Less is More // No Shame in My Game

We lived together for almost a decade before we moved into Holtwood House and within that decade, we collected a lot of stuff.  Over the years, we frequently re-decorated the tiny back house we once shared and simply tossed all the "old" stuff we no longer needed into the eventual abyss that became of the one car garage we were allotted under our lease.

When we finally left that little back house and moved into the house of our dreams, we surprisingly took a lot of that stuff with us and crammed it into our now larger, two-car garage where it has sat largely untouched through all of our home renovations. For two years, we've weaved our way around through boxes of old home and party decor, clothing we will likely never wear again, small appliances we will never use and sports equipment we have probably only used once. It's easy to rationalize that we may at some point need or want these things, but the truth is, we probably never will.  More is not really more.

The chaos of the garage-cum-storage area, has been in stark contrast to the sort of minimalist thing we have going on inside. We've been pretty restrained when it comes to decorating our new home, carefully laying the foundation with quality pieces and only things we really, really love. But the bottom line is, we want to finish decorating our space and there are some other things we would love to purchase.

It's become very difficult to ignore the white elephant though. How can we responsibly purchase more stuff when we have a garage full already?

So we've laid down a moratorium. No more stuff comes into the house until we address what we already have. If we're not using it, we need to get rid of it. We will keep only what we absolutely have to and nothing will be purchased until we have a completely clutter free garage.

We've made a lot of headway over the last couple of weeks, carting boxes to Goodwill and local consignment stores and even listing items on Craigslist. Funny thing about Craigslist. We've actually met some pretty nice people with some really good stories along the way. Like last night when we sold off an intricately carved walking stick brought back by a family member as a souvenir from Jamaica (say wha?). Turns out the guy who bought it actually collects them for his father who uses them as conversation pieces during his daily hikes. Cool huh?

It's made us feel good that what was once languishing in the garage has now been given a second life in somebody else's home. In the process we're making a little chump change to help fund our next round of projects around here. Hey, there's no shame in my game. I actually feel pretty damn good about it.