For me it's taking the Winnebago to Lake Winnebago in the Land of the Cheese heads.

Over this summer, our children were not keeping their rooms clean. Sure, sure, if I got after them, they would clean the rooms, but within a day or two it looked like a tornado hit.

They were staying with friends for a few days and I decided to help them simplify their complicated lives.

I took everything in their rooms that wasn't put away or they were not taking good care of and put it all curbside. I took a picture and posted it on Craigslist in the "free" section. Everything was gone in a couple of hours. The foosball table lasted less than 30 minutes.

The funny thing is that I haven't had to help them simplify their lives since. ;)

angela

Sort your stuff into 3 categories: love it; use it; lose it. Get rid of the "lose-it" pile.

My wife has a memory scar of her parents doing this to her; only they burned the stuff. Poor kids, they'll never forget that. I stay out of my kids rooms; on special days we ask them to make sure they're clean, otherwise it's their room, imo.

My wife and I are in the process of "simplifying" our lives as well. We sold our house right before the crash, changed a lot of the money into foreign currency, kicked out our tenants and are living in a smaller townhouse that has a super low mortgage payment. We paid off every credit card, cut out all unnecessary spending, hardly eat out, etc. We're going through our storage and garage and selling everything we don't use on eBay which turned out to be great! We even sold pants, skirts, shoes etc that we don't wear and we are getting a lot of hits. Not only the clutter is disappearing but there's extra money in our bank account. We both have excellent jobs and make a very good income, but we know tough times are coming (I believe we'll see the "D" word not just the "R" word) and we want to be able to live on 1 paycheck and not touch our savings. We're still working on cutting our last "vice"..Starbucks coffee..but we're getting there! :)
We're not getting rid of the Porsches, tools etc. My passion is playing music and I'm even selling off some of my guitars that I hardly play (I was up to 12).
Basically sell all the clothes you don't wear, go through your garage, storage, attic etc it's a great time to sell used stuff on eBay. Get rid of everything that you don't need, try to cook at home, eat out only once or twice a month, do simpler things with friends/family (play cards, boardgames, video games,etc) so you're not tempted to just hang out at the mall/stores and buying more stuff.
A lot of good advice by the way from the previous posts!

Good luck!

I also have too many books. The sad part is that I have not read most of them :(.

ugh ... I would love to rummage through some of your stuff :)
Been running on a tight budget and still need some things to fill out my house.

I actually moved into a bigger space but for lot's of yous I'd recommend going smaller with a bigger lot. Enjoy life and cooking. Can't go wrong that way.

Anybody need to dispose of ipods or 82 911 usable parts :D ?
My baby is need of some TLC ... and my "allowance" is at a level that makes simple life easy!

A little more seriously (errr, the ipod and parts is serious though ;) )
Maybe a another Classified section might be good. Sure there's a misc section but it feels more like just another parts section. How about another Buy-Sell-Trade-Free area?

There ya go. That's the key to it. I started this life style 5 years ago when I retired. I have not regretted one second.

buy less.

I wonder why there's no P car in you signature. You could be driving this

http://www.sneedco.com/Superfly%20El...0Tindera_4.JPG

while listening to this

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Dress like this

http://elucid.blogs.com/elucid/image...4/superfly.jpg

Oh did I wish you a Happy New Year?

If not Happy New Year.

sell the kids, rent out the wife
buy lot's of guns and beer
eat what you shoot

simple enough?

My family just moved my dad out of his house and garage and into a retirement home. He was always a do-it-yourselfer and had a ton of tools and miscellaneous crap. We sent about 4 large loads to the dump of things my dad was saving. After we were all done, I started doing a lot of personal reflection, as there wasn’t anything my dad had that was worth much after a lifetime of working and building and fixing. I started thinking about what I was going to leave my kids, and wondering if anything I had was really worth keeping. I spent the next couple of weeks throwing things away, giving things away, or selling them. I completely re-designed my garage with all the space I created, and we are now looking at buying a much nicer but smaller house. My life is simpler now, and I have a lot less stuff. I’m not as busy as I was, and I’m a lot less stressed. I want more time to sail, and hike, and camp, and ski – and generally just enjoy life.