A couple of months ago, a salad changed everything for us.
No, but really. I was eating a salad for lunch one day, and I turned to Rob and said, "I don't want to keep living the same way we are now."
I had already been thinking about the implications of changing our perspective and living differently, but for some reason, that salad just pushed me over the edge. It sparked new conversations and dreams for Robert and I, and we've been on a new path ever since.
That was a few months ago, and this week we've finished moving out of our apartment and into my mother-in-law's house. We'll stay there while we save money and find some property to buy, and hopefully in 2013 we'll build a house. And a tiny one, at that. Yes, we are on a journey to simplify!
For me, that fateful salad really represented my desire to change the way I live daily, mostly in terms of food. Right now, we eat crap, we don't pay attention to where our food is coming from or what is in it, and we're not being responsible for our foodie decisions. Because we run our own business, the easiest thing each day is to grab fast food and eat it quickly before moving on to the next things, and it's just so awful. I want to change the way we see food and the way we eat it.
Along with my desire the change the way we eat, I want to change the way we live altogether. More and more, I am convicted about all the "stuff" we have. All the junk, the garbage, the pointless bits and pieces. We hold on to so much stuff!! "Stuff" has quickly become a four letter word in my mind, and I want to get rid of it all. So as we moved out of our 1200 sq ft apartment, we made a real effort to let go of some of the things we've held on to. For us, we had a second bedroom filled with things that we forgot we even had, but somehow it was still hard to let go of some of them. Because we've been trained to want more stuff and keep it all. Thankfully, in the end, we were able to give away about two cars full of things to Goodwill, plus 5-10 bags of trash. And that is only scratching the surface. We moved the rest of our stuff into a 10x15 storage unit, and the plan is to go back every so often and keep pruning.
The process has been disappointingly difficult. I'm sad that we care so much about the things that we own. I'm sad that we own so much and that it's so hard to give away. I'm sad that the hardest part for me will be training myself to not buy new stuff every time I see something pretty at target or convince myself we don't have enough. I'm sad that living simply/minimalistic is unusual in our part of the world. I'm mostly sad at the shocked/horrified faces of others when we tell them we want to get rid of all our crap and live in a tiny home.
I didn't realize until this year that as an adult, I can do any freaking thing I want to. I really didn't get that. But now I do. And now I want to do something awesome. I want to live a better life with my husband. I want to dream big, even when others don't understand or aren't along for the ride. So this is where we start. Getting rid of the old stuff, changing the way we buy new stuff, and rebooting the way we live. I can't wait to update more on our next steps!
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