Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

by Tricia

My husband said one thing during our camping trip that left me pretty much speechless. It came about after our discussion about a smaller home. He said, “Why don’t we sell everything and start over?”

My silence gave me away. “You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” he said. I was thinking about it. At first glance, it seems pretty silly. There’s no way we’d make a lot from all of the stuff we have and then we’d have to buy new things. No, we couldn’t do that.

I broke my silence, “We couldn’t sell everything.”

“But, we could sell a lot of it,” he said.

By golly, I think he was onto something. In order to downsize our home and simplify our life, we really have to trim out the fluff from our lives. We trimmed a lot during our garage sales last summer, but there is still a lot left. Off hand, I can think of a desk that we really don’t use (except to put stuff on), an extra air conditioner and a cabinet we no longer use because everything was moved into the cabinet I used for the bald eagle collection I sold.

It’s not just the big things, either. My husband sorted through our kitchen and discovered that we have four spatulas, three slotted spoons, three solid spoons and three whisks. Do we need all of them? Nope. But somehow we accumulated them through the years. My guess is that I saw some on sale and bought the extras (I still fight bargain blindness!).

Let’s not forget about clothes. My husband brought up a great point, “I wash the same clothes all of the time – we don’t even wear half of the clothes that we have.” Again, he was right on. I have clothes that I haven’t worn in years, not because they don’t fit, but because I prefer to wear other ones.

I find it amusing that I thought we got rid of a lot of things last summer. Turns out, there is so much more we can sell and it won’t affect our quality of life at all. That’s the thing…I think we were so used to having excess things that it didn’t even dawn on us what was happening. We got so used to it.

My son is excited – we’ll be having another garage sale soon!

by Tricia

As I mentioned before, my husband and I had some interesting conversations while we were clearing the clutter out of our heads during our camping trip. The first one was regarding the cabin itself.

Our cabin was about 10 x 10. I didn’t have a tape measure, so that is my best approximation. It was a very comfortable size for a room, although their layout was poorly done to maximize space (they had a really weird bunk bed where the top bunk and bottom bunk were at a 90 degree angle). We’ll just say that the cabin was bigger than some rooms in our current house and a little smaller than others (our living room is about 13 x 13).

As we discussed the size, I already started thinking about the layout. To me, that cabin size would make for a comfy kitchen. Add another cabin on the other side and I could see our living room. Add a few more cabins and you have two bedrooms. That puts us at 400 sq. feet. At two more cabins for a bathroom and perhaps a little more space in the living room and you have a 600 sq. foot home. I should note that any future home of ours would have a basement so there would be added storage area and some peace of mind during a tornado warning.

With being in that cabin, it gave us a great feel for what it would be like living in a smaller home. Both my husband and I liked it. Of course, we had to discuss the screened in outdoor living room/porch that we would also have, but that is not included in a home’s size 😛 Next up, I would love to visit a small home to really get an idea if we would like it or not. I do believe our current home (about 1,100 sq feet) is too large and poorly laid out.

Is a small home for everyone? Of course not. I don’t think everyone should do it. But for us, where we are in our lives, our ideals are becoming more concrete. It doesn’t involve a huge home with a white picket fence. Sure, they are very pretty and grand, but who are we kidding? There’s no way we’d want to clean a large home – and there’s no way I’d want to spend the money to furnish it! The key to making a small home work would be to have a great layout and smart furniture/appliances.

Of course, not much can be done until our finances are in better shape. But we can keep looking at houses/plans and we can start doing another important step into turning all of this into a reality. That’s discussion #2 which I’ll write about tomorrow 🙂