Tarraguña's Blog

When we moved to Southern Florida about 5 months ago, we moved into a small one bedroom apartment.  We had moved from a larger apartment and we did not get a garage with the new apartment.  We did get rid of a lot of things before we moved.  Which I do suggest because the more you have to move the more it sucks.  With a baby on the way I assumed the apartment would start to seem way too small way too soon.

As I am imagining having a newborn I am thinking the small apartment will be excellent.  I mean I can clean the entire apartment in less than 2 hours.  As I will soon be spending a lot of time breast feeding and changing diapers, the less time I have to spend cleaning the better.

If I could only find a way to get the laundry to do itself.  It always seems so tedious to put it in the washer, then the dryer and then hang it up in the closet only to wear it and dirty it again.  I was thinking how much easier it would be if I only had a few outfits.  Would people even notice if I wore the same cloths all of the time?  I think what stops me from getting rid of a lot of cloths is that I think I may need it later and I hate re buying  what I already owned.  I know I will use that heavy fleece jacket when I travel to cooler climates.  Just because I never use it in Southern Florida where I live isn’t always a good reason to donate it.

Another good benefit of living in a small space is you don’t feel the need to buy things to fill in the empty space.  If we had opted for a 2 bedroom apartment we would have just bought more stuff.  As we are planning to buy a house in the next few years, I know that once we got the house the stuff that we had in the apartment would probably not fit in the space well or we may want to buy nicer more quality furniture for the house.

Living a minimalist lifestyle makes things a lot easier.  It takes less time to clean everything and keep track of it all.  It gives you the opportunity to save money as you are not always buying things.  A smaller space usually costs less so you can save money in that respect.  Saving money and time probably also allows for a lower stress level.  Now I am wondering how do people live in mansions?

As I have matured and gotten older and become more conscious of everything I have been able to let a lot of things go. Before we moved in September 2009, I had been preparing for the move by selling a lot of material possessions that I had been holding on to. I had been using them to define who I was. With each item that I sold or donated, it got easier and easier to let go of the possessions and with letting go of the possessions, I let go of the emotional attachment. I am enjoying our new minimalist lifestyle.

But what do I do about things that I find harder to let go of?

For example, we recently moved out of an apartment. Right before we turned in the keys we had maintenance do a walk through. They had no procedure for filling out a form and giving us any idea of any charges or if hey planned to keep our security deposit. The maintenance man said the apartment look great and they there should be no charges. Just be safe we had him write out exactly that and sign and date it. We also took a bunch of pictures of what the apartment looked like when we moved out.

Now the old apartment is trying to charge us 265 dollars in additon to keeping our 100 dollar deposit. We still have the pictures we took but I can’t, for the life of me, find that piece of paper that I had maintenance write up saying no charges due on the apartment. I am so angry and frustrated with myself. I keep running through things over in my head, all of the steps we took, all the travel, the unboxing. I can’t seem to come up with a place that this document would be. I tried to keep all of the papers together as we need to buy a new shredder. I have saved everything since we left the old apartment. I have tried to be so meticulous and organized. The one piece of paper, that I need and that would possibly save us some money, I can’t find. I am so angry with myself.

How do I let that anger with myself go? I have tried to not think about. I have then tried to think about it by telling myself that I am cause more than 265 dollars worth of stress and thus I should just pay it and let it go. Maybe it is not time to let this go just yet. Maybe this emotion has to run out its course. How do you know the difference between expressing an emotion and letting it play like a broken record over and over? What is the difference between expressing and attaching?