Don Kowalewski
Writer. Ad Sales and Marketing. Social Media Content Creator. Aeropress Coffee. Makes the best salsa in the world.
Need to Simplify
For the past 5 weeks, I’ve been displaced from my home. Nothing bad, don’t worry. We’re remodeling our kitchen and it’s a pretty major project, so major that our family-of-five had to move out. Blessing of blessings, my Aunt, who lives 1.9 miles away from us, was spending January and February in Florida and we’ve been able to live at her home.
Because her house is only 1.9 miles away, we pretty much were able to move out of our house in a matter of hours (my wife might argue otherwise, but trust me, compared to many doing major renovations, we had it easy). My Aunt’s house is fully furnished. We grabbed enough clothes to last us a week, loaded it into a suitcase, and we were out. I think we brought some pillows, some food essentials from our fridge to her fridge, and that was it.
Again, my wife would argue it was much more complicated, but for the point of this Blog entry and the point I’m trying to make, I’ve lived the last 5 or 6-weeks with much, much less than what I have at home. I have 5 wash-n-wear dress shirts. I have 5-shirts. I have one pair of athletic pants. A couple sweatshirts. Some socks and underwear. Pretty much, I have about 25% of my wardrobe with me, and it’s been more than enough.
I think I’m learning I …have …too …much …stuff. I’m American. We’re consumers. Having “too much” is very much our way of life. We work to make money to buy stuff. As George Carlin famously said, “we buy houses to put stuff in it.” And then we buy bigger houses when we eventually have too much stuff in our smaller houses.
Please don’t scroll back through my Blog and see the many, many entries with my Christmas and birthday wish-list, because, um, well, my life has been about acquiring “stuff.”
In six weeks, living out of a suitcase and cardboard box, I’ m rethinking what I need to live moving forward.
Like, what if I donated everything that I didn’t bring with me to my Aunt’s house during the renovation? I’ll bet I’d be fine. I can donate things to people in need. I can sell some things. I’ll have less things to take to the dry-cleaners and less things to clean around. I’ll feel more calm because I’ll have less clutter to contend with.
Things will be simple. Simpler. Here goes another 2017 initiative.
Betcha wonder how #Project44 is going? More on that, tomorrow. But “simplifying” is going to be added to that. Thinking, “44 items of clothes.” Something like that. More on this as the year moves along.
Don Kowalewski 