About a month ago, my wife Stephanie and I moved from Bowling Green, OH to Kent, OH. While there are a few differences between the cities, one of the significant changes for us, was simply the size of our apartment. We down-graded to an apartment that is noticeably half the size of our previous place. We did this for a couple of reasons. The location is fantastic. It is a half block from campus, and two blocks from downtown. The location is referred to as the "Times Square" of Kent. This is a little silly, considering it's one square block made up of about nine or ten stores. But silliness of the name aside, we couldn't ask for a better location.
Another reason we chose the apartment was in an effort to simplify our lives. Stephanie wanted to simplify for very honest reasons, and she really believes that living simply is a wonderful thing. My reasons for wanting to simplify were mostly self-righteous. I wanted to tell people about how I was living simply, and hopefully they would think I was a provocative person because of it.
Before we moved, we began to get rid of some of our stuff. We started with the useless things: the entertainment center for the TV we don't own, thirty extra tupperware containers etc. Somehow both copies of The Purpose Driven Life, and my all of my economics books made it through this stage. Steph and I had also had quite a bit that we kept around simply because we found it, and it might have been useful for some future art project. This was the easy stuff to get rid of.
The hard part came when looking through the useful things that we just didn't have room for: The dresser, the desk my dad built, about half of our dishes and cooking utensils. I didn't want to get rid of this stuff. It had a purpose, but there was no way it would all fit. So it went to storage, or Goodwill. Other things, I argued for, like my old school books that I don't read, and all five of our lamps (three of them are sitting unplugged right now in our already well-lit living room).
When we arrived in Kent, we had to get rid of even more stuff. On top of that, because we moved into a small space, what little stuff we did have, left our apartment looking like a total mess. Simplifying was officially not fun. I didn't care about it being cool or provocative anymore, it was messy and uncomfortable!
The things I am self-righteous about so rarely work out well. Worst of all, I end up missing out on the blessings that come from humbly living out a spiritual discipline like living simply. Wanting to be seen as cool is not a strong enough reason to do something. I may stick with it for a little while, but as soon as things become difficult, I find myself retreating, and looking for some other way to impress people. Unless of course, I have already signed a lease, and my wife is in it for the right reasons.
