Several years ago I began a "minimalist" approach to my lifestyle and I am just now finishing up. When I started I had a 2000sqft 4 bedroom house full of stuff, garage full of stuff and I was overwhelmed. I started listing 10 things for sale every week on craigslist or ebay. I gave anything under $10 in value away to charity. I held garage sales. Eventually I sold my house and got an RV and put rest of my stuff in storage but I hated paying for storage so I slowly dwindled that down too. It involved making some tough decisions like throwing out nice mattresses or donating precious items. All my photo albums and videos got put into digital format and I threw out about 100 photo albums and 100 VCR home movies. I donated buckets of clothing. I am proud to say after 4 years of hard work EVERYTHING I OWN is in my truck camper or in my small safety deposit box for important documents. I have no storage unit. Trust me, it is worth it! If you are ever anxious, tell yourself you only live once. Also, throw away anything that can easily be rebought at walmart or wherever. I would find myself stressing out about dumb things like ice trays "Will I want ice in the camper or not?". Well Walmart or dollar stores sell ice trays for like $1-2 so who cares! Toss em! In the end I found out the most important lesson for me... no matter how stressful throwing/donating things is, it was far more stressful to my health to keep them. Now I am free and I can go where I want and I have nothing tying me down, no expensive storage bills, no house with utility bills and upkeep!
