Downsizing and Simplifying
Finding peace in a chaotic world
A little over a year ago, my husband and I downsized. We found a charming home in a new neighborhood and absolutely love it. It’s perfect for us. However, moving from a larger house to a smaller one came with a common challenge.
What are we going to do with all that stuff?
In a spacious home, it’s easy to accumulate unnecessary belongings over the years as we filled rooms with trinkets, duplicate items, and impulsive purchases. Carefully walking through each area of the house in preparation for the move, we were struck, almost as if for the first time, by the volume of clutter that occupied our life. It did not feel like clutter because it was neatly organized within a larger house but in a smaller home, it will quickly overwhelm.
We soon faced the daunting task to let go of many attachments. It’s not easy to discard things you’ve walked past thousands of times. Items purchased decades ago were enthusiastically placed in our home and then left to gradually fade into the background.
That’s the nature of familiarity.
What once excited us slowly melted into the scenery. It's as if material possessions merge with our very essence and become invisible, growing heavier to carry around with each passing year.
The need to downsize became even more apparent when we began renovations last month. While we love our new home, it’s outdated and we want to modernize it. We started with the master bathroom.
Our goal is to simplify and create space to breathe.
As I took stock of what I actually used in that bathroom, I realized it is only a fraction of what is there. With that in mind, we decided to remove a wall and opted for a smaller cabinet. It’s incredible how little space you really need to live comfortably.
Check out before/after pictures
Learning to live with less is incredibly freeing. It showed us that a fulfilling, joy-filled life does not mean excess. In fact, it often means the opposite.
Therein lies the challenge. Society sends the message that if you’re unhappy, you must be missing something. What they are really saying is “I have what you need to be happy so BUY NOW!”
That’s the nature of capitalism.
Capitalism itself isn’t bad. In fact, I would not trade it for any other system. I value freedom far too much. And I offer tools here to help you feel grounded and at peace. But the final choice must be yours.
If you buy into the illusion that you are incomplete, you risk buying things you do not need. You will feel the satisfaction of that newly acquired purchase and mistakenly believe that feeling will last. It’s human nature to do this. However, when the newness fades into the background, which it will, you begin your search again.
This pattern reinforces the belief that happiness and peace exists outside of you and that is the greatest lie of all
As you embark on your search, keep in mind that you will encounter plenty of people eager to offer advice. Consider it all feedback. While many have good intentions, others will not. Either way, people offer advice based on their own ideas about what they see as best. It may not be best for you. Ultimately, you are the only one who can decide.
How do you know what’s best?
When you tune into your divine wisdom, you will find clarity. It’s the space beyond your fear, the place where true guidance comes through. Some call it God, others call it intuition. I call it your “Inner GPS.” But again, it’s all feedback, and this feedback offers you a way to better understand yourself and the world around you.
The challenge of downsizing turned out to be a beautiful transformation for both of us. It revealed how wastefully we live, so common to our American way of life. It also provided one of the greatest lessons I learned, which is that peace is not something you need to chase. It’s something you already have. The key is to learn how to access it and then how to remove everything that stands in its way.
If this speaks to you, leave a comment. Share below how you find peace in this chaotic world.
We sold our 3 bedroomed, 2 bathroomed house, 2 cars and 99% of our possessions to have a narrow boat built to live on in 2021. We travel around the UK canal system on it, plus we've just bought a motorhome, so we can go to places we can't access on the boat. It's a totally different lifestyle to our old life, but as retirees we have everything we need and we're having adventures whilst we're fit and well enough to do so 🙂 Karen