The Refreshing Purge

Is it weird to get a little enjoyment out of purging things out?

I've usually been one in my life to spend time doing things instead of going around buying needless shit. This has mostly stayed true for my adult life, although when you have a wife and a family there tends to be some modifications to that, but thankfully the underlying principles tend to hold true.

One of the things I realized a few months back was that we were starting to collect random shit again... and I needed to slowly work towards getting that down to a more manageable level! We aren't ones to go out and buy a few hundred dollars worth of junk like games, pillows and other things that we just end up stuffing in a corner and forgetting about it. There is a lot of toys and things like that, which end up getting played with quite well but eventually go to the wayside and often get broken. Once they get a little broken, they get forgotten and then end up in the toy box.

This has been par for the course for several years now, which is understandable as kids get older. Their interests change and although they really enjoyed the thing they were playing with, they eventually forget about them and move onto other things they like. It is no different in our house, except that we've done a pretty good job at managing to keep that stuff down as much as we could.

With the holidays and birthdays over, there needs to come a time after that where we take a little bit of inventory and stock of what we've got. What still gets used, what doesn't and what do we need to get rid of. There were plenty of things that got put into the donate bag for other kids, but there were also a pretty considerable amount of small stuff that just wasn't worth trying to put together in a donate bag.. so into the barrel it goes.

I don't love putting these things into the waste, but they weren't in the best shape to try and sell, and they were also not in good shape to donate to someone else but they weren't completely broken yet. When the kids move on from something, you tend to have to just give it up and let it go. Considering we don't have a bunch of extra space to store things for a few years before we find someone to give it to, off it goes.

I think this is an interesting thing to think of - in the world we live in we are constantly being pushed to buy this and that latest thing. Sometimes we give in, sometimes we don't. What the challenge ends up being is trying to get back to that minimalist lifestyle where we have to figure out "do I WANT this or do I NEED this?" If I want it, it is likely not something that I need to acquire. If I need it, how badly do I need it? If it's something that can be delayed a little bit, it's not a bad idea to delay it so that we can figure out other things to exchange or get rid of.

This is the everlasting battle of a parent and an adult that is interested in trying to move towards minimalism. It's a struggle but it's worth fighting the good fight because it has positive implications in many of our other aspects of life, most frequently in the financial side!

What about you, do you like being able to clean things out of your house every once in a while? Let me know in the comments!