Loving my life with less stuff
So a house that works for the human actually delivers many benefits. In the past there have been many activities that I felt that just had to be done and on reflection really did not add much to my quality of life:-
- The swimming pool….
- Mowing an acre of lawn
- Deck extension
- Additional bedrooms
- Man cave with stuff
And many more. We now have the emerging services to “declutter” our homes and our lives, is this really a necessary service to contract out to someone else? What if we could inherently build less into our homes and what would the benefit be for us in the here and now?
What did living like this feel like?
A constant list of to-do activities.
Exhaustion on weekends after a high demand working week
Inability to take on the important activities friends, travel or just a good book
What is the freedom you speak of like?
Sometimes less is more. Now I can say that living without all of these things in my life has allowed many more of my interests to be pursued. Travel, good food and great company being high on the list. Now I just don’t have any of the background concerns around leaving my place for extended travel. My home will still be there, but it isn’t an impediment to leaving at short notice to actually attend a birthday party, sail on a yacht or whatever comes up in my best life.
How did I get to this stage? Well the kids have grown up and left home (really they do at some stage) and I now have had the chance to question why am I doing these activities based on the expectations of others? Out health is far too often taken for granted yet when we eventually have a moment, or a scare, we often find that there has been a long term causal link. Eating, drinking and sleeping poorly are the big ones however the joy or satisfaction in your life might be the primary emotion to get right! Being ground down by an endless list of chores may not be all that conducive to your best life and I can say living without these chores is a blessing every day.
A joy to wake up, a joy to maintain (less is better) and always having available time you just cannot put a price on that. After all we only have the one journey and this should be spent living your best life. When you are thinking of your home consider doing more with less as part of your evaluations I can highly recommend it!