Simple Goals

In January, I started carefully tracking how much money I personally spent a month.  I don't track J's spending, but I started to realize that I have much more "stuff" than I need.  And really a whole lot of "stuff" I don't really want.  Yet it is so hard to give up the "stuff" once you have it.


What I started realizing with the coming of the new year, was that I had become a lot of talk, and very little actual practice of what I was preaching in terms of my goals and my desires.  I want a simple life.  I don't want or need a lot of extra stuff, yet it is really hard to have that simple life when everyone around you wants more, more, more.

I am not going to give up everything and become a monk in a monastery somewhere that has taken a vow of poverty.  But do I really need to buy everything that crosses my mind?

For example, I have almost decided to try biking to work fairly regularly.  I don't know how that would work out, as I still have to get the boys to school and/or childcare, but perhaps there is a way to do that efficiently.  Maybe it is time to teach the boys to really ride a bike.  Not sure that would really help though because then their bikes would be at school...I will have to do some thinking on this, but as I am thinking about doing the whole biking thing, I started thinking about needing a waterproof backpack in the event that it was raining.

So I started thinking, what kind of backpack would I want to get?  What color would I want?

I live in a house with like 12 backpacks.  Do I really need to be thinking about buying another one?  One of my backpacks is great, it has a rain cover built in.  Really?  I want to consider spending more money on that?

Sure there are good reasons why that backpack isn't the perfect choice.  It is a little larger than I really need to carry my stuff, and the zipper has had to be restiched in with embroidery thread because it started pulling away from the canvas.  But it is bright orange.  You can't miss it on the road or me with it on my back.  And I wouldn't be spending nearly as much on gas.

It would take me longer to get to work...but how much longer?  With traffic and everything would it really add that much time to my commute?

I can make excuses.  I can come up with reasons why it is a very bad idea, and it  definitely won't work every day, but could I make it work at all?

Could I reach a point where we are mostly a 1 car family?

The Lexington Public Library has almost every fiction book I could ever want to read.  Sure, sometimes there is a waiting list, but do I really need to buy more books?  In the realm of non fiction, do I really need to go buy them?  I can probably do a fairly good job of putting J's dad on the task of finding them used for me at bookstores in the DC area.  He goes shopping all the time for books anyway, he can probably locate some of the books I need...and then after he's collected some of them, he could ship them for me media mail and I would save some money because I am not paying out the ass to ship individual books.  Honestly I would have a really good time spending some time going through the stacks of the local used book stores looking to see if I could find some of what I am looking for.

I love books, but I think perhaps it is time to let go of my desire to own them all.

I have been talking a lot about wanting to live a more simple life, and build a community that supports that idea.  Now it is the time for real action.  There is no reason why I have to live a life complicated by a million distractions.  There is no reason why I can't outline what is important to me, and balance that with what is important to my family, and put everything else on hold.

Just because society says it is important, doesn't mean I have to agree with them.

As I have really started shifting my thinking about living a simpler life, I have watched my spending decrease in the last few months.

There will still be months when I track higher than I would like, but let's see if I can reach a point where I actually can be happy with what I have, not reaching for what I don't really need.