Simplify, simplify. ~ Thoreau

[Waldo]

I, as June and a few others can attest, live a very spartan life. I keep nothing in my home that doesn't dignificantly enrich my life. Friends, family and loved ones have all, at various times, complained that I'm the hardest personto shop for because there's nothing that I want. Which, strictly speaking, is not true.

But having lived in four different states in less than a year I got really good at determining what was important and what wasn't.

But the turning point for me really came years earlier while I was living in New Mexico and the Bosque was on fire. We were just blocks from the fire and they were evacuating everyone. They'd already come down out block on the bull horn and let us know that we were on evacuation alert. I started gathering all the things which would devastate me if I lost them. Fortunately they all fit in a single box.

The box may have changed to something a bit more decorative, but the conents haven't changed much at all. What's in the box is all of the "things" that really matter to me. Everything else is a matter of "do I really want to take this into the next chapter of my life?" or "will it cost me more to move/ship than it will to replace?"

It's a pretty awesome way to live.