Husband and I had a lovely 3 day weekend visiting with friends in San Diego. I get back to Burbank and I am so uninterested in writing. I have made some interesting dishes lately, but add on P90 and my desire to finish Dragon Age 2, you just aren't going to get a bunch of quality writing out of me.
I did learn something while I was away. Staying at Bam and Tam's house this past weekend, I realize that Husband and I live with a lot of stuff out and about. The BT household is an incredibly tidy one, free of extra things, light on knick knacks, and everything seems to have a place. Granted I have seen their garage, but knowing the couple, it is highly doubtful that it is heavy on "stuff".
So while we traveled back north, Husband and I had some serious conversations about our "stuff ratio". I know that I am the pack rat of the relationship. That comes from a childhood of keepsake boxes, a desire to memorize memories from an object (especially after my mother passed), and the lack of discipline of getting rid of things not needed. I come from a father whose mother kept everything just in case. Even with a basement bursting with things at the time of Grandma's passing, so was her bank account. The paternal grandparents never lived with too much, only just enough and incredibly frugally. I, unfortunately, learned the "keep it till you need it" mentality from that and not the practice of using the things in order to go without the new things.
My maternal grandparents, on the other hand, while living in a 1,100 sq ft (approximately) home, managed to keep SO much stuff as well. Both English Majors and lovers of books and art, their home was brimming with it, nay stuffed with it. From them, I learned the love of Decor (aka knick knacks) and the abundance of things on the walls. I like lived in homes that reflect who lives there. The thing I didn't know until recently is that a home doesn't have to be flooded with character, it just needs a taste.
Both Grandparents, while being keepers of stuff and things, have taught me inadvertently that I don't really NEED all the things. Mainly because I have seen the great "go through" that my family has had to do since they decided to keep things. In a few cases, that has proven to be helpful as I don't have to "fight" over things with my siblings for that one keepsake I want. Granted, I don't need all of those keepsakes. That is where I run into problems.
Coming back to Bam and Tam's house: They have 2 or 3 things that are specifically Heirlooms that they display in a place of honor in their home. They don't bog down every space with "this belonged to what's her name my mother's step sisters grand aunt" and "this was given to me by whosiewhatit". It was refreshing. It makes Husband and I want to live more want less lives. So we decided, especially since we plan on moving in April, to start purging.
We started in our living room area the day we got home from Bam and Tam's. I went through my junk drawer, cleaned up the coffee table shelf, looked at the counter tops and got rid of things that were on display that weren't meaningful to us. We still need to go through the books (I don't think that we will have much to get rid of with that section as we have pared it down quite a bit over the last year) and make sure everything we have we use in the world of media.
Husband is totally on board with this. As I mentioned before, I am the pack rat of the relationship, but he isn't a natural born minimalist. He just grew up having fewer things. Not that he was wanting or anything, but he doesn't really buy things frivolously and he gets rid of things easier than I do.I am excited to embark on this adventure with him.
Tune in tomorrow for my compiled list of tips and suggestions for living with less.
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