Hello! We are back in action. We have gathered a bit more wood from Craigslist. With the possible start date of May 2014 fast approaching, the next step for us is to downsize our current house. Like most of you we have tons of stuff. We have been fortunate to have moved twice in the past three years. Every time we moved we relocated to a smaller and smaller apartment. This is good because it made us really give up "stuff" to fit into our new abodes. Currently we are in about a 900 square foot A-frame cottage. It has an upstairs with a slanting ceiling and you have to take a bath or a sitting shower due to the ceiling slope. the down stairs is pretty conventional with a large living room and a galley kitchen. The living room is a long rectangle room, which is slightly larger than our tiny house foot print would be. I looked at the room one day and asked my husband to help measure out the tiny house onto the living room floor. We taped the dimensions using painters tape and now we have a true idea the size where we need to fit all our possession in. It is a perfect size but not without purging more items from our current house. So off to work I go!
This brings me to the wonderful world of purging. What needs to go, what needs to stay, what can I live without??? All questions I have to answer. Actually it hasn't been all that difficult and the hidden benefit has been since I have less stuff, I have less stuff to worry about. I have less uncompleted projects, and less stress to have to fix, clean, or do something with all this stuff. Amazing! I will warn you that sending clutter off to others is addicting. And if you true find that you sent something off and you end up needing it, well you can pick most household items at the local thrift store. I will now bring in the term "Renting". I have many items at took up alot of room, such as a large canner pot for water bath canning. I spent $6 buying it from the thrift store. I "rented it" for $6 for a season, and I sent it back to the thrift store, where next year, depending on if I do large amounts of canning, I will rent another one for a similar price. It is worth it to me not to have a mammoth of a pot that I used for 2 months, hovering over me on top of my fridge, reminding me it will be another 10 months until I may or may not use it.
Next I tackled my closet. Today I have a lot less clothes than I use to. At one time I had a very large walk in closet (the size of my current bathroom) and it was full of clothes. When I moved, alot of the clothes went to the thrift store. At this house the closet is very small, but I made mention to my husband that when we move to the tiny house our closet will be a bit smaller and will need to fit both of us. With this I am taking a harder look at what I actually wear and what it just there to fill the "just in case" scenarios. Such as, I have two little black dresses, which I have not worn either of them since I got them. They are there "Just in case" .....right....just in case what? I needed to attend two dresses for dressy functions that had all the same people in the same week? Somewhere a skirt would not do? As of yet I haven't even been to one such event. So this weekend I will try on them both and decide which one will be set free to the thrift store, where it can be loved by someone else.
Take a look at your closet. Do you find that you where the same pants all the time, yet you have 10 pairs of pants? So the question would be why would you keep things that don't fit, is being dated in your closet, you don't love, and is taking up space. Set it free!
This is how I am now downsizing my house. I am sending things out that I don't love, but someone else might. Things that no longer work for my space.
Every once in a while I will have something that will make it to the door of the thrift donation and I just can't take it in. My Serge would have been one of those items. I left it in the car for two days pondering why I am so resistant to let it go. I thought of the last time I used it? (3 years ago). Do I love it? (NO I have a love when it works and a hate when it gives me fits). Would keeping it help me achieve any goals? (No) Does it do something that my sewing machine couldn't do? (Well not really since I know how to french seam). You can see the line of thought. With that I took it to the donation center the next time I had a car load full and I haven't looked back since.
Instead of giving it away, I have sold some items too. This extra cash gets deposited in the tiny house fund. Take a look at selling on Craigslist, Ebay, Etsy, or the local consignment shop. You may find some hidden $$ that you didn't even know you had.
I will try to keep you up to date on the progress. I really wish I had before photos of my house awhile ago. But I was not wanting to show the world what a clutter bug I had become, however now it would have been a freeing photo of where I started and how far I've come.
