The Myth of More

 

When my first baby was small I was heavily influenced by others and the need to provide for him. If we went to another child's hose for mothers group and they had a toy that H Boy was interested in I would make a point to go out and buy it - because clearly he liked this toy and he needed it for his development.

He needed the musical ring stacker and the plastic musical bongo drums and the mega blocks dump truck and numerous other things that I am sure I bought without thinking.

The only thing was, I would get these things home and give them to him and they would just sit on the floor without being played with. 

I think that probably only 10% of thetoys we own ever get played with. 

Do our kids really need 6 Dump trucks and the latest roaring dinosaur gadget?

No - he will be fine without these things.

I have spent the last 6 months or so gradually reducing the toys to only those that provide valuable learning experiences. I feel like we still have a truckload of toys and there are some that very rarely get played with. 

As the new baby grows out of some of the toys I will give them to charity or pass them onto friends. 

I am so much more conscious now of the toys that I am bringing into the house. I learnt with the first baby that  many toys have multiple small parts which when strewn all over the house drive me mental.

I am glad that the less is more approach has found me now that we have two children. I couldn't imagine what it would be like otherwise!

In the beginning...

For a little while now I have been feeling an affinity towards living a more simplified life. I have been feeling the oppression of clutter and the excess of consumerism and it has been weighing me down.

A few weeks ago after reading a couple of excellent books (reviews coming up in future posts) I decided to begin accounting for everything I spend in a spreadsheet and also to begin living to a budget and being honest about it.  Very quickly I noticed a difference in how I was spending.

You see for years I have been the ultimate consumer. Utterly obsessed with consuming, living a completely throwaway lifestyle and basically having very little conscious though about any of it. But at some point I began to see the waste and it didn't sit well with me. Every time I threw out food that we didn't eat or vegies went bad in the fridge I felt a discord and could almost see the money being figuratively being washed down the sink. All the extra packaging in our lives drives me batty and I was sick of not being able to fit everything in the garbage at the end of each week for the amount of packaging being thrown away from stuff that we had bought.

Then there is the storage issues - things were piling up (and out) of the spaces we had available to store them in.

Something had to change.

I have felt like this for a while now and didn't really know how to approach it. There are plenty of blogs out there about simple living and examples of people doing it and doing it well. It makes it seem all a bit overwhelming - I didn't really know how to begin.

So this is where I chose to start. I am going to keep track of everything I spend for 365 days and track the items coming into and leaving the house (non consumable items). In the next 12 months we are planning on a major house renovation also - so it should be an interesting experiment. I am also hoping to learn more about simplifying our lifestyle and our home and living a more sustainable life.

I am going to blog about how I go about all of this as well as my thoughts and feelings throughout the process in this space.

I hope that you will enjoy coming along on the journey with me!