Operation House Purge

What is it?

Housepurge — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:56:48 GMT

OPERATION HOUSE PURGE is a unique project because instead of beautifying a house, as so many people are aiming to do, I am simply about purging STUFF. It's something that anyone can do, and it doesn't cost a thing. A FREE DIY project. In fact, many people could make money from purging.

We live in a day and age where people are being consumed by their STUFF. (Often times, people's STUFF takes on a character all their own, so I recognize STUFF as a character all its own, by capitalizing the word.) We buy larger houses to hold our STUFF. We spend a fortune on trendy closet organization systems to stash our STUFF. We have elaborate holidays where we exchange nicely-wrapped STUFF. We are living in an age of STUFF, and I need to reverse that in my life.

When people have too much STUFF, they sacrifice time, money, organization, aesthetics, and often happiness, in order to house their STUFF.

Follow me on my journey to purge my house of most of its STUFF. I'll be taking on the exhausting, and often emotional, challenge of eliminating 75% of my family's belongings, proving by doing do we will be able to live a richer life. This is an experiment to see how eliminating the number of possessions a person has can also eliminate the stress, time management struggles, marital and parenting problems, and feelings of needing to buy more STUFF that a person has.

I imagine that I will need to get through the holidays before I hit this project hardcore, so please check back. In the meantime, I'm doing my homework and looking for insipiration. I also hope that by taking you on this journey with me, it will motivate me to actually get it DONE!

Coming Soon...

Housepurge — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:22:58 GMT

Stay tuned... I plan to be covering the following topics:

Voluntary Simplicity
Staying simple through the holidays
The psychology of STUFF
Where do I start?
Home decorating with less
Inspiration and resources
Sustainability, Environmentalism and Conservation
Selling your STUFF
Giving it Away
How to manage Kid STUFF
Collections
Organization
Shopping

Are we going to have fun, or what?

Our Goal

Housepurge — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:18:24 GMT

We have several goals by doing this project.

One MONETARY goal we have is to take a family Disney Cruise. *sigh* Wouldn't that be nice? It's a dream of ours that can't be realized when we're trying to get by on one salary.

We believe that we have SO MUCH money tied up in things we don't want, don't need, don't use, and that take up our energy, that if we sold as much of it as possible, we could use that "tied up" money to fulfill one of our dreams. A vacation that we all get something out of.

MONEY COLLECTED TOWARDS GOAL, TO-DATE: $60.50 (Gotta start somewhere!)

About Us

Housepurge — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:15:11 GMT

Please check out The Owen Family Web Site to learn more about us.