In the spring of 2015 my partner and I sold the family home and gave away—quite literally—95% of our possessions. It was among the most powerful and meaningful moments of our lives. We learned a great deal in that process and its immediate aftermath.

First a little context. We moved to Charlotte, North Carolina after spending almost all of our adult lives in Western Michigan. We quickly embraced Charlotte with its fast growing, young and diverse population and terrific climate. In fact, we didn’t want to move back to Michigan. After six months in Charlotte we put our house in Michigan up for sale.

This was a fairly serious thing for us to do. When my partner and I were married nearly 17 years ago she moved into the home in which I was raising my three kids from my first marriage. After some time together we built a new home that would be ours—designed for the way we wanted to live as a family. We filled that house with the accoutrements of our life together as a family. Gifts from friends, art we accumulated in our travels, objects we loved, and a lifetime of books. It was truly our home. But it was also too big for a couple living alone. Our grown children were scattered across the country and even the world—we didn’t need four bedrooms for more than a week or two a year. It was also ineffecient to pay for a home we weren’t living in and didn’t plan to live in anytime soon. And we weren’t terribly excited by the idea of being landlords either.

So with some fear and trepidation we put the house up for sale and held our breath—many of our friends had their houses on the market for months or even years before selling. Four days later the house was sold. We had to be out in three weeks. I was traveling for work and my schedule wasn’t easily changed—my partner took on the herculean task of clearing out a lifetime’s worth of clutter and accumulation. The detritus of an increasingly affluent, middle American family with three kids, life. Simply put, we had a lot of shit in those 4000 square feet. And since we were living in a much smaller high rise apartment, most of the stuff had to go somewhere else. My partner and I decided quite quickly we didn’t want to try and sell it or monetize it—we wanted to give it away. Here is what we learned.

1. We had way too much stuff.
2. We needed much less than we thought.
3. Our kids didn’t need us to keep it for them (or want it very much).
4. Our stuff had value to others.
5. Our stuff had become a weight to us.
6. We had wasted thousands of $$ on shit we thought we HAD to have.
7. Giving it away gave some meaning to what had become mindless consumerism.
8. In that giving, we became more like the people and couple and family we had imagined ourselves to be.
9. Giving it away made our kids proud of us and we of them.
10. We will never clutter our lives with shit again. It was strangling us without us even knowing it.

We had way too much stuff

We owned thousands of books. We had somehow accumulated at least 150 wine glasses. We had 300 bottles of wine in our cellar. Some of which was well past its prime. We had something like seven or eight beds. We had a complete camping setup that had been used twice. We had sound and video equipment dating back to the days of analog tubes. We had computers from Bill Gates’ youth. We had dozens of plates. And coffee cups. Strangely enough we had dozens of spoons but only a few forks. We had boxes and boxes of clothes we never wore in sizes that no longer fit us.

The truth is that we had lived the last ten years of our lives as mindless consumers. We gave a yearly, reasonably legendary wine party, and for that we had purchased hundreds of things that we used exactly once per year. Early in my life I had read somewhere “that any book worth reading is a book worth owning” and had taken that as my mantra. And I read both quickly and relentlessly. We had filled a rather large house with lots and lots of things we didn’t need anymore. (Why did I keep the kid’s bunkbeds for a decade after their last use?) Our house had become a repository of our leftovers as affluent Americans at the beginning of the 21^st century. It was stupid. It was all our doing.

We needed much less than we thought

Moving into an apartment without any real storage had taught us something important. We didn’t need most of what we had come to regard as essential. As the cook in the family I had a pot or pan for everything I may ever have dreamed of creating. I even had a paella pan for the paella I had never made and never would. We didn’t need it—but we thought we did—at least in the moment of desire and purchase. In our smaller (yet still large by comparison) apartment we made do with three pots and three pans of varying sizes. We haven’t starved or gone hungry as a result. We have survived with around 10 mismatched wine glasses. Somehow we have managed to give a few cocktail parties with only those 10 glasses and have yet to be reported to the authorities. It may seem obvious, because we had clearly lived for years without all of those things (you know—before we bought all of those things) but we were surprised by the fact that our life was just as beautiful and rich without all of the stuff. Clearly we didn’t need it. And we should have rid ourselves of it much sooner.

Our kids didn’t need us to keep it for them (or want it very much)

One of our patented excuses was that we were “keeping it for the kids.” So before we gave anything away we asked the kids to sort through our belongings and take what they wanted or needed. They each took a box or two. That was it. Clearly we weren’t doing it for them—we were keeping it for us. Because it made us feel secure. Or we had a slight emotional attachment to it. Or simply because we had actually spent money on it and therefore had to invent a need to keep it in order to avoid feeling utterly stupid.

Our stuff had value to others

We invited non-profit organizations we had worked with to go through and take their pick of our possessions. We also asked friends of ours, some of whom had family and friends in need, to carefully comb through our belongings and take what they could use with them. We discovered that those unused bunkbeds, shoved into a corner of our basement for years, actually brought enormous joy to the grandkids of one of our friends—and constituted, for them a “new” bedroom. That became a recurring theme—things we had no use for and hadn’t used in years actually had real value and usefulness to others—both people we knew and interacted with every day and those we never met but who now have our beds and dressers and and books and kitchenware through the non-profits we gave our stuff to. It is a source of shame that we had all of that stuff, doing nothing for anyone for so long.  We should have given it away years before.

Our stuff had become a weight to us

I had read Marie Kondo’s wonderful and quirky little book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up a few months before we sold the house. And her practice, which we have haphazardly and incompletely embraced, of holding each object in your life and asking the simple question; “Does this spark joy?” when deciding to keep or remove helped us as we moved through the house. What we found was that the giving brought us much more joy than the owning ever had. In truth we had a big house with a big mortgage to store a lot of shit we didn’t need. It was humbling and a somewhat beautiful relief to let go of nearly all of it in a very short time. We literally felt a release of pressure and the lifting of a burden as we relieved ourselves of our possessions.

I had wasted thousands of $$ on shit I thought we HAD to have

As a family we, and I in particular, had become a cliché. We had thousands of things—some of them very nice—that we never used. I had bought them to prove I was successful. Or to show that I could. Or because I simply walked past them in a store and had a moment of unthinking want. The poor preacher’s kid turned corporate executive had become a bit of a caricature. Only the best stuff, and more please. It was obnoxious, morally fraught, and intellectually silly. I wish I had done the math, literally done the math, as I was consuming mindlessly. I may have been retired to the south of Spain by now.

Giving it away gave some meaning to what had become mindless consumerism

The shame of it gave way to a deep feeling of contentment as we watched our things being put to good use by those who actually needed them. I never really resented the $$ wasted, because so many of those things were finally being used—had found true purpose in other people’s homes and lives. And that gave me some release from the guilt (I did grow up a Calvinist after all) and nagging sense of stupidity. Although it was really stupid to accumulate so much shit.

In that giving, we became more like the people and couple and family we had imagined ourselves to be

Perhaps most importantly as we shed the useless detritus of our affluent, upper-middle class lives we became a little more like the people we had always wanted to be. Grateful for what our life had brought us. Resourceful. Much more excited about experiences than things. People who believed in having a few, truly quality things that were actually useful in our life.

Giving it away made our kids proud of us and we of them

I was worried at the outset that our kids might be a little pissed that weren’t holding on to all of that shit in case they needed it. All of them are young adults, barely started in their own lives. They could have laid claim to much more than they did. They could have asked us to store much more of it for “one day” when they would need it. Instead they encouraged us, helped us, and were amazingly generous with the far fewer things they had accumulated. The three of them (plus one truly significant other) spent a last night together, without us, in the house they had spent so much of their lives in. They laughed, had a couple of bottles of good wine—ate and told stories of their lives. I imagine they cried a bit as well. And then they walked out, taking their experiences and joy with them and helped us give away the rest. I loved them for it. And am proud of them because of it.

We will never clutter our lives with shit again—it was strangling us without us even knowing it.

Today we walk past that terrific thing in that awesome store that would look great in our apartment. We don’t need it. Even if I still want it a little bit. And that is freedom. No longer in thrall to consumerism or our latest desire. (Well, at least not as much in thrall) We live incredibly well. Our lives are just as rich and full of joy. Most of all we are lighter because we are carrying so much less. Our belongings had become, in some ways, our masters. Our shit had become a reason not to move, change our lives, to go live where we wanted and how we wanted. We’re not going back.

*In truth I had very little to do with actual clearing of the house or our lives. My terrific partner managed to empty our house and clean up our lives in 13 days. A small miracle. I was there for only a few of those days and frankly was more hindrance than help. I owe her, as always the deepest gratitude and appreciation.