Small Beginnings

When I started doing research on tiny houses and living in them, most of what I found was focused on the experience of building and living in tiny spaces. I don't think any tiny house enthusiast would argue that those things are unimportant, but what I really wanted to know was what it was going to take for me to get to the place where I could say with confidence that I could fit everything I needed into a tiny house. Since I started looking, I've spent countless hours scouring the internet and I have found a few newer resources for downsizing, but nothing as comprehensive as I was looking for. The goal of this blog is to illustrate, from start to finish, what it's like to downsize from approximately 2000 square feet to 200 square feet. My hope is that it will help other people attempting to do the same and maybe find me some friends along the way. So why not dive right in!

My first step when I decided it was time to start de-cluttering was to create a calendar so that I could visually see what needed to happen each day. For me, it's a tool to help me stay on track but it's also a tool to give me boundaries. I know there are lots of people out there who, like me, start a project they're excited about and go at it full tilt until they've eventually expended all their energy and don't have enough left to make it to the finish line. I didn't want this to be that way so by creating the calendar, I'm hoping to limit that.

Today I started out really easy, mostly because I had a sleep study done last night so I got about 3 hours of sleep, but that's a different kind of blog story. I decided that the easiest way to start would be with taking down Halloween decorations. Now, you might be thinking "Pshh...Halloween decorations, that's like MAYBE one box of stuff sitting in the garage/attic!" The thing is, I LOVE Halloween. It's my second favorite holiday and I love decorating for it, so I had about three full storage bins of Halloween decorations. It's still not a lot but I wanted to start small and it was good timing because it coincided with taking the decorations down. It didn't involve any terribly difficult decisions but I have a feeling that once I get through the fall and Christmas decorations I'll be deciding to pare down even more on everything. This is what I ended up with:

That's one box about half full and it's not even all Halloween decorations...it's partially miscellaneous, non-holiday season decorations. Even though it was a small step, I'm feeling pretty good about my ability to let go of things. We'll see if that still applies when it's time to attack my bookshelf...that one might not go so well.