Moving and Minimalism

One of the great minimalist resources is a duo called The Minimalists, and one of their more extreme ideas for jump starting your minimalist life style is to have a packing party.  Basically they want you to pack all of your belongings into boxes like you're going to move and then only unpack what you need over a certain period of time, then get rid of everything that gets left in the boxes.  You can read all the details here. If I were staying in the same house this idea would seem completely ludicrous to me and beyond inconvenient.  But I actually am moving so it may be a great time to try it.

One of the most interesting things I have found about minimalism is how easy and almost exciting it is to get rid of things the more you do it.  Even though I have "purged" my home several times, as I prepare for our move I am astounded by the number of things I still want/need to get rid of.  Some of this is by necessity, because we don't need to hold onto expired meds and the movers won't pack them anyway.  And other things are in perfectly good condition but forgotten and now completely useless.  I am actually excited to downsize from our 3 bedroom + office house to a two bedroom condo, because it will force us to be really honest about what we value and what we need in our lives.

The hard part I am having right now is that I am feeling extremely wasteful.  So many things are unfortunately ending up in the trash. Vitamins, and cotton balls and old bath toys for example.  When our junk is no ones treasure, when it has been offered and no one wants it, to the trash it goes. And my guilt increases.  I suppose that this will teach me a valuable lesson about only buying things that I truly need and using all of something before buying its replacement.

So maybe the baby step is just pretending to have a packing party. Instead of packing everything and then only keeping what you need as you unpack, what if you went through your belongings room by room and thought about what you would pack.  Would you keep all four bottles of hand soap?  What about the extra set of curtains you've had in your linen closet for 6 years.  And if you're keeping these items for "just in case" think about when that time is going to come.  Are you actually moving to a house where those curtains might fit and you'll magically love them? Or where there are twice as many bathrooms, thus needing all the soap?  Its probably not going to happen, and if you're not using it now, you're not going to use it in two months once its travelled across the country and you've forgotten its very existence.

Let go.  It actually feels really good.  And if you have to throw something away, remember how it makes you feel so you think twice before buying its replacement.