Less Waste: Groceries Sans Plastic

While it doesn’t come new to us that plastic pollution is becoming a more prevalent and pressing matter, it was new to me just how dire the situation actually was, until recently. We were on a fishing trip in Hawaii and I was sitting on a boat with my brother when it came up in our conversation that I was hoping to decrease my red meat consumption and to substitute that with fish and other sea dwellers. My brother suggested I watch the Netflix documentary, A Plastic Ocean. And while I won’t give away any spoilers, let’s just say that after I did, my resolve to cut down on further plastic consumption has hardened significantly.

While I have increasingly tried to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the past year, in the form of grocery bags and disposable dishware and ziplock bags, etc., it dawned on me that plastic is literally everywhere. I walked into grocery stores and department stores this weekend and I was shocked at how much plastic I saw. I think it’s safe to say that more than 99% of the store had plastic on it or was made with some part of plastic. There are so many one-time-use plastic capsules and containers that we never think of. Toothbrushes are made out of plastic. Your lip balm container is plastic, as well as your shampoo and lotions. Clothes with polyester have plastic in them. I mean, most people are wearing plastic! That’s crazy to me.

So this week, I decided to try a new project, which is to reduce (or all together eliminate!) the consumption of plastic. (Thank God we live right next to Mother’s Market!). But even Mother’s Market has their meat wrapped in plastic. I had to trek to Whole Foods, which was my savior! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had anything to eat this week! Here are a few tips I have learned in the ONE day that I went grocery shopping without plastic.

BULK DRY FOODS, INCLUDING COFFEE BEANS AND TEA LEAVES. Whole Foods and Mother’s Market as well as other eco-conscious groceries sell dry foods such as rice, flour, nuts, granola, (fig bars even!) in bulk. Whole Foods also has a Bulk Chocolate section, as well as Bulk Cookies section for all you sweet tooths. What I love about the bulk section is the ability to purchase only what you need, which also helps to eliminate the food waste problem that is occurring. I can easily confess to buying a sack of flour in the past and then not needing half of it until past its expiration date. Wasteful and tragic. The bulk section allows you to simply bring your reusable container(or my favorite, glass jars!), and fill them up with whatever you need for the week. TIP: Go to the cashier first to weigh out your containers, that way you can subtract how much they weigh when you check out at the end of your grocery run.
PEANUT BUTTER AND ALMOND BUTTER. My husband loves peanut butter. So how excited was he when we came upon the section at Whole Foods where you could make freshly grinded peanut butter and almond butter?! With different flavors to boot! We ended up making honey peanut butter and it dispensed straight into our reusable glass mason jar. Pop the lid on there and you are all set! Oh, and the verdict: Best peanut butter ever!
MEATS. This one was easy. Most groceries, even Ralph’s and Albertson’s, have a fresh meat and fish section. All you have to do is remember to bring your container. You just hand them your container, they weigh it all out, place the meat into it and print out that sticker to hand to your cashier!
CHEESES. I was afraid this was going to be a toughy. We like to eat cheese at our house, but if you think about it, what cheese isn’t wrapped in plastic?!?! I think I purchase at least one of those shredded cheese packets every week that I’m at the groceries. And what about the cheese to go with our crackers and fruit? Wrapped in plastic. I was worried for a second that we would have to give up cheese forever. Then my husband figured it out! We headed over to the deli section and asked them to slice cheese for us and put it in our container. The selection is limited, and it isn’t the classy type that you serve with dried dates and cracked black pepper crackers, but it’ll do for your everyday cooking! For the nicer stuff, try stopping by your local cheesery (we’ve got one in Costa Mesa just down the street), and ask them to slice a big chunk off of their cheese wheels, to go!
BREAD. Bread usually comes packaged in plastic, but Whole Foods has fresh baked bread every day, and tons of different types too! It was so difficult choosing which one to get this week. The one covered in pumpkin seeds or the baguette? You just let them know your favorite and they have paper bags that can be used to carry the loaf out. Or, my more preferred option, you can bring in a large rectangular linen, and wrap that fresh bread up as if you were in France and were stopping by a bakery on your way to a picnic. Might as well bring a picnic basket with you while you’re at it.
MILK. We know we wanted cereal this week, but the problem was in the milk. Milk comes in those plastic gallons or half gallons which I definitely did not want to buy. They also come in cartons, but even the cartons are lined on the inside with a film that contains, you guessed it, plastic. So what solution did I find? Companies such as STRAUSS Creamery sell their milk in glass jars. And you can take the glass jar back to Whole Foods who will ship it back to Strauss and the creamery itself will reuse the glass jars. The only problem? They use a plastic containing lid, probably to seal the milk properly. I will keep returning the glass jar with the lid, to prompt them to think of a reusable option at least. The nice thing is, if you live close to their creamery, you can swing by and fill your own container, but alas, no creameries near me. Also, I was happy to see that there were multiple other companies that sold milk in glass jars as well, so yay for the movement!
MAKE YOUR OWN SAUCES. Okay, so I know it’s easy to find sauces in glass jars these days, but I wanted to go that extra step and try to reduce consumption of other individual containers as much as possible too. So this week, I made pasta marinara and green enchilada sauce out of vegetables and spices. And it was very rewarding. Mike says the enchilada sauce was the closest he’s had to the best enchilada sauce he ate in Mexico. I bet it’s because they make them fresh there too.
EAT FRESH. The subway mantra applies to this no-plastic campaign. I came to the sudden realization that if I am to cut out all plastic, I have to cut out all frozen foods. Including my ever-loved acai berry packets from Trader Joe’s. All frozen foods come in plastic packaging. There’s no other way around it. But you know what, it’s for the better anyway. Healthier meals, happier planet.
FRUITS AND VEGGIES. Skip plastic bags when buying produce. I use these reusable net mesh bags from New Zealand to put my veggies in, and when I get home, transfer them to a bowl so that the bags are free to re-use again. Usually, berries and the like are packaged in those clear plastic baskets, but you can head to a local farmer’s market, and fill your own container with your favorite summer berries. Or return those green plastic baskets to your local farmer’s market guy and he can re-use it again! The worst are those nets that hold multiple avocados or cuties. How many of those avocados go bad before you are able to use them anyway? Just grab one or two individual avocados and oranges instead!
SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES. Ice cream isn’t the first thing that pops into most people’s head when it comes to grocery shopping, but it’s the first thing that pops into mine! One of my favorite local ice cream stores is Kansha Creamery in Torrance. They make ice cream daily, and give part of their proceeds to a charity, which changes every year. They also promote having their customers bring in their own containers to serve the ice cream in. And they will sell you ice cream pints, placed in your own container! The ice cream is great, albeit a little pricier than a tub, but you’re saving the planet, and hey, it might even help with your summer diet! Might I be so bold as to also suggest supporting local carnicerias by buying freshly made tortillas? The second thing that pops into my head. They will welcome the business, and your belly will welcome the tortilla. Win win.
ASK FOR AN ALTERNATIVE. And the best thing you could possibly do? Start a conversation. Ask for an alternative. You may get weird stares, especially at large grocery stores such as Ralph’s and Albertson’s, but it does get people thinking. I asked for my meat at Ralph’s to be packaged in my container, and there was a moment’s hesitance, but he said “Ok” anyway. When I was ringing up my order, the couple in front of me were whispering, not so subtly, “Is that tupperware??”, when staring at my pile of check-out items. And then the wife goes, “I never even thought of that!”. The cashier guy himself paused in the middle of check-out and asked, “Did you bring all of these?”, to which I said “Yupp! Just trying to reduce plastic waste.” To which he shrugged and kept ringing up the order. You wouldn’t get these questions or stares or comments at places like Whole Foods or Mother’s Market, which is to say that you are surrounded by very like-minded people in those areas. But it’s important to continue this habit in other aspects of your life as well, to other grocery stores who might question you or think differently of your routine. One day at the grocery store can bring a lot of awareness to a lot of people.

I know that there are a lot of people out there who know about the situation, but don’t care. But it is also true that people cannot care if they don’t know. A lot of people simply don’t know. They don’t know the severity of it, nor are they aware of the alternative options that they have. And you know what, most people will be willing to change. How often do I see people bringing their reusable bags now that they have to pay to buy grocery bags in LA and OC and SF? Or opting to carry their items out in their hands instead of paying for a convenient piece of plastic? I like to believe that people are inherently good. That’s just how I am able to sleep at night. How about you?

Other tips for readers and me alike are welcome in the comments below! Thanks!

Future blog post on how I reduce plastic in other aspects of my every day to come! 🙂

Living slow: Saying No

Life is a whirlwind, and that’s the simple truth. The dogma of western culture states that an individual has increased freedom with increased choice. This unquestioned thinking has led to what some describe as the paradox of choice. It is so embedded in our culture that it is difficult to stop and think that the opposite could also be true (which it is). That is, the abundance of choices may lead to an overwhelm that could rob us of true satisfaction.

I used to be a “Yes Man”. Born with a strong urge to please others and to be the most helpful I could be, I said yes to everything. I said yes to all social events even though I was introverted, I said yes to peer pressure even though I knew the difference between right and wrong, and I said yes to all projects even though I was stressed and extremely overworked. It garnered me a lot of “friendships” and “accomplishments” and many, many people liked me. But I was tired most of the time, sickly at best, and honestly dissatisfied with a lot of my relationships, including my relationship with myself. Most importantly, I did not have a very strong sense of self. I had a very deep understanding of what others wanted me to be. But I did not know what my own goals in life were, what values meant the most to me, which relationships I truly enjoyed, and what it meant to be truly successful.

Confused about what success truly meant, I said yes to a lot of ideas that were shaping my life to become what others expected of me. I bought a lot of clothes in different styles so that I could be socially accepted by different groups of people. I bought stuff just to shape an image that would be appealing to the public. I bought into the idea of getting married at a young age (at 18, I said I would be married by 21), and buying a home as soon as possible (I was planning my future home as early as 20), and having kids (by 24!). At the same time, I had planned to be a doctor by 26, I had wanted to have a large smattering of friends, and hoped to be working towards a vacation home, a dog, and even more stuff. I never thought of travel. I put my hobbies aside, or rather, discarded them completely. In order to gain this level of “success”, I had three jobs in college, stayed out late partying with random groups of people, said yes to many school events, and studied my ass off. I hardly saw my family, despite the fact that I lived at home during undergrad. I stopped being religious, which isn’t so bad because I still haven’t gone back, but when I was religious, I used to at least thank God every day, and I think a part of me stopped being grateful at that time, so that wasn’t too good. And I never took care of myself. I was sick for months at a time, because I honestly didn’t allow myself enough time to get better. Always saying yes, my life was a mess.

So in 2010, I met a boy who was living slow, and saying no. It was frustrating at first, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around why he would say no to a LOT of ideas, events, and things that a normal person would embrace. Even his movements were slow. He could be described as deliberate. Purposive. Intentional. Calculated. Most importantly, he was someone who was true to himself, and nobody else. He was also the most satisfied human being I had ever met. One day, we were eating breakfast omelettes and potatoes that cost $7 a plate, because we were still living on close to nothing, and out of the blue, I remember him saying, “You know, we are two very lucky people.” He expounded, saying we had everything we need and want, and more, and we had each other. We had things that some people never found in a lifetime. “Life is good.” I married the damn sucker.

It took forever, but he was the first and only person who ever taught me how to live slow and more importantly, say no. Over the years, I learned that time was more important than money. My work goals changed from wanting three jobs to earn money to buy stuff, to working ONE job that I had to love doing so much that it does not feel like work. I quit the librarian position I hated during dental school, which I only had to take in order to make ends meet when I was living at a conveniently located, high rise apartment in the middle of downtown LA. I moved to a small bedroom in Torrance and cut my rent from $1300 a month to $375 a month. I got rid of clutter and stopped buying junk. I did not go out excessively, except to celebrate important occasions, and I cooked healthier meals at home. The money I saved, I used to travel the world with my partner in crime, and we learned more about ourselves and each other in the process. I started focusing on experiences and hobbies rather than social status symbols. My favorite thing to do in my teens was to hit the mall, scour the sales, and go out with friends. My biggest worries in my teens were the perception of self, and what others will say about me. My favorite thing to do now include taking classes and learning things that improve myself and increase my contribution to society, whether it be art or science. My biggest worry now is whether or not my friends and family will be safe today, whether or not other people in parts of the world are suffering, and whether or not I will do good by my patients through my work.

My relationship goals changed from saying yes to all my acquaintances or people I hardly met, to saying no unless I really, really liked you. I became selective in who I chose to hang out with, and I lost a lot of relationships along the way, but I regained a few that were more important to me anyway, and that was worth it. I learned that you shouldn’t try to change the personalities, beliefs and values of others, that changing the people around you is never a good thing. But you can still change the people around you. I cut out the excess fat. I realized that people who did not share the same values and beliefs as me only take away time from people who do. I don’t mean to say that you should cut out everyone who does not agree with your beliefs, but surround yourself with people who have the same end goal. You and your friend can vote for different presidents, but if both your end goals are to try to improve this world to become the best that it can be, it’s totally okay if the paths you take in order to do that diverge. Diversity is good, but so is working towards a common end. Now if you have a friend whose goal in life is to make someone else’s life miserable by spreading bad rumors about them, then maybe that’s not a friend I would want to keep hanging out with. And that’s just my personal preference, because it does not line up with my values and that’s okay. In return, I see my family more frequently. I built stronger, longer-lasting relationships, rather than transient relationships which last only half a decade. I have surrounded myself with a support system more focused on pushing me to become a BETTER person, rather than a more successful person.

My husband also slowed me down in my ridiculous fast speed chase of buying a home and having kids. Which gave me this opportunity to learn about myself. It gave me a whole new perspective on a way to live life in order to enjoy it most. I now have the time to take care of myself and to grow. He made me question why there is always this constant need for more. Or why there are social norms that we accept to be true. Why is there a timeline that one is expected to follow, a path that people expect you to take. What works for me, may not work for you, and vice versa. In order to live a meaningful life, I had to make room for only the things that matter. And very few things truly matter, in comparison to the abundances of choices we make every day. Some will still argue that with choice, comes freedom. Sure, it does, up to a certain extent. Kind of similar to the idea that money will buy happiness, only until your basic needs are met. Once you have food, shelter, safety, and a stable income, money has little effect on happiness. Likewise, freedom is defined by the ability to choose. However, choosing to say no to a lot of the choices offered to you will arguably give you even more freedom to fill your life with important matters and will lead to a more meaningful life as defined by individual ole you.

The Decision That Will Change Everything

About a year and a half ago, I stumbled upon “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. What began as a simple process of de-cluttering my life of material goods that served me no purpose turned into a shift in my entire way of thinking about STUFF. I was brought up to believe in the compulsive consumption that defines a majority of the western world today. I was stuck in a state of mind where I felt as if I “NEEDED” everything. I was fooled by the fashion industry to believe in the “it” thing of the nanosecond, constantly changing from one “it” thing to the next.

The journey began with getting rid of my clothes. I used to stand in front of my closet each morning, and take thirty minutes just to choose what to wear. There was an overwhelming amount of options to choose from, and more often than not, I went back to the same set of clothes I wear every week. I started to realize that I had spent hard-earned money (or worse, money I didn’t even have if not for the massive amount of student loans I took out), on articles of clothing that I didn’t need, or want, or even like for that matter. This realization pushed me to start researching about the fashion industry and I began wondering how I could have ever thought I needed that much clothing. And as I delved deeper, I started asking more and more questions. How could they get away with making our clothes so cheaply? Where were the products coming from? Who made them? And I started turning towards more ethical lines of clothing when purchasing my clothes. Additionally, over time, I began purchasing less and less stuff. After going through so much work purging my closets (it took weeks and weeks!), I did not want to go back to that state of being in excess. I started realizing that I needed less, or that I didn’t need anything at all. I became overly selective, scrutinizing every piece and grilling myself with the question, “Why?” Why do I feel the need to have it? Why do I think it will improve the value of my life?

I then started to extend this de-cluttering to my books, arguably my second largest collection of items at the time. I hoarded books. It was awful. When I was done sorting them, I had filled 6 medium-sized Home Depot boxes with books I had already read. Another 4 boxes with books I will never read, 4 boxes with textbooks, and then I kept another bookshelf of books I wanted to read in the future or wanted to keep. Over time, I realized that half of the books I kept were books I didn’t want to read anyway! I used to think that starting a book meant I had to finish it. I pushed myself to the ending because I thought every book had something to offer. That is generally the truth (with a few exceptions), but it doesn’t mean I enjoyed the reading process throughout its duration. During the de-cluttering process, I started realizing that life is too short for that. Reading should be done for pleasure. Now I pick up a book, and if I do not like it, it immediately gets passed on to someone else.

De-cluttering books and clothes freed up so much of my room, let alone my life. I started to crave the absence of material things. My physical self felt so much lighter, if you can imagine that. I went from wanting to buy a new article of clothing every weekend, to buying less than 10 in the last year. I went from buying all the books I can carry at library sales and used bookstores, to wishing only to borrow books from the library or getting electronic copies on my kindle. Can you even imagine how much space a person frees up if they go from 500 books on the shelf to a single rotating book from the library? Or a single slender kindle by your nightstand? As a follow up question, do you even realize how much money you save? And going past money, look at how much time is freed up. No longer are you reading books just to say you read them. No longer are you standing in front of your closet for thirty minutes trying to choose what to wear. This opened up a lot of time for me, allowing me to explore the world, to learn new crafts, and to spend time with my loved ones.

So I kept on going. I went through everything I owned and re-assessed whether they were of use to me or whether they brought me joy. And when I finished the process, I started all over again. Things that initially were hard to let go, became easier to let go during the second round. And the third round. As I parted with more things, the less I needed. More importantly, I realized the gifts that living a simple life had to offer. Something in my brain clicked. Life became more about the people I spent time with, the hobbies that made me happy, the milestones that made me a stronger person and the achievements that made me grow. And this is why I named my blog, “The Simple Life”. I would never have had the time to start writing again if I did not go through this change. I realized that I was working to become a minimalist, in order to be a maximalist. I was minimizing the amount of STUFF that surrounded me, which allowed me to maximize reaching my true potential. And just like that, I was hooked.

And then something terrible happened right after I graduated and Mike and I moved in together. I suddenly became obsessed with furnishing our new place. I wanted to buy new furniture. I wanted to have it look a certain way, like warehouse meets bohemian meets mid-century modern and all the other bull crap that they feed you when you look through housing magazines in your average dental office’s waiting room. I bought and bought and bought, even before I started working, with money I didn’t have. I used money that Mike had saved up. Now our home looks amazing, and I love coming home to it every day! It is perfect in my eyes. But as time went by, I realized there were some things that we purchased that really is not the SOURCE of my happiness with this home. I do not love coming home to our loft after a long day of work so I could stare at my furniture. Instead, I love coming home and seeing Mike lying on the couch with his legs swung over to the side watching League of Legends on our projector. The couch and the projector were not the things pulling on my heartstrings. Also, we spent about $1000 on 12 dining chairs from RH. Don’t get me wrong, I love those chairs. They look cool and sleek and are comfortable and fit perfectly around our 12 foot dining table (A 12 FOOT DINING TABLE GUYS! I mean, Jesus!). But that’s not what made me happy. What made me happy is hosting a gathering for friends or family every week and having those chairs so that we could all eat a meal together. What made me happy were the PEOPLE, not the THINGS. We got Mike this beautiful RH computer desk, which is a modular system, meaning we could add more units to it over time (kind of like a sectional couch). We said we were going to buy an extension for myself after I started work and earned money for it. To this day, almost one year later, I have not bought myself the extension. I slowly started to realize that I did not need a desk. We get ourselves into these homes, with so much SPACE. And because there is the space, we feel the need to fill it with STUFF. I realized in the last year that none of this is true.

As I continued to de-clutter in all other aspects of my life, I was momentarily swept away by the idea of starting a beautiful home that I forgot what I was actually working towards. I started to feel like I needed to pick up more work hours, so I could BUY those dining table chairs. Imagine! Feeling the need to tie up your time with work so that you could earn more money to buy more stuff. Less time, more stuff. Therein lies the trap.

And then, two months ago, I decided I wanted a house. Mike and I heard of this amazing program for doctors that would allow us to buy a house, well, now. Right now, we are able to get a loan for a house close to one million dollars. ONE MILLION! That is a really big number. I became obsessed and threw myself into a headlong search for homes in the area, which are crazily spiking in value, by the way. As I looked for more homes, I became more and more grossed out by how large they were. How much excess space they had. There was a living room, AND a family room? A breakfast nook, AND a formal dining room? But why? I started to fall more and more in love with older, single story homes. I became obsessed with Eichler homes down the street. The smaller the better. Homes that nears 1600 square feet seemed extremely large to me. I started to look at homes because of their design, not because of their size. But even buying a house is a concept society tells you you should do in order to be successful. And even now, it’s hard for me to unwrap my mind around it. Yet another THING that I was told should be purchased in order to make me happy. And I am not saying it won’t make me happy. I think living and owning an architectural piece of history like an Eichler would be AMAZING. But who’s to say I am not equally as happy living in my current loft? We all know that the happiness level can only be so high. And I am VERY happy here. Lucky for me, something happened last week that really pushed me to step back, and re-analyze whether buying a house right now is right for us.

When I graduated dental school, I left school with a huge loan. Bigger than any other school loan I have heard of, I graduated with a debt of over $560,000. In order to pay back this debt in the standard 10 years, I would have to commit to 10 years of payments of over $6,500 a month. Think about how your life would be different if you spent $6,500 a month towards paying back a debt. Obviously, that is a huge chunk of change for most people. It was an impossible task. So we had agreed to commit to a 25 year loan forgiveness plan called IBR to get rid of this massive amount of debt. In essence, this program allows you to pay only a percentage of your income and then on the 25^th year, the loan is forgiven, but you have to pay the taxes of the left over amount, which would mean that on the 25^th year, you would pay over $477,000 in taxes. But it’s a more doable program because you get to raise this money over the course of 25 years and meanwhile, you only pay a small amount per month. Our financial advisor agreed with us and told us that this is the best way to go.

We started working with a budgeting tool called YNAB to get a better grasp of our finances and to plan out a future of 25 years worth of fun, but also, 25 years worth of saving money for this massive repayment when the loan is forgiven. Last week, I got on a call with my advisor, expecting to discuss with him about the possibility of buying a house. We were going to go over what we have been saving (on average) the last few months since the wedding, and we were going to use that to determine what a good price on a home would be, and also how much we should set aside each month for the loan repayment. And then he proceeded to tell me and Mike something that we never thought we would hear.

He said that we are saving so much money, that we could arguably pay back my student debt in ten years or less WITHOUT changing our lifestyle.

I was floored. And that’s when something in me clicked again. I am in a lot of debt, and here I am, ready to sign up for even more debt, for something that I was taught would define “success”. Mike and I knew how much we were saving a month, but when I heard our financial adviser tell us that we were saving so much money that what we once thought was insanely impossible could be done, I really truly woke up. And it is here that I want to drive in two points.

First, I can attribute the amount of money that Mike and I are successfully saving to the fact that we have significantly decreased our spending since the wedding. Simple as that. Do you keep tabs of where your money goes? Every penny? With YNAB, I now do, and I am able to curate my money-spending decisions and habits based on money-spending mistakes which I made in the previous months (I would be happy to write about the envelope system that we use to help us manage money in a different post). And with this comes power. Imagine if you just stopped buying things. If you just paid for groceries (and when I say groceries, not even an excess of groceries. I am talking about enough food to sustain you but not enough food to make you gluttonous), a roof over your head, and other bare (and I mean BARE) necessities. Do you know exactly how much you would save? Obviously it’s different for every person but I can tell you that it is a lot more than what you are saving now. Minimalism, or at least mindfulness with consumption of goods, has REALLY changed my life. It’s changed my way of thinking so completely that not only do I have more time, I also have more money without me having to work hard to make it that way. And this isn’t to say, live like a hermit and never succumb to any pleasures. I spend a lot of money on things that make me happy, including activities such a yoga, ceramics, and guitar lessons. I have no problem at all with spending money on things that will progress you towards becoming the person you want to be. But if you want to truly save money, don’t buy into the goods and the hype and the CRAP that they spew out at you. I have never, in my life, had excess money. But I have always had excess stuff.

And my second point is this: So many people need stuff so desperately that they are willing to add more debt and give away more of their life and their freedom in exchange for said stuff. How many people reading this have a car payment? A student loan? Credit card debt? A mortgage? I know I do. Did you know that the total debt owed by US consumers is $12.58 trillion as of 2016? 12.58 trillion! The Minimalists Joshua Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus put that into perspective really well. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year. 12.58 trillion is 398,909 years worth of seconds. You have no idea how much that stuns me. Did you know that the average household has debt with six figures? I came from a family where debt was always the answer. I will go over my money egg and experience with debt while growing up in a different blog post, but debt is never the answer. I went into debt to invest in myself and to pursue a passion that I dreamt about since I was eight years old. But that STILL doesn’t make it good debt. And I made bad decisions along the way. I took out the maximum amount of debt and spent the money on vacations. I worked three jobs in undergrad only to spend more than what I earned on going out with friends or on new clothes. Like I said, I was fooled. And even though I am getting better at realizing this, I was about to sign even more of my life away for something that I do not NEED. I should have learned my lesson about debt by watching those around me. Debt needs to be paid off ASAP. There IS such a thing as Financial Clutter. And if I truly wanted to minimalize and de-clutter in order to live a more meaningful, passionate life, I realized that I needed to get rid of this debt. I suddenly felt silly for wanting to keep up with the Joneses, for wanting to show the world what I can “afford”, in quotations, because I do not believe people buy homes they can actually afford. They buy homes their future selves would be able to afford, after a lot of work and time and years. I knew right away that buying a house was not the correct answer. Shouldn’t I have seen the warning sign when my dear friend told me that their first house purchase is preventing them from actually buying the house of their dreams. Tying them up like prisoners to the house they chose to live in. Weren’t the ridiculously rising house prices in this area over the past two months enough to make me stop and think if now is the correct time? How could I not realize that buying a house right now would be a mistake, when my co-worker who has been working for over 15 years chooses to wait one more year to buy a home? These were all questions I was asking myself after I realized what I was doing. And there was only one answer.

I truly believed that if I bought a house, it would show the world how adult I’ve become, how successful, how tasteful, how smart.

How silly.

De-cluttering and minimalism was the best journey I ever embarked on, and it was a decision that changed my life forever. And now, we are making another big decision that will also change our lifestyle in the next ten years to come (for the better!). I am choosing to pay back my student loans aggressively, and to channel my energy into being debt-free (more on thoughts about debt to come in a future post). Where people are throwing themselves into work to get more money to buy more stuff, I am going to throw my energy and resources to RID myself of stuff. I want to choose the presence of people, the presence of mind, the presence of everything else but excess consumer goods. And I am most definitely choosing the absence of student debt.

Join me in reading about how this decision, and all other decisions about simple living, shape our life. I have a feeling that it will enrich our lives that much more. I am not a minimalist by any means, but strive to live like one, in order to be a maximalist in other, more important things.

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