Monday, May 31, 2010

The Great {Material} Cleanse!

Starting tomorrow, my husband and I will follow through with our plan to get rid of at least half of the material possessions we own. We both feel the house is too cluttered (most would disagree:) and there is so much we do not need or do not use.

We are starting with the kids things. They will be parting with MANY toys that never get touched and the puzzles and games they have become bored with and two of the three toy boxes. We will be donating the entire VHS collection and donating half of the books, ours and theirs. We own a ton of books, literally. (The library and Netflix will be a fine substitute.)

I started getting into my closet today and already have 2 giant bags ready for the thrift store and I can not wait to get into the attic and basement.

I'm so excited about doing this and it is part of a grander scheme that we have been pondering for years that may finally be put into action. Websites like this and blogs like this make me realize it can be a reality. We are also intrigued by families like this one that made their dreams a reality and live in a paradise.

I plan to blog further into detail about our grand adventure in the near future. This idea is part of a six month plan to dramatically change our way of life. It is easy to loose sight of ideas like this, or have them put down by friends and family that think we are nuts, but this is something we really want to try. We tried the "American Dream" plan, and although we are living happily in the burbs with our house and fenced yard, we are not quite content.

And even if we only end up on the road temporarily, we still plan to sell our house and move somewhere else.

I will blog some updates on The Great Cleanse and maybe get some before and after photos. Now I am off to list a bunch of furniture on craigslist and load some things in the car for the thrift store.

4 comments:

  1. I can't wait to hear all about this! We have been attempting something very similar, but I am having some issues with my soon to be 6 yr old. Since I put her in Kinder this past year, and with my depression and all, she has been "exposed" to so much junk...food, entertainment, materialism. I'm going to take her "de-schooling" and "cleansing" slowly, but I can already see that this past year has created somewhat of a monster.

    You can be some of my inspiration :)

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  2. Funny you mention that cheyenne, our 6 yo son, although he has never been in public school, is exposed to these things by the other neighbor kids. There are a lot of children on our block. He really wants to go to school next year (1st grade) and in the past few weeks has been questioning our differences from others in the neighborhood and calling us weird etc...
    (unschooling, tree hugging, vegetarians etc..)I am not sure where this is coming from (ok, I know it is mostly from these other kids and their parents) but we are just not quite sure how to handle it all...It was so much easier when he was younger...sigh...but we are trying to not loose sight of our goals and trying to get him excited about this adventure, so far he is mostly on board...I know as a kid being 'different' is not easy and hope some day soon he realizes just how lucky he is to be raised different. It helps when we get together with other like minded families for activities and he realizes there are a lot of other families like us, just not in our neighborhood.

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  3. I just found a homeschool play group with similar interests, so I am eager to meet these families and get her playing with kids who are like minded. I am glad to know that I am not alone in this! It would be so easy to just put her back in school and not deal with it, but that would go against my beliefs and not be true to who we are. I am sure things will get easier once she realizes that her world is really not ending! :)

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