How are everyone’s green New Year’s goals going?

How hard would it be for you to just pack up and travel if the opportunity arose? Barring situating your family – how hard would it be based only on the stuff you own? Would you need one small storage space or many large ones?

My ideal answer to the question above would be, “Easy, I could just go.”

My main goal for New Years was to get rid of more stuff. Right now, I have more stuff still than I’d like. I’m not a pack rat or anything, I just do have stuff. Over 30 odd years it builds up. In my case a lot of my stuff consists of books, paper items like notes, saved articles and such, and art supplies. If Cedar and I were to pack it up and travel, we’d need a medium sized storage space (for both furniture and boxes). To me that’s too much. Lately I just want to simplify as much as possible.

I have been working on my goals though. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Went through my files and recycled about half of my paperwork. I saved obvious stuff like tax and medical files and got rid of most of the rest.

Over the last few days I’ve been going through books. I have about 300 or so. Now I’ve set maybe 100 aside to sell at Powells Book’s. This has been really hard. I love my books, or did, I’m starting to feel confined by them though. It’s time to let go. I’m also going to give some away – the ones that are more used looking. In all I should end up about 200 books lighter.

I think I’m going to try and get my art supplies organized too – but I’m still working on a good solution. Because we homeschool, we do use them all, but I think I want less.

Lastly, soon, Cedar and I are going to go through his toys. While I’m not a pack rat, this kid sure is. He has tons of stuff.

If I bought an RV and Cedar and I took off, or wanted to backpack for a while, it would be easier with less stuff. Since that is in our future plans, it makes my goal easier to work on.

Here are some more resources about having too much stuff:

The hidden costs of too much stuff - MSN Money

Stuff Owns You

The awesome Story of Stuff video.

Two of the most influential books to me about stuff have been Your Money or Your Life and Into the Wild. I highly suggest both – although, I don’t necessarily suggest you take off for the wilds of Alaska quite like the kid in Into the Wild did, it’s still a good example of being less confined. They recently made a movie of Into the Wild – no where near as good as the book, but beautiful, here’s some musical inspiration from that flick.

So, how are your green New Year’s goals going?