I Just Escorted 382 Items Out My Front Door

As mentioned in my “2025 list,” 2025 is my year of less. This week I gave away, at a minimum, 382 items. Here are the things I happily escorted out the front door. And yes, I did count them and 382 is not one of my typical exaggerations.

Item	% Gone!
Brooke’s T-Shirts/Work Out Clothes/Shorts	34%
Dresses	25%
Jeans	33%
Skirts	33%
Unmentionables	73%
J’s Clothes	75 items
Kids Books	41%
DVDs	100%
Kyle Socks	19%
Brooke Socks	48%
Evs’ Socks	52%
Hads’ Socks	59%
J’s Socks	13%
Macs’ Socks	0%
Random Things	7 items
Beanies	20%
Decks of Cards	46%
Highlighters	64%
Colored Pencils	100%
Sharpies	33%
#2 Pencils	62%
Mechanical Pencils	4%
2 Lead Containers	50%
Colored Pens	69%
Black/Blue Pens	49%
Gel Pens	21%
Colored Pen Markers	22%
Pencil Grippers	75%
Pink Erasers	50%

As I mentioned in my last blog, the word “less” has been on my mind for a…well for several years now, but more intensely over the past couple of weeks. As I was purging my life over the past few days, I decided not to wait until 2025 to read The Year of Less by Cait Flanders, but go ahead and dive in.

Four days ago I made the decision to avoid spending money on anything other than food and gas for the next week; so yes, I was a tad sad when I realized my next audible credit wouldn’t be here for 12 days and spending $1.99 on The Year of Less e-book would throw me off course before I’d even made a solid run toward the goal.

However! After some research, I realized the audiobook was free on Barnes & Noble through the nook app, if you had a subscription. Well I didn’t have a subscription and new I couldn’t sign up for one, but I went to bn.com to do more research, realized those who sign up get a free 30 day trial, signed up, “purchased” the audiobook for $0, and sat a reminder to cancel my BN subscription before the free-trial ends.

Okay, Cait Flanders! I’m setting sail into your experiment, but an adapted version that includes considering the 5 other humans living in this house.

Here’s the adapted version of her idea; Spending Money on Stupid/Unnecessary Stuff Ban for one year! The SMOS/US Ban.

Here are the guidelines, I’ve set thus far. In addition to paying for our home, bills, and things we are required to pay for to continue living with the typical first world country luxuries (water, electricity, Netflix to ease our children’s suffering, etc), here are the things we can buy:

Must Haves List:

• Consumable items: food, toiletries, gas, etc.
• Items to replace others if broken or needs replacing (ex. blow dryer kicks the bucket, vacuum keels over)
• Children’s necessities (ex. school needs, outgrown shoes/clothes)
• Items on the below “It’s Okay” list that we already know we need; this will be revisited mid-May as we head into summer break with the kiddos.
• Household needs, but only when we run out (ex. tin foil, shampoo/conditioner, batteries)
• Birthday presents
• Entry fees into Hads’ basketball games and then select high school home games. (Note: If we went to all of Hads’ games and the high school home games, just to get our family of six in the door costs us over $300 a month. If I paid that amount of money extra to my mortgage just during basketball season each year, that would save me over $42,000 dollars in interest over the course of the loan and let me pay off my house 4.5 years early. Live streaming is sounding nice about now.)

It’s Okay List (January – May 2025)

• 1 pair of running shoes for Kyle; 1 pair of running shoes for Brooke; my Strava is telling me the purple running shoes need to become the mowing shoes after 4 half marathons and the hundreds of miles they’ve carried me over while training.
• 2 pairs of work slacks for Kyle; we gave loads of clothes away this week that don’t fit or were worn out; his wardrobe is a bit too minimal for having an out-of-home job.
• Hotel for OKC memorial marathon and a t-shirt as these weekend getaways have become quite essential in our lives.
• If we happen to go on a trip with the Fullers; 1 souvenir per child (this is our thing; we don’t want the kids missing out just because of mom’s crazy ideas that she talks dad into).
• Red Rock Canyon Adventure Park season pass. This pays for itself and then some as often as we go hiking down there.

Specific Things I Know I’ll Want to Buy, but Won’t List

• New pots for plants 🙁
• Clothes for myself/Kyle that aren’t on the approved list
• The Audible App – I was going keep the audible account, but when I plugged this additional payment of $14.95/month into that same mortgage payoff calculator and realized paying that amount extra to our house would save us just over $7600 in interest over the course of the loan; figured I’d roll this to the house and find some good podcasts.
• Books. Just use the darn library, Brooke.
• Shoji White paint to paint my living room. Not a need. You can wait.
• Candles. This one makes me sad, but I’ve got some Young Living stashed away!
• My annual Day Designer Planner that I dearly love and have cherish each year for the past 7 or 8 years now. 🙁

I’m three days in so far and loving my life. Maybe I’ll also just pop all the money I think about spending, but don’t spend into a savings account and then chunk it at our house at the end of each month. I fail at many things and this could very easily end tomorrow; however, maybe I’ll stick to it for a bit and see where it lands us down the road.

If we can give up sugar and bread and pasta and essentially anything good (thanks a lot Kent Butler), surely we can give this a bold attempt! We shall see.