Here is a good website about getting rid of the excess clutter in our lives. Has anyone gone through any kind of minimalizing/downscaling your lifestyle experience? I did when I left my previous career in which I was working 60-80 hour weeks and took a lower paying 40 hour a week job and also got rid of automobile expenses and turned to bicycling, public transport, shuttle vans, and Greyhound to get from point a to point b. http://www.theminimalists.com/
Backpacking specifically, but being in the outdoors in general is a way for me to cut down on the amount of stuff I have to think about. I am a minimalist by nature.
My wife and i moved a couple years ago from a big house in the country to a small apartment in the city. It was a big exercise in downsizing. It still is. We stored a great deal of our belongings. We occasionally go through and purge a few things here and there. Pretty much all thats left in storage are a few pieces of furniture. Living in a one bedroom has taught us a lot about buying "stuff". We're basically at a point of if we bring something new in, something old of the same size has to go. The living in the city experiment is about over though, we're once again looking for a place out in the country. Maybe not quite as rural as before, but definitely out of the city and sub-urbs. It's nice to have a little space to breath and put your junk.
The thing that is nice about apartments is that you don't have to worry about maintenance and repairs. I remember when I lived in Massachusetts people started heading for apartments when the government sucker punched homeowners with Title V code upgrade which required homeowners with septic to install very expensive upgrades to septic systems. It seems like there is always something coming up in home ownership. For me the going from a 60 hour a week job to a 40 turned out to be a very good move. I was so tired of heading out to work on Saturdays while everyone else was heading out fishing or hiking and having to miss out on experiences.
