Have you ever gotten to the point in your life where you feel overwhelmed by how much stuff you have? How much house you have to take care of? How cram-packed your closet and drawers are? How full your pantry and refrigerator are? How cluttered the garage is that you cannot even find a hammer, even though you know you have four?
We weren’t far off from that, despite being pretty neat, clean and organized people.
We were a pretty normal, everyday family. Married when we were young, we had two awesome kids, a boy named Dylan and a girl named Riley.
With each child, we outgrew our homes and ended up buying a large mountain home on two beautiful acres in Conifer, Colorado.
We loved our 5 bedroom, 3 bath mountain home and did many upgrades to make it just perfect for us.
Funny when you move into a bigger home how you don’t really have enough furniture to fill it, and then before you know it, your home is fully furnished and stocked to meet all your daily needs. How did that happen?
I suppose you could say we “grew” into it. And it was perfect, for many years. Of course, I was an avid “spring cleaner”, cleaning out the old to bring in the new. Commercialism at its finest. It worked though. We were a happy family, living a happy life, in a home where we never had to go without.
Until our kids flew the coop!
All of a sudden, our home felt “huge” and almost unmanageable. Who NEEDS all of this?
Maybe we were experiencing some sort of mid-life crisis, but we both knew that we did not need all that we had, and in fact, we were pretty overwhelmed by what was stored in our home.
Expecting some friends to stay with us for a couple of months, we started to “declutter”. In that process, I literally took truckloads of “stuff” to be donated. It saddened me that we had so much stuff to just give away.
How did this happen? How did our nooks and crannies become so full of things that meant little to nothing to us?
Despite being frustrated at our collection of hollow items, decluttering made us feel so good, spacious, and simplified.
That was it! Those feeling were pervasive and penetrated many of our conversations about downsizing. We talked about living in a smaller home with easier maintenance, and far fewer possessions. SO, we started talking about moving and making this talk our reality!
I’m sure many new empty nesters experience similar thoughts and feelings, but this was a giant step for us, and one that we could not have anticipated the actual outcome 12 months later.
So the process began. We made the commitment to relocate into something smaller, somewhere new.
We began cleaning out our house, going room by room. We evaluated our possessions on their value, sentimental value, and whether or not we had utilized them in the 20 years we lived in our home.
We had a big sale, gave away a few things to family or friends, made 2 boxes (only) for each of our kids, organized a few sentimental things we wanted to keep and donated ALL of the rest.
We moved to the city and lived in an 800 square foot furnished mother-in-law house, attached to a garage.
We took our clothes and a few other personal belongings including our bikes and a couple family photos.
The separation from “stuff” was liberating!
Hey, we could live anywhere like this!
Well, let’s do it then.
And there began our search for work internationally. I began applying to international schools, literally all over the world. A few offers came in and we settled on an opportunity in Tortola, British Virgin Islands.
In under a year, we have cleaned out our family home of 20 years, down to the barebones of furnishings and possessions. We gave our kids the opportunity to “rent” our house as we go out and explore the world for a bit.
We lived in a small “garage” with very few possessions and couldn’t be happier. Now, we are moving to an island where we will continue to live simply and continue our quest to downsize, including our societal expectations of time.
Love our minimalist life.
