 |
| Oh, how I will miss this city. |
I have been reading the blog Becoming Minimalist for some
time now and I have always been inspired by the ideas of living more
simply-- that by actively choose less,
you can begin to focus resources and energies
to what really matters the most. No, I'm not trying to live as an aesthetic (I love beautiful things!), but I aspire to make more of an effort to contemplate & reevaluate how I live my life and what I spend my time doing.
As I embark on a year abroad, I
took this opportunity (NECESSITY) to try minimalizing my possessions I took on the daunting task of
cleaning out my home and packing my livelihood into three suitcases. Okay, so I still have like, 10 boxes of stuff stored at my parent's house. But I think I did alright. Inch by inch, right? Life is a
process like that, I suppose.
Here are some things that helped me throughout the
moving/minimalizing process:
- Work in stages. I began the process of cleaning out my apartment months before I was leaving on the trip. I worked one day at a time organizing my possessions into three piles: keep, donate, trash. What helped me most was starting now and starting small. Even by just going through one drawer a day made a difference.
- Sell your stuff and earn MONEY. Selling your possessions can also act as incentive to get rid of more things and make parting with your favorite "whatever-it-is" a little easier. You can sell clothes at consignment stores (like Crossroads) and Books/CDs/DVDs at most used book stores (like Half Prices books). The internet has countless website to help sell your possessions (craigslist, eBay, etc.).
- Digitalize your memorabilia. Instead of keeping the big shoe box of letters & cards anyone has ever written to me, I took pictures of them and saved the pictures onto my hard drive. The words and memories are still with me, just taking up much less space.
my yttp graduation card - Choose one item to symbolize something more. For example, I choose to keep a small box filled with tiny memories. Each of the items in here represents a time in my life. And this small box is all I need to remind me of all the lovely times that have befallen in my life.
mini memory box - Give. Something I wish I would have done more of. Either by making a “please take” box that people could peruse through or giving a gift to someone each time I saw them. It feels good to give!
No comments:
Post a Comment