Settling In

06 December 2011

I am now officially moved as of December 4th.

And I discovered I still had way more stuff than I thought I did.

I’ve donated, sold or given away most of the things that are neither difficult to part with nor still necessary given my current needs and wants. I’m not going to ditch anything yet solely for the sake of reducing the count; if I need it or am genuinely attached to it, I’ll keep it (for now).

The next bit of work is to go through the last couple of boxes, where I’m sure I’ll find a few things that can be let go of, then to archive a few boxes for six months and then see if I actually miss anything in them. At that point, I’ll take an inventory… I know I’m not at 100 things yet but I bet I’m not that far away.

This is a good time for reflecting on what I’ve gotten out of this process other than reducing the complexity of my recent move (which is a huge benefit in and of itself).

I have had a major shift in attitude about how freely to spend money on things, and what is ‘necessary’ vs. clever marketing
I have much greater focus and satisfaction in my personal areas, especially at home; I no longer feel the need to clean up all the time, or overwhelmed at the amount of stuff staring me in the face
Consideration of other habits of over-consumption: how much and what kind of food I eat, planning to downgrade my car quite a bit when the financial opportunity is there, simplifying how I use desk space (both on the physical desk and on the computer desktop), seeing hoarding digital stuff to be as much of a problem as hoarding physical stuff
Hearing from friends and family who have at least considered what I am saying about simplification, even if they ultimately reject it; their questions and comments help me refine my own thoughts about this even further.