This is the first post in the blog series One Year Without. See all of the posts here.
Today marks one year since we arrived in Germany. It’s an appropriate time to reflect on something that has meant a lot to us over the past year and had an impact on shaping our future together, which is our desire to embrace a life of minimalism.
In order to prepare for our move to Germany we put approximately 90% of our belongings into storage. This storage service was provided by the company and it took just a few hours for the movers to pack up our things and take them away to their warehouse for the next 13-15 months. We sent 140 pounds of our belongings to Germany via air shipment and headed to the airport with two 50 pound suitcases (our checked luggage), two smaller carry-on suitcases, a backpack, and our bird in his travel cage.
Most of what we brought with us was clothing, but we did allow for a few other things such as our bright yellow fruit bowl, silent clock, and wedding photos. Our new German home was actually an extended stay hotel and came with nearly everything we needed. By the time we’d recovered from our jet lag we made a decision to embrace “our year without”, meaning that we’d try to purchase as little as possible during our time abroad. This was useful for two reasons, the first being that we wouldn’t have to worry about going over our company provided air shipping allotment (300 lbs., and the other being that we wouldn’t overcrowd our small amount of space in the hotel suite.
Photo by BetteBlues licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
Over the past year we’ve embraced our newfound love of minimalism in many ways and we want to continue to minimize our lives once we return home. There are many benefits to this, such as having less stuff to keep clean (although the hotel cleaning staff helps a lot with that) and have to devote less time to take care of everything. The less stuff you have, the less stuff you have to fix, maintain, or update. Instead we can use that time to do something fun, travel somewhere new, or enhance our lives in other non-materialistic ways.
Not all of it has been easy, though. There’s been many times when I desperately wanted to buy something that would make our lives easier (and times when I did). That’s the purpose of this blog series, to talk about what we gave up for the past year, what we couldn’t do without, and what we learned throughout it all.
This is a six part blog series, here are the following five blog posts that will be included:
One Year Without Our Vehicles.
One Year Without All the Small Stuff.
One Year Without: What We Couldn’t Do Without During Our Year Abroad.
One Year Without: What We Gained by Owning Less Stuff.
Take a moment to sign up for my daily newsletter (form located on the right sidebar) or follow me on Facebook if you want to be sure you catch all these posts!
Have you ever enjoyed living minimally? Or had to give up something important for a while?
Photo by Doug licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Modifications made by My Meena Life.
Featured photo by 1llustr4t0r.com licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Putting 90% of your belongings in storage and moving to another country takes a lot of courage. I tried it myself 30 years ago when I immigrated to the USA, but my reasons were very different from yours.
Thanks, Galanda.
What an incredible experience! I'm sure it takes a lot of willpower and determination but it's amazing that you guys have made it work for you. Thank you for sharing – off to read the other posts in this series!
It did, but I’m also glad that the experience is almost over! The next post in the series will be on Thursday. 🙂
I'm looking forward to reading more about your adjustments to life in Germany.
I hope you can join us over on #TheWeeklyPostcard to share your story and don't forget to add in the badge.
Thanks, Sally! The timing of #TheWeeklyPostcard is hard for me (9pm on Friday here) but once I\’m back in the States it’ll be much easier and I look forward to linking up often!
I've been living more or less minimally for most of my life, since my family moved around a lot when I was growing up and every time we moved we got rid of the unnecessary stuff we had accumulated, but I really went minimal when I moved to Germany as well. Since I was moving in with a host family I brought even less stuff than you did (just one 50 lb suitcase and a backpack) and since then I've been trying to maintain the minimalist attitude. I have started accumulating more stuff now that I live alone, like dishes, kitchen supplies/utensils, lamps and small storage cabinets, but I plan to get rid of most of that stuff when I finally fully move in with my husband. It's incredibly satisfying for me to have as little stuff as possible (in addition to being better for the environment) and I hope to be able to continue that in the future.
I’m so glad to hear that you enjoy living minimally too! It’s a great mindset and I think it helps us be happier overall.