THIS IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

Apr 22, 2016 by

A reader recently sent us this letter and we think it pretty special:

Thanks LifeEdited! You are helping fuel our resolve to continue on our journey simplicity.

Our story began the summer of 2014.  My husband and I found ourselves empty nesters, in a huge house, with a huge yard, and a huge to-do list of chores and have-to’s. Our bank account non-existent, our paychecks going out the window faster than we could deposit the paychecks.  All the stuff in the world hadn’t made us happy, only miserably in-debt.

So we decided to break out of the box we’d climbed into and regain financial freedom and our joy. We spent five months purging and preparing our home to put on the market to sell.  We must have done a great job because we put our house on the market on December 31st, 2014 and on January 20th, of 2015 we were sitting at the closing table!  Our heads spinning, three-Fourths lighter in possessions, we helped a wealthy friend care take his 14,500 square foot, multi-building, 65 acre estate in Cincinnati, Ohio for eight months, which helped us eliminate almost completely all of our credit card and vehicle debt!  Ashamed to admit it, but when we sold the house we were $37,280.00 deep in debt!

We now rent a very cool 1000 square foot apartment in Historic Covington, KY. While 1000 square feet, probably sounds huge to you over at LifeEdited…for us it’s 1/4th of the space we used to have. Gone are all the dusty collections, over 35,000 books, and 500 pieces of white pottery. Gone are the days of spending nights and weekends tending to the maintenance, repair and upkeep of a huge home. Gone are all the things I felt compelled to hold onto for ridiculously sentimental reasons, just because I felt guilty about letting them go. (Trust me when I say this, Aunt Millie…who’s been dead for three decades, really doesn’t give a shit if I still have her casserole dish!). Gone are the endless headaches attached to caring for all that stuff!  Gone are the dozens of bills flooding the mailbox each day. In exchange, we’re finding freedom, peace of mind, tranquility, time for random timelessness with friends and loved ones.

Our example is helping our sons relearn and reset priorities. It feels great. We’re still working on streamlining our current possessions, because let’s face it, the world keeps screaming “you need this!” all the time, and people around us still haven’t figured out that what we want is to just share our lives with them, not get stuff from them….so we’re working on what to do with those gifts from loved ones, that you just don’t need or love.

The biggest shift for us has been becoming “appreciators” instead of “consumers.” Appreciators see beautiful things and think, “Oh, how beautiful that is and take time to delight in it.”  While Consumers are people who see beautiful things and think….”I must possess that!”

I just wanted to stop and take the time to say thank you for helping inspire me today to stay the course and not take two steps back into that old life that I so do not want to ever repeat!

Less, truly is the key to opening the door to a life filled with more abundance.

LTS & GGS

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