Who I am and how I started.

I am a stay at  home mom of three boys ages 9, 6, and 4.  My husband and I have been together 13 great years. My husband is a collector of many things, baseball cards and comic books to name a few.  I myself, have not always been heading towards minimalism.  My husband and I married young and we didn't have much so everything that we had we kept.  We had boxes and boxes full of useless things.  So much we had to store boxes at both of our parents houses because we didn't have room for the stuff in our apartment.  Shortly before the birth of our third child we purchased our first home. We were full to the gills with things. I wouldn't list us as hoarders but every closet and storage space was full of things we "might" need.  

One year after we purchased our house the economy bottomed out.  My husband was laid off from his job permanently.  After numerous different jobs that never panned out we moved eight hours away from our home in Michigan to Wisconsin.  My husband currently has a very good job  and we have been here for 3 years.  

When we moved from Michigan leaving our home we had to use one of the biggest self moving trucks and  it was filled to the top. Closing the back door was a chore in its self and the embarrassing part was that we still had boxes stored at our parents.  I moved to Wisconsin sight unseen.  My husband found an apartment for us and I never once thought 'how are we going to fit all of this stuff in a two bedroom apartment'.  That changed the moment we unloaded everything into our new home.  Boxes were stacked to the ceiling with no place to sit. I muscled through it all and found places for the majority of stuff but our one stall garage was stacked with boxes.  Luckily our apartment had plenty of closets.  

We lived in the apartment for 1 year.  Slowly I started getting rid of things, clothes the boys outgrew, an old suitcase that we never used, etc.  I became a member of Freecycle and slowly started giving things away to people through the group.   We moved into a 3 bedroom duplex and moved everything with us.  After moving in and seeing that we still had closets stuff to the top, boxes in the garage and things with no home it occurred to me, "why am I keeping this all?"  I couldn't come up with an answer. 

I started with one closet, emptying everything into my living room floor.  It was the worst closet in our whole house. It held:

•  drawing easel and paper
•  chalk
•  gift wrapping supplies
• reusable shopping bags (40!)
•  file box
• broom and dust pan 
• 5 large candles 
• play dough 
• board games
• the extra leaf for our table
• misc. holiday decorations
• and a two unpacked boxes

I started unpacking the boxes and everything into the give away pile.  The boxes hadn't been unpacked since we moved from Michigan, we obviously didn't miss anything in them.  The drawing easel and paper, the majority of reusable shopping bags, all of the holiday decorations and some of the gift wrapping supplies were listed on freecycle.  What wasn't taken was dropped off at Goodwill.  The chalk, board games, and play dough were moved to the closet designated for the boys art supplies. 

The closet now holds a file box, leaf for our table, broom and dust pan, a few gift wrapping supplies and reusable bags.  The door closes without anything falling out.   The feeling of giving away things to other people was amazing but nothing topped the feeling of having a clean closet.  I can see everything that is in the closet and I know where everything is!  This started my addiction of getting rid of things before I even knew what a minimalistic lifestyle was.