I have become a minimalist

Ok, so not completely, but I'm so excited I feel like I've found religion or something.

I've always been really into organizing and de-cluttering. When I go visit my mom, I choose one space to de-clutter at a time. I've done most of her house at this point.

Yesterday I drank coffee which I literally never do (blame the pumpkin spice).  I went crazy organizing and de-cluttering my apt. Now, my apt. is generally very neat, if not a bit dusty with hairballs.  But since I moved in a year or so ago, I never really organized my closets. I have more space now than I ever have, so I didn't have to make the most of it like in my old place. It bums me out on the regular when I look at my closets and they are just kind of messy. I like neatness and organization.

So yesterday I became inspired and bought two e-books on minimalism and read them both. In between, I spent probably 10 hours sorting through my stuff. For the first time, I really looked at everything and evaluated whether it was worth keeping or not. I have always thought of myself as having a pretty lean wardrobe, but I still added another 2 bags to the 1.5 I have sitting around to go to Salvation Army. I couldn't believe it! Then I threw out the packing materials I had saved from my move. Because while I am overall neat and organized and don't have a ton of "stuff" I am a hoarder with packaging. I don't know why. But I have a lot of bags and boxes stored away. It was hard, but I felt really free getting rid of some of them.

I'm traveling today and left pretty early for the airport, but I couldn't help but go through my nightstand drawer before I left (I literally have not opened it since I moved in last spring). 

I feel like my eyes have been opened. Most of the stuff that I'm storing in my closets I barely ever use!

I also realized that a lot of the extra stuff I don't use was given to me as a gift, or I got as a hand-me-down from friends.  My mother is very sweet and always brings me back a souvenir from every trip, but it's built up over the years. I'm thinking of putting all but 1-2 things in a box and packing them away.

The books I read yesterday, both of which were useful, are:

How to embrace minimalist wardrobe
Simplify

Trying to Save, But Spending

Because I didn't know I was buying an apartment until a few weeks ago, I made some previous financial commitments that are coming due now. First, I booked a trip to Central America. I wasn't sure about this because I just went on a trip in November, but I thought what the heck. So that''s about $2K that I'm paying between January and March. In November I told my brother and his wife that their wedding gift would be tickets to Italy for their honeymoon. I bought those this month. Airfare sucks right now and they are going in the high season -- September. So there goes another almost $3K. I can afford all of this but it is very stressful to spend all this $ now when I am going to have to write an enormous check within the next few months. I already wrote a check last week for 10% of the purchase price.

I've been trying to be good in other ways, including making much more of my food, and now I've stopped drinking for a while, so that will cut down on a lot of my restaurant bill. Not that I drink that much, but it's so expensive at a restaurant.

I am also staring down a lot of costs associated with the apartment on top of the actual cost to buy and close on the place. Movers, a new TV, some new furniture, and then the service costs like someone to install blinds and possibly paint. Hence why I am sitting home on a Saturday night after having just cooked soup and baked cookies with not a drop of wine in sight!