Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words. If you’d like to participate, click here for details.
Today, I’m pleased to feature Samantha, who explains how selling their home has enabled her and her husband to live more intentionally and pursue their dreams. Please visit her blog to read more of her writing.
Samantha writes:
It didn’t take me long after buying our house to see how our materialism was eating away at our priorities.
Our spare time, energy and money were spent paying for, maintaining, cleaning and making plans for an edifice to live in. It seemed unnecessary and wasteful. And I didn’t like what it was doing to my marriage or to my soul.
My husband and I had dreamt of buying our first house. And while many suffered during the housing crisis, as first-time homebuyers, we benefited from it. We bought our house at a good price and a great interest rate. We saw lots of room for improvement and imagined the fat check we’d get someday when we’d sell our house in an improved market.
But I soon felt restless about owning this home. This house was a reflection of the life I was living. And I didn’t like the look of it.
I was pursuing the American Dream unintentionally. I was going to school for public relations. And a year after buying our home, I landed a good first job in marketing. I was succeeding in every possible way. At least that’s the way it looked. But that’s not how it felt.
I wasn’t grateful for the new job I had. I wasn’t grateful for the beautiful character home I lived in. I was becoming very restless with the way I was living my life and I knew I needed to make a change.
And I did change.
I left my job and pursued my dream of being a writer.
I started getting rid of all of my stuff. Slowly, but steadily. I didn’t know it yet, and I certainly had no goal of becoming one, but I was turning into a minimalist. Not to follow some trend or save money or anything like that. It just seemed a natural response to what was going on in my heart and my mind. I was weeding out the stuff in my life I felt was holding me back from living the life I wanted.
And yet there was this house. My husband and I no longer wanted to own a home. It wasn’t worth it to us. It was more expensive to maintain a home than we’d imagined. On top of that, our priorities had changed over the three years we owned the home and we no longer desired the space or autonomy owning a home brought.
Instead of this home being a haven of peace and a sanctuary for us, it was a constant reminder of how much time, money and energy we’d spent maintaining and cleaning it.
And we wanted out.
We breathed new life into our dream of moving across the country just to try living somewhere different. It’s something we’d always wanted to do. Finding out some family and friends were moving out of state was the catalyst for us pursuing our dream. So we put our house up for sale.
We sold our home this summer. We’re moving out of state in two months. And we have no plans of buying a home again.
Selling our home and moving out of state are two of the ways we are choosing to live life more intentionally, which requires us to minimize the stuff in our lives that doesn’t matter so much.
Today, we’re weeding out that which holds us back from pursuing what matters most to us. That means living with less stuff. That means choosing more risks and less security. It means making choices intentionally and not operating out of habit.
And it doesn’t feel like I’m giving up anything at all. It feels like I’m gaining a whole lot more. And I am.
{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
I very much enjoyed Samantha’s story. However, and this is often the case with minimalist stories, the subject of house ownership comes up. Whether you rent or buy, you still need some sort of roof over your head (be it a house, an apartment, a boat, etc.). Whilst some may say that ownership ties you down (and, in some ways, it does), it can also provide a stability that renting never can. When my children were younger, we rented initially and I cannot tell you how many times we had to find alternative accommodation towards the end of our leases, when the landlord decided s/he wanted to put the rent up and we couldn’t afford the increase. There was then the stress of finding somewhere new at very short notice and it usually needed to be very close to the children’s school. This prompted us to buy the home in which we now live and we have never regretted it. We are definitely minimalists in many, many respects but, for us, the security we have by never having to worry about what a landlord is going to do at lease renewal is priceless. After all, rent or buy, you still need MONEY to pay your rent or mortgage!
Hi Tracy, thanks for your comment. My husband and I don’t have kids yet, so we have yet to think of others when it comes to dealing with the instability renting can bring. I’m sure that will become an inconvenience for us. However, we also found unexpected things that brought immense financial stress with owning our home that were unwelcome and the “stability” of owning the home meant there was no way out. After we decided to sell our home, for example, the city decided to put new pipes (I can’t remember exactly what they were called) in our neighborhood and we ended up forking out $2500 when we never were going to “benefit” from the new pipes and they weren’t going to increase the value of our home. So for now, to us, renting is a less stressful, feasible option as any maintenance that comes up is the landlord’s responsibility.
i have a reply to your answer. when you rent, you pay no property tax, homeowner association fees, can move out at almost any time, no down payment required to move in (other than one month’s security deposit in case of damage when you move out), can switch to other locales or neighborhoods based on job relocation or interests or lifestyle change, never pay for common repairs, do not pay a fee to paint your home every few years (this is law in nyc anyway where i live), i can go on, etc. you get FREEDOM when you rent. when you own a home, you pay for all repairs and all said fees and sometimes have to agree with ridiculous co-op “boards” as if they are doing you some kind of favor when you have already earned the home on your own. you cannot move out when you like. even if you want to sell, it may take a long time. sometimes you may buy a home that may be underwater on mortgage: you owe more than the home is worth. lastly, no one owns anything. this is a short life. everything is a rental. we leave everything behind at one point or another so in essence you are always renting. even after you die, your kids can sell off the house and gamble away the funds. a fire or tornado can destroy it and you may not be recompensed. you know how sneaky those insurance companies are. anything can happen.
the only benefit i see in buying is equity and full home customization but you lose your freedom just for that. you have to stay stuck to where you are. also if you lose your job, you lose your home. hello foreclosure. goodbye all that equity and down payment you put forward. home ownership is good but not at the cost of the entire loss of freedom and constant stress of making mortgage payments with interest.
“It means making choices intentionally and not operating out of habit.” Well said!! And the essence of minimalism to my way of thinking.
Thanks, Gayle. Please stop by my blog sometime: http://www.elevatewhatmatters.org -Sam
I’m glad you’ve turned the corner. I had a similar experience where I wasn’t feeling to good about what I had become. After throwing away a shed load of stuff and re-prioritizing my responsibilities I now live a calmer richer life. Great post, thanks for sharing your experiences.
Thanks, David. Glad we’re walking this road together!-Sam
How brave you are to pursue your dreams–bravo! I think “home ownership” makes many (like me) feel like they have a source of financial security…even though looking at the numbers and market conditions it is usually a false sense–I’ve bought into that many, many times:( Thank you for sharing and best wishes on your new adventure.
https://awellstockedlife.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/happiness-files/
I would have to disagree with Stacy re home ownership. Unlike you live for free with family or friends, you will end up paying a mortgage. If you rent, you’re paying your landlord’s mortgage; if you own, you’re paying your own. A house may be too big for Samantha (and too big for me), but she could try condo living. I purchased a condo, worked hard to pay it off in seven years and when I sell it, it will pay for my retirement condo so that I won’t have a mortgage during my retirement years. So home ownership can be a “source of financial security”, as long as you buy one that you can afford. As well, its square footage ensures that I remain a minimalist.
Thank you, Stacy. This post was written months ago, so we have actually made our move already and are living in Arizona (and loving it). I just checked out your blog and would love an opportunity to subscribe or follow you on Twitter but couldn’t find either on your blog. Feel free to reply here or contact me on my website.
http://www.elevatewhatmatters.org
I think it is a great moment when we realize that our lives are not working and we change it. I have donated, sold and tossed more stuff than I ever thought I would. I am not done yet. I dream of a one room cabin and have been pretending that my house is just that. I have a small private rescue farm, so renting is not an option. If it weren’t for that, an rv would do the trick. Having so much “stuff” is crippling. Every day I reevaluate at least one area of my life and my stuff and make the necessary changes. When your stuff starts to define you, it time to change!
Sounds like you’ve been making some courageous choices. We also started using only a few rooms in our house before we sold it and it helped prepare us for living in a one-bedroom apartment for about six months and now we are living in a studio! Kudos to you on your journey.
Congratulations on your new path.
How fantastic that you realized what you really wanted, and didn’t want! I feel the same way about my home, except that for awhile it allowed two important things, my husband an office space so he could build his own business, and room to raise our two boys. But now I am done. I don’t want a basement or an attic. I don’t want my time to be taken up with maintenance, repairs or cleaning. It is a huge burden that I feel oppressed by.
Great post!
Congrats!
We sold our home last fall, got rid of 90% of our stuff and are now renting a small studio apartment 3 blocks from my job. Goodbye commute! Best thing we ever did. I, too, never want to own property ever again.
Enjoy your freedom!
Really well-written article. I can see why you switched to writing! Your experiences really resonate with me, especially about your job; I, too, have struggled with feeling unhappy rather than grateful for my work, and am also aspiring to write and edit for a living. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed, but felt unworthy of pursuing for some reason. I’ll subscribe to your blog now!
P.S. – I LOVE that you have an entire blog section about adoption! I’ve always known that I’d rather adopt than procreate, and it’s only in recent years (since I came out of the closet) that I’ve felt empowered enough to state it so matter-of-factly. I look forward to following your journey through foster care and adoption!
Hi Fran, thanks for your comment and for subscribing to my blog!-Sam
We own rather than rent so we have something besides a pile of rent receipts. That said, our income is steady. We have pensions and social security and could pay off our mortgage any time we want. The problem with putting money into a home and financial insecurity is that you might lose what you put in. We own a condo 1600 sq ft. Bigger than I wanted but smaller than my husband wanted. At the time we bought there were 3 of us living here. Since we are south facing, we have never turned our furnace on even though we live in the suburbs of Chicago. Good for you getting rid of stuff.
All the power to you Samantha, I can identify with you.
I emigrated to Canada in the 70s, I rented various places right up until I met my second husband. In 2005 we bought a new built money pit as an investment (my first time, his second). I hate it!
The mortgage won’t be paid off until I’m 75, hubs retires in 2017, me in 2018….I’ll have just turned 60 by then.
We’ve been in it 10 years now and things are starting to need replacing (the roof will be the big ticket), it has always been a money pit. We are selling in June!
Having crunched the numbers we can actually save a load more money by renting and not paying the exorbitant property tax and I don’t care if I’m paying someone’s mortgage, it means carefree peace of mind for us, more money to travel while we wait for retirement.
When retirement arrives we can decide where we want to live and in what……then have twilight years of fun.
Having a huge garage sale in May, ALL the clutter is going out. My rooms are looking emptier by the week, it makes me feel liberated and housework gets easier.
Money isn’t everything, but health and happiness is.
Definitely, not spending time cleaning the basement is a big plus. We get the paper 4 days a week and are talking about getting it Sunday only. We don’t get any magazines,either. I still recycle over a cubic foot of paper and plastic each week. We give a lot of stuff to Salv army and Goodwill too. I don’t remember buying anything new and we still have a lot of stuff. I see people with crowded closets all the time and people who buy in bulk. We don’t have dining room chairs, just some folding chairs we bought years ago. I’m thinking of getting a case for the DVD’s I want to keep and giving away the rest.
Becoming a minimalist takes vigilance. Everytime the mail comes the junk goes right to the recycling. I gave a stack of kitchen magnets to a crafter who makes bookmarks out of them. The Sunday comics go to one charity and the coupons to another. We took more books and magazines to the library to give away.
The library was giving away stacks of art magazines. I took a small selection home and when I am done I will pass them on to a friend. So far, I have torn out one page. I am always looking for crafts to do with kids. I also enjoy using throw-away items to make art projects. There are plenty of uses for junk mail, for example.
I have been reading books and magazines about small space living and the tiny house movement. While we could certainly live in a much smaller space, a tiny house would be more expensive to heat and cool. Also, climbing a ladder everyday would be a dangerous proposition as one ages. I am thinking of downsizing to 1000 sq ft at some point in the future.
I am amazed at the amount of stuff I still have in my home and I declutter constantly.
The rents in the Chicago area are high if you are close to public transit. When I tell people our summer electric bill is about $40 per month they are impressed. We sold our home to buy our condo. The thing I don’t understand is why people buy the McMansions. They are on small lots, but cost a lot to heat and cool. Then you need to have two cars because of transportation. We raised three kids in a small home where the kids could walk to parks and a public pool.