The Move, was it worth it?

So I moved. As stated, I moved within my block to a 31% smaller place for 26% less rent. Initially, I calculated some redecorating costs (including painting the place white and putting in some roof windows since this attic living place was kind of dark) and was hoping to break-even somewhere around 6 months. As these things tend to go, I also ended up putting in a laminate floor and creating a fancy OSB designer-style kitchen (which could partly be used from my old place since I already had done that there). 

As you can imagine, flooring doesn’t come cheap and with everything added up I spent somewhere around 1.600 euro’s for everything (including lighting and other miscellaneous stuff). With me saving 125 euro a month on rent, this means I need to stay here for at least thirteen months to break even. I really don’t have a clue whether I’ll stay that long (I did live in the former space for sixteen months and I do like my new place, but you never know how life moves you). So was it all worth it?

Movement, again

Mindblowing busy as my mind can be, I’ve been constantly staring at my spreadsheet and wondering how I could possibly save more. Me moving to another city and downscaling was one of the biggest leaps I could have made. In hindsight, that was a life changing moment last year but ever since, only so much spending could be allocated in a different way. As always, this is an ‘spend less and/or earn more’ equation. With living somewhere around my budgeted amount (and feeling this is as barebones as I am willing to go at this moment) there wasn’t really that much to scrape off on the spending side.

Decluttering, the sequel

A while ago I wrote a short post on a possible solution for decluttering. It worked with my clothing; just getting it out of the closet and into a pile made me feel better and better about just getting stuff out of the way. So I bagged it up and took it to the Red Cross container. With my CD's and Lego it didn't really work that good. I still just can't seem to let go of my old Lego since I'm in one way or another attached to the darned thing. And if attachment isn't all of it, it simply also does look AWESOME

A solution for decluttering

While posting my last post about attachment, a thought hit my mind. The reason I keep my cd's in a drawer, for instance, is so I can't see them. They are nicely tucked away and when I open up the drawer, I feel a bit of the attachment and emotion there is in that drawer.

I think this happens with a lot of stuff people tend to keep close, but out of sight. Sometimes even not so close in a storage, but out of sight anyway. I think it's not a 'maybe, one day, I could use it'. I honestly believe it's the attachment to the piece of stuff. In an ongoing consumerism world, what we 'have' shows for who we 'are'. I have, so I am. For some reason I manage to become a staring time traveler whenever I see stuff from the (even sometimes not so) good old days.

Attached

So I put up my cd's on market place. Around 88 of them. And someone offered me 40 euro's for it. And even though that's just about the utmost fair price I can get for them, my mind is screaming 'nooooo'.

They take up one drawer in a closet that is fairly empty for the rest of it (despite of my socks and underwear). I think with ditching the cd's and relocating the rest of what's in the closet, I might even be able to ditch the whole drawer closet completely. More space, less stuff.

All of the cd's are also on my computer in mp3. What's even worse, I don't even have a way of playing a cd anyway since I don't own anything that eats cd's anymore; selling off my mac usb superdrive was the last of it.

While I think of it, the last time I ever listened to a cd anyway was over three years ago. In a different life, it feels.

Rolling on

Whenever there’s cash, I dump in into the great abyss called Debt. Not so long ago I managed to give my motivation and my down payment a giant boost by taking it under 10K. Now I'm even further down to less than 1/3... What a great feeling that is! Now to continue for what ever is left over... in a pace I hope to hold until it’s completely gone.

In the mean time I’m also selling stuff out of my home. Still don’t know why this suddenly hit me, but I didn’t feel happy with having big closets around filled with stuff I seldom use.

So bye bye vintage cupboard, electric drumset, studio monitor speaker set, apple accessories and so on.

I hope to get a lot more to go. Maybe even the digital piano, too. I am trying to learn and play the guitar. Far more mobile than a piano, I must say. So maybe I can sell it and get myself a small second hand guitar or something. Or just sell it. Period.

Possessions taking possession of me

Since a while I'm trying to declutter. And guess what... the more I look around me the less I feel like I really need al this stuff.

It doesn't make me any happier at all, it just stands around keeping me from being able to move in a day if I wanted.

I have got no clue where this thought came from, but I think it has everything to do with me trying to let go of my old patterns and me feeling stuck in life and the never ending circle sleep-eat-work-repeat. I was looking for myself in my mindfulness courses the past two years, and all I can see now is all the little patterns that I set up for myself to feel safe or needed or wanted or whatever. 

It's time to let go of all of my habits and for some reason owning less and less stuff makes perfect sense to me right now.

Speeding up!

I've got a new goal. I started going through my stuff in june and used the obvious rule:
"Haven't used this item for over six months (or didn't even remember I had it): get rid of it!!". This makes space in both my home and my head. And it puts another dent in my debt since I also managed to sell some items on Craigslist. Still not having sold the e-drums bothers me though, since it's quite some value that's just standing around without any equity. Using that value to decrease my debt (and interest) would be nice. But, still hoping I can make someone happy with it one day.

First big downpayment! (And it hurts...)

So. This week, my tax reduction came in. And, as I promised myself, I would use this and a partion of my vacation fee, to make an extra downpayment next month. But, since I already have the money to do so, I made the transaction today. In the end, this will save me a little more interest and every bit helps! 

This was the first time I got a litte "extra cash" which I immediately transferred into the bottomless pithole called "debt" and I must say, it feels strange. Yes, I do feel the joy of reducing my debt by a total of 2K this month. But on the other hand, it also feels uncomfortable because normally this kind of extra cash would give me a little more breathing space in my savings account and could make me do some fun things.

Fun things. That's interesting because when I think of it, last years where years where I didn't go on a long summer holiday or bought a new car (or something like that). So what DID I do with my money back then?