My story begins 11 years ago when my newly wed husband and I were living in Biloxi, MS when hurricane Katrina made landfall. We safely evacuated along with our dog and a car full of necessities, only to return a week later to find that our home had been completely submerged by the storm surge. All in all, Katrina left us with about 5% of our belongings salvageable. (And just for the record, a refrigerator is buoyant! Meaning, when its submerged it tips over, this info would had been GREAT to have before putting all our boxes of pictures on top of it before exiting the building… moving on!)
We had no mortgage at the time because we rented, and we had only lived and been working there for 10 months. Neither of us had real careers yet tying us to the area, so a move back to Atlanta was a no brainier. We took our few leftover items and hit the road.
Not many people get to start over from scratch with their things like we did, and man was it easy to replace it all! We went from living in a small 2 bedroom duplex to a 4 bedroom house and filled it up quick. A few years and 2 kids later, we were back to being the typical American hoarders. Kids make it pretty easy to accumulate ALL THE THINGS, along with very generous grandparents that constantly bring gifts and trinkets over to dote on our little ones.
As you might guess, being a person who thrives in a tidy ship, was drowning in all the “stuff”. A few years ago, I started my natural healing jewelry business, Hippie Hoopla, out of my home and came to realize how important keeping it clean really affected my ability to create. I busted butt daily to get the house clean only to be too exhausted after all that cleaning to actually create the things I cleaned up for in the first place. We also home school, so my kids are always home with me, I’ve learned there will always be messes, and over time I began to not care and let it all go.
A little over a year a go I felt like I hit a breaking point. It showed in my relationships, my house was a disaster, I was feeling alone and drowning in all the stuff surrounding me. I was mad that I had to clean up this “stuff” daily, keep them functioning and putting time and energy into a house full of belongings I no longer wanted.
My husband works 60+ hour weeks, mostly during my kids awake hours, and it seemed like all his free time was going toward keeping this mother-ship of a home we had created running, I wanted out!
My “Aha” moment came while I was walking the track at the gym. I suddenly realized what I most wanted out of life was adventure and experiences. How can I possibly achieve this when we are tied to all these responsibilities? Bills to pay. Expectations. I started brainstorming, what if we no longer had a mortgage… then we wouldn’t need my husband to make “x” amount of dollars to pay for it. Now THAT was something to ponder.
My business that originally just started off a hobby, was growing pretty fast and I couldn’t put time into it, because I just didn’t have a lot of extra time to give. But, what if I had more time to give to it, would sales increase? Would it be able to become a family business? Without all this “stuff”, we would require substantially less income to keep all the things housed and provided for. That’s when my AHA moment of really selling all the things we own and moving my family into an RV and traveling the country began!
We currently are at the end of one journey, and about to get on our trail to begin a new one. Our house is in escrow, things have been sold, trashed, given away and logistics of every sort have been looked into over the past year since I had this AHA moment. I hope to share with you all what has gone into all the downsizing and how to take a dream and make it a reality. Follow our families adventures on MAMC, as well as our personal website.
Michelle Howard
Wife, mother and business owner. Michelle home schools her children and enjoys making healing jewlery for her shop, HippieHoopla.
1 Comment
Michelle,
Looking forward to hear more about your adventures,; beauties, bumps and all!
Best to you all!