The End.

~ sophiesparkles321 ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a pretty big year for all of us. For me, it has encompassed a lot of transition, changes, and complete adjustment to a new plan that I’m still developing. A lot weighs on my mind, and I’m trying to figure out ways to remove some of that load in order to learn to have better balance and stronger focus on the endeavours I choose to keep.

For this reason, fresh from my big win of moving out of storage and completing the last move of my things into my home, at long last, I’ve decided to bring Life With Less to an end. I have written content for the last 8 years, over 50 posts, and it has been such an instrumental part of processing and assessing what I own, in order to learn to make decisions about parting with items. I’ve grown up, been through nearly a decade’s worth of life changes and then some, and celebrated a lot of mini wins along the way. Publicly posting has been a form of accountability. It’s also served as a memento of the journey.

I hope in a few months, once things settle more, I can write maybe two more posts that are still dancing around my head, a big one being that I’ve done it! I’ve finally gotten rid of all the stuff I don’t need, and am moving forward into the future of dealing with only daily/current clutter. Maybe that’s a pipe dream, I don’t know.

For now, I thank my subscribers for allowing me to land in your inboxes once a week for the last few years. Thanks to other readers who have read a piece of my story. I wish you all well. The blog will still remain live, for those who’d like to go back through the archives to read more of my story or to get some perspective on a given declutter topic.

I can be reached under my real name of Rebecca, at the following if you have any queries or would like to learn a little more about my travels:

Thanks again, and happy decluttering! I’m so glad to be mostly living on the flipside, in the land of intentionalism and minimalism. All the best!

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Storage

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Things have evolved pretty quickly in a good way lately. Firstly, I freighted my car from Adelaide and it’s now, finally, with me once again. You have no idea how helpful this is, because I’m sporting a hip injury at the moment that flares up with too much walking. But it also means I can transport stuff to and from the storage unit up the road without lugging it by hand. Furthermore, my November lease end is rapidly encroaching and causing me worry because there is still so much uncertainty. So, despite it feeling a tad early, I approached my realtor and asked if an extension on the lease was possible, and the short answer was yes. Hooray! It feels like this month I have managed to lighten my worry load significantly just with these two details. But it got me pondering the fate of my storage unit, which I had planned to get rid of this year once and for all, forever, once I moved and no longer needed the boxes it held temporarily. Whatever to do?

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Letting Go

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There’s a saying Kirsty says in the Art of Decluttering podcast, my no.1 motivator during this COVID season, and that is you have to sometimes “get your Elsa on” and let it go. It sits in my mind as I write this post, and in recent weeks as I feel intensely that my years of decluttering are coming to a close. Which is, like, something I never actually envisioned as part of the future I see in my mind. I see only what I need, I see a minimalist home, but the actual section that gets me there, of reaching the end, is just, well, blank in my mind. But here we are. I still have a few stories left to tell before we draw to a finale, don’t worry. Such as, letting things go.

I have been on a work break for a few weeks now, and seizing the opportunity to keep at my projects of going through stuff. I emptied my three school tubs. That was a catalyst, as this week I opened another two tubs and emptied them, one of which, has had childhood mementoes and stayed packed for maybe 20 years. Here’s what I noticed as I went through it. I have an awful lot of collections. Some I value, but although I know I spent money and energy collecting other items, the attachment is just gone now. Let’s take a look.

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Pandemic Productivity

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There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m starting to see it. That was my big breakthrough recently. I surveyed the piles of paper on the bed and they seemed small. There weren’t a lot of boxes around me anymore. Decluttering stopped seeming endless, and started to appear finite. I’m getting there at long last, and you will too. I’ve been quite busy during all these months at home. While others are relaxing with family and house mates, playing games and puzzles and lego, I’ve tried to end years of hoarding and clutter with a firm view of a different future. Here’s the gist of my progress in productivity.

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Holiday

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I found this old reflection from a holiday I took in 2016. It is so odd to read it in 2020. After I travelled so much in 2019 that I longed for a home, for the comfort and security of a place to call my own. After a pandemic shut down the world, shut down borders, rendered travel impossible. After a second wave of virus hit Melbourne and made it illegal to travel more than 5 kilometres from your doorstep. In a twisted way, it’s like I got my 2019 wish to an exaggerated degree. I look at those words below, about being passionate about travel, about living in the moment, about living an intentionalist life, and I feel it is a nice way to end the last month of Intentionalism posts.

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Travel

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My final piece on intentional living – travel.

Intentional travel is something of a careful blend of fun experiences, thoughtful money-spending and mindful values during a time you’re supposed to be relaxing and enjoying a break from everyday life. Can you really stay true your way of life when you are miles from home? I have learned the hard way that it’s indeed a very delicate balance.

I set off on a year-long overland holiday last year with a plan to publicly blog about how to travel sustainably. It had been suggested to me that to travel so extensively, it was best to have some ideas about what I was looking to get out of the trip, and that turned into a quest for sustainable travel. In short, I quickly found myself questioning what’s possible and how much value I’m bringing to myself and my destinations when I can’t get the balance right. Continue reading →

Values

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In the third instalment of this month of Intentionalism posts, I’m delving into an important part of the journey from minimalism to intentionalism. That is, the reflection and reassessment of one’s values. Along the journey, it is natural to want to shed old, unhealthy habits and mindsets in favour of a fresher outlook. Many turn to meditation, yoga, mindfulness, creativity and other kinds of self-reflection to think about what’s really important to them. The wise will evaluate and regularly re-evaluate themselves on a Wheel of Life* to notice when their values are falling out of alignment.

An intentionalist will then try to live life with their truest values at their core. In their daily routines and practices, they will work hard to keep balancing and re-evaluating their wheel as much as they possibly can. Continue reading →

Frugal is Not a Dirty Word

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Last week I introduced a month of posts dedicated to intentionalism, and I kicked off with a post about what it means to be intentional. This week looks at the first logical step, intentional spending. Which is basically, asking yourself a lot of questions before you buy. Many would say it is about living frugally. Frugal is not a dirty word. Yes, there are some people who take it to the extreme, but there can be many advantages to consciously thinking about, spending and saving your money. I went off to the Middle East for three years after living in poverty as a university student. And the money I saved from living frugally in that time paid off an old car purchase, bought a new car on my return home, paid off two credit card debts, two university degrees, saved enough to travel for months after I left, and all the while, flew business class and stayed in apartment hotels each year during vacations. How? Everything I did, came from intentional thought. Continue reading →

Intentionalism

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Isn’t this year just flying by and going snail slow all at the same time? I can’t believe it’s August and there is still so much uncertainty. Here in Melbourne we’ve just entered a stage 4 lockdown amid COVID-19 numbers spiralling. Well, I thought I’d break from the norm and, in keeping with my silver linings optimism, focus on something a little different this month: Intentionalism. Similar to minimalism, the journey a person takes typically starts with decluttering then going into minimalism, and then reaching intentionalism. That’s how I see it anyway. And each week this month, we will delve a little bit into the benefits of a life lived intentionally. This week, we’ll look at the journey and what it all looks like, so that the next posts featuring the benefits make a little more sense. Enjoy. Continue reading →

Data

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I have this drawer full of electronic data. By far, almost all of it is made up of copies of copies of copies. This is the problem with data, isn’t it? You back it up here, then you back it up again there later. My drawer tells the story of 20 years of technological evolution. Much like my videos, that I kept for years because I moved overseas while they were still in circulation, and never had the time, my own place and VCR to clear them, data storage was something that just kept evolving onto new devices and I never had it all together to sort out once and for all. Bet you’re not surprised about that! So how does one try to tackle years of photos, documents, videos and other data on a multitude of storage devices? How far back are we talking? Continue reading →