A couple of days ago I wrote a post called Memories Over Things where I talked about our families journey to simplifying our life by choosing to live a more minimalist lifestyle.
I asked you to join in with me and use the hashtag #memoriesoverthings
I've had a lot of feedback and I'm so happy to see that so many people and families are interested in living with less and focusing on creating more memories instead of buying more things.
One question that I've been asked a lot is how do I decide what should stay and what should go?
"Should It stay or should It go now? Should It stay or should It go now? If It goes there will be trouble and if It stays there will be double"
This is how I decide...I sing The Clash :)
But in all seriousness....
There are three important questions I ask myself before I decide to let go of something.
1. Do we use it?
2. Do we love it?
3. Do we need it?
I'll give an example of a few big items our family has recently let go of lately.
We had this beautiful dresser and mirror from our first house that we brought to our current house.
We didn't have the space for it in any bedrooms so we decided it would be great for extra storage in our kitchen. It served its purpose well for 11 months but last week we decided to let go of both items.
We asked ourselves these questions
1. Do we use it?
Yes we used it. We actually used the mirror and dresser every single day.
I stored a lot in those dressers from bills that needed to be paid to tupperware containers.
We also looked in that mirror a lot :)
2. Do we love it?
Absolutely. I loved the mirror because it was big and silver and the dresser was Ikea and a white finish, what's not to love?
3. Do we need it?
Did we need this mirror? No.
We have other mirrors in the house so this mirror was not a need.
Did we need this dresser? No.
Yes it was nice to have extra storage but simplifying our lives and letting go of our things means living with less. We moved some items into the kitchen cabinets, donated things we hadn't used in months and suddenly we realized we hadn't needed this as much as we originally though we did.
So this is how I make the decision of what should stay and what should go.
Another perk to letting go of your stuff is you can actually make some money in doing so.
By selling the dresser and mirror I ended up making $260 that we put towards paying down some debt we have. We also have WAY more room in our kitchen. My husband keeps walking around the table and saying "look at all this space we could've had from the beginning"
How do you decide what should stay and what should go when decluttering?
Don't forget to use the hashtag #memoriesoverthings
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