WE SOLD SOMETHING!!!!

The other night K and I finally listed our first 4 items on line with Amazon. Small things to get our feet wet and test the waters as it were.

One of the items we had listed was a box set of the first 4 Harry Potter books in paperback.

I know, not super exciting and not anything that really sets off any bells, but it's our first official sale of consumer items serving our two primary goals: getting rid of clutter and consumer debt.


There are loads of books and comics and various items that need to go. I have 30 year old train sets and ORIGINAL Star Wars comics from 1977. I have signed and numbered Batman comics. We have DVDs and electronic games and regular games. It all has to go in the name of minimalism, debt reduction and our sanity.


I want to come home in the evening and enjoy my wife and my pets and my kids (on the weekends when they are home) and not have to worry about what needs to stay or what needs to go. How does my home look if someone comes by? Or, how quickly it takes to clean up and keep clean.


If we want to move, it's nice to have less stuff to take with us. Most of our furniture could be sold since we are downsizing. We have replaced old furniture that took up too much space with good condition, used furniture that fits our needs for now. It can be donated when we move in 2+ years and the rest of our possessions should only require a mid size U-Haul truck.

K here, I am super excited to get moving on this process! Part of our problem was getting over the inertia of the unknown. We had sold items on Craigslist before but never on Amazon. It's actually pretty easy.

Once we make a dent in our CC (credit card) balances with additional payments from our J.O.B.'s and by selling our not needed stuff, we are going to invest in an external hard drive. That way we can store all of our music and access it easily. We will then be able to sell our CD's and 200 disc CD changer which we currently do not have a space for and is sitting in our bedroom on the floor - how attractive.

The next step after that is to store our DVD collection digitally which is close to 400 DVD's. Currently they are housed in some IKEA DVD storage (we have in white) that I am not particularily fond of. It was something that fit the pocketbook at the time and allowed us to get our DVD's off the floor from the overflowing shelving unit we had. They will eventually go away.

Another way we minimized is by going to a laptop from a desk top computer when our computer died a few months ago. The laptop sits on our coffee table (repurposed from my Grandfather's WWII army trunk) and the printer currently sits on a dresser we have in our dining room that stores bill paying items and whittled down craft supplies for wrapping gifts and making tags and cards.

Choosing minimalism is the easy part. Working towards it is the hard part. Even after all the decluttering we have done, I am certain we can get rid of even more stuff. I have gone through my craft supplies three times and each time I have been able to part with more and more.

Be Gentle, it's our first time

We have taken a big step last night by posting our first four items for sale on Amazon. This is kind of a big deal to us. We have been talking about getting our stuff listed we don't need in order to get the credit cards paid down.


While we realise that we won't pay everything off by selling our stuff, we will achieve two things; working towards our version of living minimaly and getting our credit cards paid down to a more managable level.

The stash of stuff seems pretty small for now, but the posibilities are so much greater once we get out of the house the stuff we no longer need and start working on selling the stuff that's in our on site storage.

Several months ago we had decluttered our on site storage to the point that everything has a place and nothing was left on the floor. Now that we have been looking at our lives and the stuff in it, minimalising the storage unit will be the next part of the plan. There are untold treasures out there that can hopefully fetch a pretty penny or two by schlepping them to the unknown masses that still believe possessions will fill their lives with what is missing.

The fun part about this is that we won't miss anything we are selling, especially the stuff in our storage unit. We haven't see anything from there in years.

While the ultimate goal is to have no credit card debt, we just want to make a dent in it so the minimum payments are lowered and we can increase an emergency fund which is super important. We also are getting more realistic about what we actually want surrounding us and what is just stuff that does no real good.

The on site storage is great, especially since we have stuffed four people and two animals in to 812 square feet and storage inside the condo is extremely limited. Even for basic items. The other goal too is that in less that four short years we will no longer have kids at home and plan to move to a small house. We will still be in our early 40's with lots of opporunities ahead of us.

Stay tuned for our version of living minimally!