Living a Life with Less

by Nick Sturgeon | Jan 7, 2020 | Declutter

I volunteered recently at a countryside youth hostel for walkers and climbers, in the heart of the beautiful English Lake District. I was part of a ten person group who were there to prepare the hostel for the next six months of heavy use by visitors. We all worked together to clear rooms of furniture in advance of commercial carpet cleaners. In small teams of two and three we painted the common room and dining rooms, we painted corridors and stairwells. One day I worked outside and pushed wheelbarrows of gravel to create the paths around the campsite. On another I chopped up small branches and old timber pallets to create the kindling for the open fire in the main common room and bar area.

It was a brilliant week away from home, working at practical tasks each day and then being free in the late afternoon for a walk on the mountains that surrounded us and a chat in the bar and by the log fire each evening. Each day I chatted with whoever I was paired up with for our work and it was fascinating to see a glimpse of the lighter life in action for these other volunteers.

Rob had been working for the past year at a timber chalet holiday home site in Austria, ensuring that six cabins were always ready for the scheduled arrival of holiday makers. He had arrived back from Austria just a week before our working party in the Lake District. The next week he was going on to repeat the process at a hostel in Ambleside. Then again at other youth hostels in Keswick, Longthwaite, Settle, and on to York. All attractive places in the UK. In all he was going to be living and volunteering in eight different hostels on working parties over three months until he takes up a full time job at an adventure holiday site in Scotland from March to October.

Through our conversations I learned that he had only as many clothes as he needs for two weeks in between washing them. He keeps these in his car along with a laptop and half a dozen paperback books for his entertainment. He has no home and very few possessions.  The few things he regards as valuable he keeps stored at his stepmom’s house. Otherwise he lives by attending working parties at hostels for three months of each year and receiving a small amount of expenses money each time. The other nine months of the year he does paid full time work at holiday sites where he receives his accommodation for free.

He saves successfully because with no accommodation costs and all his food provided by the adventure camps, what can he spend money on. For two or three nights every ten days, between each volunteer week, he will either sleep in his car or stay over at a friends house, or go back to stay with his stepmother. Rob is 48 years old and has been doing this for the last ten years. He is financially independent and has significant savings.

The conversation with him about not having many possessions, not owning a house, and never having owned one, was a new perspective for me and opened up some fresh ways of looking at his experience and his approach to ownership, home and money. The obvious light-bulb moment for me was the realisation that for so many regular volunteers the companionship they get while on a working holiday is the reason they return so frequently to such weeks.

Do you need ALL those clothes?

by Nick Sturgeon | Jan 7, 2020 | Declutter

The cost of moving house, both in terms of paying for a removal company as well as the emotional cost of the effort and energy required, all of this can be high. In preparation for our most recent home move we each went through our clothes and decided what we wanted to take with us versus what we actually had in our drawers and wardrobes. We figured we needed to start somewhere with reducing the amount of ‘stuff’ we took with us.  Being charged by the number of crates we moved was a motivator to reduce costs by moving with less.  Why pay someone else to move the ‘junk’ and clutter you have accumulated?

One day in a very simple process I lifted out all the shirts from my wardrobe and laid them on the bed in a pile. I had two dozen shirts on hangers. Asking myself “Do I love this shirt and feel good when I wear it?” I went through them in ten minutes and let go of nine.

The fifteen shirts I hung back in the wardrobe are all smart, gorgeous or look great. In my chest of drawers I repeated the process and lifted out all twenty tee shirts, putting them on the bed so I could clearly see and touch each one. I repeated the process with a similar “Do I love this tee shirt and feel good when I wear it?” How many did I keep? Ten to keep and ten to bag for the charity shop.

In one hour I had removed the following clothes:

• Nine long sleeved shirts.
• Ten tee shirts.
• Three pairs of shorts.
• Three winter coats.
• Twenty seven neck ties.
• Three bed or sofa throws.

A total of fifty five items from one hour of focus. If I had looked through the items and thought to myself “Do I like this shirt?” or “Is this coat nice?” I may not have let any of them go. By putting a specific “Do I feel good when I wear it?” on the item I was making a much clearer, emotionally based decision. Four large bin bags went with me to the charity shop the next day and it felt great to hand them over and to understand that these clothes and the blankets could have a second life, being useful, good or comforting for another person. But when I stepped out of the goodwill store I felt amazing, I felt lighter in my own self.

This is what the ‘lighter life’ is all about, being in the place within yourself where you are letting go of the emotional baggage that comes with all the ’stuff’ that holds us back. Letting go of the physical so often brings with it a lifting of the emotional or sensed weight upon our shoulders.  Much of the time we don’t even know this heaviness is there, but at the moment of letting something leave our space or our ownership, we then feel the lifting of the burden we had not known we were carrying.

Right, time to look in those wardrobes!

Living the Lighter Life

by Nick Sturgeon | Jan 7, 2020 | Declutter

Any of your possessions that overwhelm you, or cause you to think daily of the mess you live with,  these are a massive drain on you emotionally as well as practically, and there is no better time to put your focus on this issue than today.  If you are ever frustrated by the amount of stuff and how this might be holding you back, then you know must deal with it. The basics of you not living the life you want stem from the clutter you drag around with you.

Not happy with the cost of your home environment? You have so many options to make change for the better:

• Sell off enough that you can downsize to a more affordable property, or raise funds to place into savings and investments for the longer term.
• Take on a good part time job that will pay you regular income for your time, but put all those additional earnings into investments.
• Start a side hustle for some passive income with the potential to leverage upwards.

Disappointed that you have not followed up the hobbies and activities which bring you happiness? Make space for them in your home and you will free yourself up to put the activity in your diary and make it happen. Brush the dust off that skipping rope and start to use it.  Take your hobby gear out of the garage and get busy with what you love.

Fed up with your lack of social life or avoidance of good friendships? Declutter another space in your home for more good energy to replace the stagnation that has been holding you down and keeping you depressed or sad about the lack of social engagement with others. Clear a space  today.  It doesn’t have to be a whole room. Start with a shelf or that top drawer of underwear. Maybe go through one box that has been sitting in the cupboard below your stairs.

Living this Lighter Life is not restricted to reducing the emotional and physical weight of the items in your home, though you do need to give attention to the fact that letting go of physical things does create a sense of feeling lighter about your situation in general. It gives you as well a great sense of immediacy about your decision making abilities. Where the excess of belongings in your space is creating the actual appearance of a home that is filled or cluttered or ‘stuck’, the opposite of this is that a reduction of those belongings brings with it the real opportunity to take advantage of the better things that will make themselves available.

Get busy letting go of those things which no longer serve you, support or make you feel happy.

If you went through your wardrobe how many items could you let go of, removing them permanently from your drawers and wardrobes? How would it feel to only keep the clothes you adore and which you feel great in?

Take a walk around your living room and consider the items that you don’t truly love. A picture you can live without, some cushions or a throw rug you have not really ever liked, a family heirloom that you have out of guilt rather than love for the person it once belonged to. You can pack these things up and put them aside for a week.  Any second thoughts will allow you to hang onto one or two of the items which you miss, but now you are free to take the box down to your goodwill store and donate it to a cause who will be grateful for your donation.