Downsizing Your Life

Richard and Jane Brown sold their four-bedroom home in the suburbs. And moved into a new two-bedroom condominium. In their 60s and still active, they chose this condominium for its amenities. It was two blocks from the ocean…

Most of my girlfriends have warned me that shoes would be the hardest category of clothing to reduce. My friend Maureen says she’d have trouble choosing 100 pairs from her collection of shoes – and trust me, she can pull off the most amazing…

Recently, a friend told me about the transformative journey she had been on after diving into Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. She applied Kondo teachings to her closet…

A minimalist lifestyle is relatively easy to achieve if all you ever say is the word no. It is so simple to say. No, I won’t buy that new dress or No, I won’t accept that gift, or in my case, No, I won’t buy more bangles. No, I won’t complicate my existence…

No matter how far you move, much work is involved. However, the further you move, the greater the effort in terms of cost, time and stress. Moving close to your current home allows you to keep some of your established patterns…

When I began my reductionist initiative a few years ago, I assumed I would actually end up with fewer things to think about. Less stuff to worry about and more emotional freedom. Seemed a logical expectation at the time and in fact was my motivation…

Sometimes we don’t have time for a big decluttering project, and we want something quick and impactful. To that end, here are 10 things you can throw away right here right now. If you have flowers in a vase that are past their best, take the opportunity…

Contrary to popular belief, the process of downsizing is super easy. All it really involves is three things. First, penetrating awareness that you have way too much ‘stuff’. Second, a firm commitment to making some tough decisions…

Clutter. We’ve all experienced it on some level. Some of it is visible. Some of it is hidden from our sight. Physical and mental clutter have a funny way of creeping into our homes and our lives. Slowly but surely, we become inundated…

Even in the tidiest and most organised of homes, there is one thing that never ceases to cause problems and that is the dreaded paperwork. And half of it we never even asked for – we can’t even blame ourselves for the little piles everywhere!