I grew up in a rural town in central Massachusetts to a working class family. Ever since I can remember, my dad has been a bit of a junk collector. He’d tell you that my idea of junk is his idea of a bargain. If you were to look in his garage today, you would find a couple of air compressors that need a motor, lots of empty boxes, 5 gallon buckets of nuts, bolts, and screws, extension cords with no plugs hanging from the walls, and ladders that they had to throw out at work for “stupid OSHA safety reasons” but work “just fine.”

A couple of years ago I was giving him a hard time about his garage full of junk and he told me something unexpected and extremely candid. He told me that his collecting and hoarding junk was his response to the way he was raised. When he grew up, there wasn’t a lot of anything to go around. His parents had six children and lived off of one blue-collar income. When he was a kid, you kept spare parts and other things that have the potential to be useful around because you had to to survive. They didn’t have the luxury of going out and replacing something that was broken. They made due with what they have. Even though my family is much more financially sound today, my father still has his safety net of odds and ends. Chances are, he doesn’t know more than 10% of what he actually has because it has piled up over the years. This made me really think for the first time that possessing so much stuff could be a burden weighing you down more than just a person being thrifty.

Growing up as a kid I learned from my dad. Being an only child and not having to share, I collected my own junk. I remember as a kid I was fascinated with locks. I would lock up my especially valuable belongings in a safe deposit box I got for one of my birthdays. Perhaps I too was paranoid about losing the material things that I had. When I was in the third grade, our house robbed into and entirely wiped out of all things valuable. Some items stolen included valuable coins that I collected with my dad and my mother’s wedding ring. Perhaps I too was clinging to material things as a way to try to feel like I had some control over my life.

Since realizing that I had an unhealthy relationship with “junk” I have made some changes to my life to cut the unnecessary and live my life as simply as possible. It is a journey which I have just begun that has no destination. Living simply is a way of life.

This will be the first post of a series where I talk about my journey to live as simply as possible in an ever complex and complicated world. Stay tuned for my story, tips and advice to make your life simple too.