Making a clean sweep in life
Have you ever felt so stuck, so trapped by your life, and your possessions that everything came to a head, and you just said, “fuck it!” And swept it all off the board, leaving you with a fresh clean slate?
It took me a few tries and a lot of years, but I think I have finally accomplished it.
I’m not really one for things, I am actually quite minimalist, and I’m certainly not a hoarder. However, after living in the same one-bedroom apartment for ten years, every crevice and corner was stuffed with objects that; I didn’t even know I owned. I worked 12 hour days and spent another hour or two in rush hour traffic. And I just felt trapped.
I felt like didn’t have time for anything, and I didn’t go anywhere or see anyone. I got up before the sun rose, walked my dog (usually in the rain) then commuted in rush hour traffic to my stressful job. And when the sun had set, I turned around again through rush hour traffic to go home to my couch, where I collected dust with my ever-growing collection of stuff. And thank goodness for my dachshund Reese, since I’m pretty sure she’s the only thing that got me out of the house for years.
I tried a few things, but they only seemed to be bandaids for the real problem.
I put my condo on the market — during a great time to sell — and I moved back in with my parents and brother as roommates outside of downtown. I also told my boss; I was super stressed and wanted to quit, so I gave notice. Of course, I gave plenty of notice and ended up taking a promotion into a leadership role in a different part of the business. The changes helped for a while — bandaids — but ultimately that stuck feeling came back.
Selling my condo was a big stress reliever for me. In that, I used the opportunity to reduce the number of possessions; I had. I: pared down my wardrobe, tossed books, DVDs, old linens. And when we merged our three kitchens into one, I let go of a few items that had seen better days. However, now that my wardrobe was leaner, it seemed to give me license to purchase new clothes. Which was needed since I had been stagnated by my overflowing walk-in closet of clothes that were more than a decade old.
And the new place was helping me feel more “less encumbered” and more connected in that I was literally always with other people. But we still rent and live in a high-rise condo building in the city, where it rains eight months out of the year. And the new job had me getting up way before the sun rose to walk the dog in the rain. And while the commute was better and the pace outside of downtown was slower, I still found myself getting overwhelmed, stressed out, and still feeling trapped.
Even though I paired down my stuff when I moved, I still managed to keep a lot of things, most of which I crammed under my mattress — literally. When I bought my condo, I bought one of those storage beds with two huge storage spaces underneath that you just have to pull the mattress up to access. And my room has plenty of closet space for clothes so really I still had way too much stuff. And stuff that I never used or even looked at for years. I think; I probably raised the bed to get stuff out once a month or less in the two years that we have lived here.
At this point, it was starting to become clear that my anxiety was work-related when I noticed that during the drive to work, I became increasingly anxious, and it wasn’t going away on the drive home. So I gave notice and took some time off to de-stress and think about how I was going to fix this.
I decided that for me what might help reduce my stress and get me unstuck was; to further declutter my life. Tiny Houses are something that I have always been interested in and thought; they were cute. However, they were sort of a pipe dream for me since they aren’t legally allowed in my city. But the more I thought about it, the more that leaving the city felt like the right thing for me to do.
Getting a job that I can do remotely also helped push me in this direction since now it doesn’t matter where my home base is. This really made moving out of the city and really just moving a real possibility for me. And that decision, while stressful to make, has made me feel less stuck and trapped. For the first time in, I can’t even remember how long. I feel free.
I plan to move into a tiny house on wheels — THOW — and I have engaged a builder, and we are working on the custom design.
And so now comes; the true decluttering and paring down of my possessions. Because as of the end of this month — September 2018 — I will be homeless. The THOW won’t be ready for me until early 2019, but our lease is up, and this gives me the perfect opportunity to travel around the province looking for the perfect place to park my tiny home once it’s ready.
Of course, I don’t really want a permanent pad in some RV park nightmare either. What I truly want is the mobility to travel when the whim strikes, but the fact that the home itself moves with me means that I will always be at home where ever I go.
PS. Please read my newest stories to find out how my crazy plan worked out. I wrote my next instalment “My road so far” in the spring of 2020 and I am just publishing the third story now in February of 2022.
