Moving toward simple. In with the new means out with the old.

Our financial situation, although very stressful and completely exhausting, is turning out to be a blessing.

For me, anyway.

Because it has forced me to prioritize.

And in prioritizing, I have had to do some purging.

Purging of habits and purging of actual stuff.

Because I am learning that in order to get out of this financial shit storm, I need to do two things.

I need to get rid of unnecessary expenses, and I need to get rid of stuff.

I have to purge things that aren’t necessities.

And what I have learned is that those things that I thought were necessities weren’t even, um necessary.

I used to be addicted to the television.

Literally addicted.

We had to get rid of cable because we just couldn’t afford it.

But now that it’s gone, even if I discovered a bag of money on the back steps or won the lottery or Ed McMahon showed up on my front door step, I don’t think I would ever get cable again.

Cable was completely unnecessary. And it was cluttering up not only my checkbook, but my brain.

Once the cable was gone, I started to think about other things that could go, too.

Then, coincidentally, the most recent chapters I’ve been reading in Living the Simple Life (by Elaine St. James) have had to do with decluttering.

And not buying stuff.

Lucky for me I have never been a big shopper.

So not having money to go shopping just for the fun of it hasn’t been a big deal.

But I have noticed that I have an initial reaction to tell myself when I see something that I really need to buy it.

Like I’ll go to the grocery store and see those big 8-foot tall cages with those plastic balls for the kids to play with and I’ll think,

“I should get one of those. The kids need some of those”

And then I think, I did not have plastic balls on my grocery list.

I don’t need those.

And now that simplifying is a priority for me, I think to myself, will those make my life easier?

The answer is no. No, they won’t.

They would occupy my kids for approximately 10 minutes.

Then, the kids will lose them and throw them at each other and fight over who has whose and then one will undoubtedly get a microscopic hole in it and whoever the owner of that one is will wake up the next morning and start crying hysterically when their ball is one tenth the size of everyone else’s.

They would make my life more complicated. Not more simple.

That has got me to thinking about the kids’ toys.

Last week I put some of their stuff out by the side of the road along with a “free” sign, and a lot of it was taken immediately.

And my kids haven’t noticed. They don’t miss it.

I don’t even know if they realize they had it to begin with.

That really got me to thinking.

This past Saturday we went to an amusement park for the first time with all the kids.

They had an amazing time, and we will all remember that day.

If I am going to spend my money on something, I want it to be on an experience for my children.

Because my kids won’t remember most or any of the gifts they received for their birthdays in ten or twenty years.

But they will remember the experiences.

They will remember the trip to the amusement park.

They still remember the trip we took to the Bronx Zoo for Number 4’s 6th birthday.

But Number 4 can’t remember what any of the gifts she received were.

And she has the memory of an elephant.

So tomorrow is Number 5 and 6’s birthday.

Yes, they will each get a present or two.

But in Living the Simple Life, one of the chapters I just read was entitled, “When You Bring in Something New, Throw Out Something Old.”

I have heard this before.

But I’ve never been able to actually do it.

The example of buying a new couch was used in this chapter.

When you buy a new couch for your living room, you don’t keep the old one just in case you might need it some day. Or because you need a back up.

You get rid of that shit.

In fact, you do it in record time.

Same for if you bought a new bed.

You wouldn’t keep the old one. You want to get rid of that sucker as quickly as possible.

But we do that with clothes.

Which brings up two points.

One, when the new stuff we acquire is smaller, we rationalize keeping it because we can squeeze one more thing into our closet or our drawer.

And that is how things accumulate and become out of control.

But here is the other thing.

If we don’t want to get rid of the clothes that we already have and there is nothing wrong with them, well…

Why are we buying more clothes?

We wouldn’t buy extra couches and beds just because they were pretty. We wouldn’t buy them just because they were on sale and were a bargain.

So I talked with all the kids about this today.

And on Thursday, the day after Number 5 and 6’s birthday, they will choose some things to get rid of so that the accumulation of too much stuff stops.

That is our next step in the simplification process.

Less accumulating. More doing.

And quality, not quantity.

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