Living more intentional lives or joining the 'minimalist movement' has been an idea we've been playing with over the last year or so. In the last few months it's become very clear that this is an adventure we really want to take.
Now do we HAVE to sell our home? No. We're doing fine here, we make our payments and have enough extra to be happy but we started to ask those bigger questions. what if we pay off ALL our debts faster, how much of our income would that open up? Do we want to be "house broke?" What experiences are we trying to have in the near future that we might have to pass up on because we have this house, this stuff, our debts. >>What can going down this road do for our business?<<
It's when we had these conversations that we realized we want more out of life. This was never our dream home and knew we didn't want it to be our long term home. With the housing market up we see an opportunity. We will sell our house and move to a smaller living space; with Phi's mother. Take the money we make on this house to pay off some of our larger debts (student loans) and take our income and invest portions, ...
We were never meant to live a life accumulating stuff. We were meant to live simply enjoying the experiences of life, the people of life, and the journey of life -- Not the things of life. -Joshua Becker
This move has been nothing short of exciting AND scary! We're going from a large home with so much space for our girls to run in to sharing a space with two more people.
I've discovered both how little and how much we have. For daily living, we have found we actually don't need that much. My girls have more than Phi and I, toys take up a lot of room and we've had to donate a lot of their clothing; even now I still feel like we could get rid of more. The things that we have a lot of are "memories" and this has been more of ME than Phi. I have boxes of books, papers etc from my childhood that has been hard to let go of or decide what to do with. They're things I know I only look at maybe every 5-10 years, so why do I hold onto them? I've been able to let go of quiet a bit, I've been instead, taking a photo of some of the things that may hold a good memory for me then tossing it out, when I want to see that thing that holds memory for me I can pull up that photo.
Downsizing for our family has been a great blessing and we can't wait to see what this journey holds for us. We plan to continue our minimalist story here on the blog so be sure to check back to see more about this new lifestyle.
Thanks for stopping by!