going to take it one bite at a time and get rid of as much as I can. 

Freecycle is a great resource for getting rid of things. It's a Yahoo group where people post things they are looking for or looking to get rid of. Of course, this isn't a money maker. But why should we think we should make money on things that are no longer useful to us? Did we think about their resale value when we bought them? Of course not. We bought them to use or just because we wanted them. Be it a painting or a paint brush, most things unfortunately end up in the land fill. The only way not to participate in this travesty is not to buy the stuff in the first place. But for now, I'll just lighten my load by passing it on to someone else.

4 comments:

p said...

thats funny about the garage...good for you for staying calm and just pushing through. freecycle is awesome!

Banba said...

I once lived in a house without a garage. Maybe it was a good thing!

Anonymous said...

good tip on freecycle. we live in a condo with two large storage areas, most office things for a business that moved into the house - which i approve of! last year was the first year we did not have to participate in the condo yard sale. another approval at this end

Banba said...

That's great Prand! I had a yard sale a few weeks ago and made $150 (which was cool for walking around cash), but I did it on my own so it wasn't really very fun. I did one with the neighborhood last year and made $1000 and we had a lot of fun drinking margaritas. So garage sales can be great, but clutter is a curse and can be an albatross around your neck!