Stealing From Ourselves!

"He who buys what he does not need steals from himself."


Ouch.

We live in a society where we are made to feel like we need things to feel better about ourselves, to remain "current" and "relevant". And I will be the first to admit that I am totally guilty of buying into this.

When I think about all of the things in the house that we have purchased and don't use, it embarrasses me. These things that we spent our hard-earned money on, yet have little to no impact on our life and well-being. Clothes. DVDs. Electronics. Maybe it was a good deal. Maybe it was an impulse buy. Maybe I saw someone else with it and thought I should get one too. Regardless of the reason why I bought it, I spent money on it. It's sickening to think of how many hours I worked for some of the things in my home that do nothing but collect dust. (Was another shirt really worth one hour of work?)


There are two practices that we use now when considering what we buy:

1) If I want to buy a $10 shirt, I consider this - If someone came up to me and offered me either $10 or the shirt, which would I choose? If I'd choose to take the cash over the item, I don't buy it. 

2) I consider how much time I would have to spend at work for the item, consider what kinds of things I could get done at work in that amount of time, and consider whether or not it's worth it. (Would I have sat in this meeting for an hour for this DVD?)



Ben and I are in the process of making a drastic lifestyle change - one that I will be documenting as much as possible. I won't get into too much of the details yet, but basically, it started out as a conversation in which we looked into Ellie's future and talked about what kinds of values we want to instill in her. One of the things that we have discussed is wanting her to desire and value experiences and relationships, rather than things. And that convicted us in a big way when we evaluated how our current lifestyle would encourage or hinder that. We also discussed how our money is being spent, and looked at how much effort we have to put into maintaining our current lifestyle.

So back to our "things"…the first thing that we are tackling is our excess of unnecessary things in the house. We have had a garage sale, put stuff on eBay and Craigslist, and have taken carloads of stuff to Goodwill. It felt so good to get rid of so much stuff. It's amazing how attached you can get to these things when you consider giving them away, but when you actually do it, it's amazing how little the absence of those things impacts you.

For me, the two biggest reasons why I hold on to stuff are nostalgic reasons and the "what if"s. What if I go to a wedding and I really want to wear this dress and regret having gotten rid of it? What if I feel like wearing bright blue pants? What if I need a pair of grey, wool dress pants for something? What if I need brown heels to match the outfit that I'm wearing? Guess what? I can probably borrow them from someone! I "borrow" (haha) clothes from my sister all the time, why is this different?


If you're thinking of paring down your clothes, but aren't sure how to go about it, consider this suggestion from Oprah:

Turn all of your current-season clothes hangers backwards (the annoying way, with the point of the hook facing toward you). Set a length of time (three weeks, six weeks, etc.), and during that time, each time you wear a piece of clothing and return it to your closet, hang it the opposite way (rounded part facing you, point of the hook facing the back of your closet). After that set amount of time expires, take a look at your hangers. The ones that haven't changed positions since the beginning of the set amount of time are the clothes that you don't wear, and could clearly do without.



So this is step one in our plan. De-clutter. De-own. Unattach ourselves from things. Starting tomorrow, September 1, we are going to have fun with it, and take the Thirty Day Minimalist Challenge! I encourage you to join us!

More coming soon!

-Katie