Yeah! I just won the Safeway Monopoly! Yeah!
This is how my life will be from now on!

After 5 big shopping trips with 13 little green envelopes each, I did it. 

With the win I will
- live in a great little house with my lovely husband and super sweet kids and great friends in one of the best neighborhoods
- only work on thinks I can stand behind and like doing
- take time to be healthy and walk more
- play with our awesome fluffy pet
- get involved in my community
- plant trees
- keep some bees
- go on a date with my husband
- drive around in a super awesome car
- let my kids do super fun activities after school
- have guest over for dinner and tea at least 3 times a week
- create a green app that hopefully will change the way people consume 
- invite the nice cashier that I promised to take out if I win
- feed the homeless outside Safeway where I got the winning ticket.

What would you do with a win?

My winning ticket!

For the last 3 years I more and more despised the consumerism I've gotten so used to and that I'm part of. I get angry with myself I let it get out of hand especially when I have to deal with all the things we acquired over the last years. All the stuff everywhere. I have to deal with it. Daily. And I deeply regret I got all that stuff. I regret all the time and energy the stuff required that I am no longer willing to give anymore. Living a busy hectic life as a family of four I realized it was time to rethink this in a bit way. It was time to let go. And foremost to change my consumer habits.

And I know I'm not alone.

Articles like this are really inspiring to me:
Ditch joyless items, but where do we send them to?

As always, change isn't easy, but I wanted to be part of something bigger, something with more meaning. I didn't want to be just part of the machine. I worked in Marketing before but I didn't want to be a gear that suggests 'buy more', 'buy now' anymore. It's truly terrible what we do to us, the next generations and the planet. This all is based on greed. Figuring something out that someone might buy and then making more and selling more to make more money. It's all fake.
This is just leading us to a few having too much in the end and many having not enough and a few in between having enough but thinking they wouldn't as they compare with the ones that have too much.

So, for my personal contribution to less, more meaningful, more conscious and ethical, I decided to make my kids more aware of the 'wants' versus 'needs' we have and try to buy used whenever possible. Clothing, toys, kitchen items, furniture, art, books, media, electronic if needed will require a trip to the thrift- or consignment store first. It works pretty well. I really dislike if I have to buy new stuff, like gifts for my kid's friends birthday parties. I wish it would be acceptable to just gift second hand items by now.

Once in a while I see myself falling into the old habit of roaming the aisles to look for the missing pieces, the pieces that will complete my household or the kids play set or the perfect gift, and then I have to remind myself, it's okay it's not complete. I want to celebrate the incompletion. I noticed if something is complete it's also not interesting anymore and falls of the radar pretty quickly, also does not give much satisfaction anymore. This whole construct is flawed and humans adapt too quickly to the sensation of a good buy. Money spent. 5 minute happiness. Need next fix to feel happy again. Need more money to get there. Vicious cycle.

It was really freeing when we finally moved. We moved to a smaller space with almost no storage. We now had to change the way we were attached to things (for insecurity or to get that instant happiness fix) and to let many many items go. We donated most of it and have a couple nice items I will be happy to gift to my community over the next couple of months.

Our kids joined a kids led organization 'Plant for the planet' 2 years ago that acts global with a goal to plant many many trees to counterbalance CO2. We already planted a couple and the kids did some presentations and a press conference. It makes me really proud to see them involved in this.

My Coworking business is all about sharing and caring and besides that a big part of the furnishing is second hand. Our members share all the resources, which in the end leads to less consumerism. Yeah! We recycle, use green cleaning products and reusables, whenever possible. We also invite the community into our space and host multiple meetings (like the Sustainable West Seattle meetings) that have direct positive impact on our community. Many members bike or walk to the office, which is also great for the overall outcome of this project. 

My newest old venture is an online app to encourage neighbors to exchange free items. We started with this even before all the facebook free groups started but it took us a bit longer to create a platform that is customized for this process. We are almost there and hope we can soft launch this week and tweek it over the summer and then save lots of items from the landfill and further reduce consumerism.

For summer we are just about to plan a trip to plant more trees. I really hope we can make this a great family adventure and learn even more how we all can do better in the future. Join us! We all can do so much better!

Less stuff! More time! More adventures!

You either have time or you have money. It's very rare you have both at the same time, if you are part of the rat race.

So, being out of a job makes you freak and want to find a new one, but it's also a great opportunity to travel without needing any vacation days. We skipped visiting family this summer and we knew our kids would need some more time with their Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. 

We flew to London, which was the cheapest way to get to Europe in December with a family of four. We stayed in the city and Sarah just loved riding the double decker buses. Christmas was beautiful in London. We explored the city. Had pizza. Rode the subway. Saw Buckingham Palace, had Fish and Chips, watched Ducks and slept well.

After 24 hours we took the train to Paris and stayed in a modern hostel. The next morning we were in line to get up the Eiffeltower. We walked along the Seine and found a great little Christmas market where we spent some time. We left at night to get to our next stop, the grandparents in Stuttgart. The train ride was a bit complicated, but we made it.

We enjoyed some nice days with them, celebrating Christmas with lots of yummy food and then moved on to my brothers. The boys played soccer in the backyard all day and we celebrated our second Christmas with my family. After some nice days there, we moved on to my sister in law to celebrate Tim's 10th birthday and New Years Eve.

In the new year we visited some of my best friends for 2 more days. From there we flew back to London. Marco spent some time in the hotel before he went back to the airport to fly to Thailand while I met up with a old college friend at the Big Ben and returned to Seattle with the kids. 

After a long but fine flight we slept well and the kids were back in school the next day. It took a couple of days to overcome jetlag but we did way better than all the years before.

So much going on. So little time to process all the new and crazy.

Lots has happened. And we did a lot over the last couple of months. We started school a little time this year (Teacher strike) after a long road trip going to Burning Man and Canada this summer. Unfortunately things didn't improve with husbands work situation and so we pulled the plug and ended the comfortable life line that supported us for the last 12 years. We still hoped it wouldn't have to happen but timing wasn't on our side. If life gives you lemon... so we where challenged to evaluate and act.

We got way too comfortable over the years and less giddy and adventurous while getting our kids through toddlerhood and the first few years. Now we got a lot of sanity back (parenting wise) and other insanity added to our plate. We wanted to reclaim our lives, simplify, reshuffle and prepare for a newly created future.

First, less stuff. More time. Sorted out a lot of kids stuff and random things over the last year but just couldn't do it all. We shopped a lot and I treated my anxiety dealing with motherhood with retail therapy. I overcame this and are a much more aware consumer now, but had to deal with the aftermath. Incredible how many $ go to stuff that is ending in the garage or a pile. Out of sight, out of life. The worst thing is how much energy all the stuff takes away from life. I was constantly cleaning up, putting stuff back, putting stuff away, looking for stuff. No fun.

For a while I played with the idea of having us 4 move in a tiny house to be forced to refocus on our values, reconnect, unplug, sort out, get closer, simplify, getting the pressure of Marco providing for us. We started with a travel trailer to get a feel for that life. Our friends let us kindly park it on their lot on Vashon and we spent quite some time there over the summer. The space felt cramped and didn't work at all as soon as the weather turned bad. Scratch that idea. We would drive us crazy. I also watched a young couple that lived out of a van parking in a different neighborhood each night, feeling like criminals, hoping no one would call the cops on them. That just seemed very exhausting. Also not my idea of fun.

We need a small space where we can open our doors and entertain. We want to have friends over and do BBQs, invite kids friends, play, spend time outside.  By downsizing to a smaller place or apartment we also might be able to get some stress off Marco, giving him some options where and what to work on in the future. Over the last year he started rethinking and prioritizing what he would like to do rather than making rich people richer by helping shipping more brown boxes around the globe. We are pretty green, communal, conscious, democratic, more for everyone. 

And yes, we reached half time (mid life) and wanted to take time to think about this. Of course, travelling, meeting inspiring people and joining the outlaws at Burning Man also benefited to question the rat race. Luckily, we found a good house coming back from our trip. The house was still affordable enough for us to pay the down payment and have a bit extra for much needed renovations to a 1963 house. By renting out half of the house we would be able to life off way less as before.

We started the process to buy while Marco planned his exit. We closed on the new smaller but larger house in Mid November, moved in the next weekend and immediately started our remodel. Four intense weeks followed with multiple trips to the Home Improvement Store, lots of hard labor, tiling, sanding, assembling, cutting, hanging, moving, cleaning, lifting, more cleaning. Early December we found new renters for our old place. Yeah! 

The move made it possible to sort out lots of outgrown items from all of us. It felt freeing to drop off a whole big moving truck full of stuff at Goodwill. We only unpacked the essentials for the first weeks. Life was easier but also complicated. Living out of boxes. The kids had some anxiety over the move. Sleep issues. Our relationship got closer as we worked together and just took the most important - our family.

Mid December we left for the airport after sanding our floors all morning to visit our family and getting a small Euro trip in. This trip asks for a different blog post, so I won't go deep here. Just a couple days into the new year we came home and finished the most needed parts on the house while we lived in the lower apartment of our new house. Mid January I moved our stuff upstairs. The most fun we had with the giant mattress being stuck in the staircase. The kids helped me getting it up but it took us quite a while with power talk, meditation and all kinds of tricks.

February came along and things around the house remodel slowed down, not done yet, but hard to push through, and we finally found some time to come up with a new rhythm for our new defined life. More time, less spending, less stress, more quality.

Easiest done to give stuff away that is unneeded if a friend mentioned he needs it. 

Tried to sort out my house worth of years and years of random stuff, some sentimental, some good ideas but never cared for, life got busy, some stuff I found new in boxes but the kids already lost interest. I got to combine stuff and then give it up.

It was too overwhelming to sort it out all in one, so I started step by step with parts of one room last year. But there was still so much left and so little progress. I got tired. 

Once we decided on moving I cleaned out all the stuff put it in a box and then slowly took out the stuff we still needed on a daily basis. That way it was way easier and I didn't have to give up anything. I just got to keep all the things that where needed. 

For the move I just packed the things in the moving box that where on the shelves. Easy. And then again just unpacked the things we really used, which was then the third step in this long process.

It feels great to not feel that stuffy. Stuffication is real!