Kelly & I just moved from the east side of Austin to the south, from a 3 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom apartment. We had massive amounts of THINGS to get rid of, much of which we had accumulated to fill a house that was too big for us! We decided to be much more intentional with the interior design of our new place.

Kelly sold most of our furniture & useful things on Craigslist, & we donated around 15 bags of clothes, accessories & kitchen items. But I was still left with boxes of photos, trinkets, & mementos. I wouldn't say I've reached a state of minimalism yet, but with Kelly's help I am well on my way. I think that my amulet to ward off attachment really helped! Here are a few things I learned from the move...

1. Get rid of the easy stuff first. Photo doubles, picture frames, matchbooks, gone. I found it helpful to sort out the empty ephemera first, because I needed to build up some momentum to keep going!
2. If you're not sure about keeping something, put it in a pile to look at close to moving day. You'll probably feel a lot less attached to it with an impending deadline!
3. Keep only your nice things. And then use them. Kelly had me choose between keeping a crappy plastic cutting board and a beautiful wooden cutting board made by my dad. I was all, "no we use that plastic one all the time!" and then I wondered what the hell I was saving the nice cutting board for, Thanksgiving or something?
4. Get rid of things you're REALLY. NOT. GOING. TO. USE. I live in Texas. I wear a layerable series of hoodies throughout the mild winter. It snowed once last year. I do not need four heavy winter coats. In Illinois, I had an excuse. In Texas, I now have one winter coat.
5. Make a pile to digitize & toss. I had to bring my photos with me to the new place, so I could figure out how to part with them. I ended up photographing my photos! I tiled them all together & photographed them with a nice camera so I could preserve the memory (in my lifestream) but get rid of the paper. Want to see my adolescent life? A MASSIVE amount of photos below. If you have any tips on letting go of things, please let me know! Click the images for larger view.