Breaking Up Is Hard To Do...

As you probably know, we're moving to a bigger house in about 2 weeks! Currently the four of us are living in a two bedroom, approximately 800 square foot condo. Squished doesn't even BEGIN to describe our situation. We all cosleep in the larger bedroom, we've made the second bedroom into a playroom for all the boys' toys, and even still at least 1/3 of the living room has been taken over by toys. We have no area outside for the boys to play, and cabin fever is a major issue.

The new house has 3 bedrooms, is approximately 1600 square feet, and sits on a fabulous 1/4 acre lot. Everyone will have their own room for their things! The boys will have a huge yard in which to play! I'll be able to line dry Bug's cloth diapers and have a garden! Very exciting times!

At first Papa Bear and I were planning all the new things we'd like to buy to fill out all the new space we'd have. But then I got inspired by my friend over at The Gnome's Mom who has been posting about clearing out their home down to the bare essentials. Our society is all about consumerism. Buy things to fix your problems, keep you entertained, make less work for you. We don't want that for ourselves anymore, or for the kids. Instead, let's focus on creative thinking and problem solving, finding ways to entertain ourselves that involve time together making memories, and feeling the accomplishment in a hard day's work.

I looked around our house and saw all the things we have that we never actually USE. They sit there taking up space, collecting dust, needing to be cleaned and moved around, creating stress. Most importantly, the more things we have, the more things Bug can drag out around the house. It's his favorite pastime.

So this weekend we set to work. Our first project to tackle was the bookshelves in the living room. Formerly home to tons of dvds, books, games, toys, piles of paper, and photo albums.

First we went through our dvds. Our goal was to keep only 10 each. When that proved to be difficult, we exempt all our series (Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, etc) from the rule, and then only kept 10 each. It was really painful! How silly, right?! I can't remember the last time we actually sat down and watched most of those movies. Heck, some were even still in the original packaging!

You can see from the pictures above, the shelves still aren't completely sorted and packed. These boxes are the things so far we are NOT keeping. That big box on the bottom- FULL of dvds. Sad right?

We're going to ease into our new minimalist lifestyle. Our ultimate goal is to each have only 100 things. Wish us luck as we tackle the rest of the house! And be on the lookout for a huge garage sale!