Over the past 25 years I've accumulated a lot of things.
I moved out of my parents house when I was 21 and moved into a 2 bedroom maisonette. All I had was a TV, a stereo, some CDs, a load of records and a single bed. My mum bought me a couple of handmade 2 seater sofas as a moving in present. My little maisonette was very empty and sparce.
However it didn't stay like that for long. A series of girlfriends and improvements in my income soon had an effect on the contents of my life. I lived in that little maisonette for almost 10 years, it was my bachelor pad. I drank a lot in it, I smoked a lot in it and I shagged a lot in it. When I moved into my first proper house I needed to hire a truck and rope in 4 friends to help me move out.
My first proper house was a 3 bedroomed Edwardian Semi and huge compared to the maisionette. Knocked through lounge/diner, master bedroom, lodger's room and then my 'mancave' room. Huge garden too. It was an inappropriately sized house for my new wife and I but we soon filled it up with stuff.
We stayed there for nearly 10 years. The lodgers came and went, the house got renovated, garden remodelled, 2 young children came along and my 'mancave' room became a nursery. You know the rest. I started to earn a better than average income and spent all of it and then some.
3 years ago we moved to a bigger house. This time we actually hired a team of removal men to fill a lorry to drive less than half a mile to move us into our new house. We did no lifting or carrying. The lorry was jammed to the max and we even had pieces of hand made furniture that wouldn't fit in the new house.
When we started to decorate each room of this house we realised that we had so much stuff. We had moved things from house to house and hadn't even opened the boxes. My brother recommended a book called the '100 Thing Challenge' by Dave Bruno and my interest in simplifying my life and possessions started.
This is my journey, not my wife's or my childrens. I'm the Photon who's trying to shed his baggage and wanting to travel light. I'm setting the example for my family.
This blog will chart the journey and record the progress. I've already started but there's a long way to go. It's not easy flirting seriously with Minimalism with a wife and 2 children.
It's not easy when my profession is in the Advertising Industry where my main brief is to get people spending more money buying more stuff.
I hope you enjoy my journey as it unfolds.
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