Before this whole Simple Year began, Stephen had an office, I had an office and the kids had a dedicated homework space in an armoire. Each was totally decked out with supplies, printers, and everything that would traditionally be in an office. We didn’t think anything of it. Except, that it’s nuts. For realz.

Even though I work from home, I very rarely sit at a desk. I’m usually writing while nestled in the sofa. Stephen uses a desk, but only if he’s working at night or on the weekend. And the kids? They usually lay on the floor, their bed or on the sofa, depending on what kind of mood they’re in. Sometimes they sit at the kitchen table. Given that, do we really need that much “office” space? Nope.

We decided to have one family desk. And it’s in the, wait for it, family room. This is good for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it forces us to downsize and focus our office related stuff. After we sell this house, our new to us, smaller abode won’t have a dedicated room for an office. We’ll have a family desk. So it makes sense to function that way now.

Which means, today, I’ve listed this on Craig’sList:

We haven’t actually used this printer in over a year. Maybe longer. We only need one functioning printer, so this one’s out of here. If I don’t sell it on Craig’sList in short order, it will get donated to the next charity to show up at our house. (The National Federation of the Blind came this morning. Whoop! Whoop!)

I’ve been thinking about how every time I escort something out of the house, how much closer we are to getting to where we want to be. Sometimes I get bogged down in the minutiae. Like, is getting rid of a pair of socks really making our lives simpler?

But then I look around at what isn’t in my house anymore. And how much better it feels. And the promise of that feeling, of what our lives will look like after we plow through the stuff, keeps me going. Like after we get through this phase of purging, we’ll have the space and time to make the bigger picture changes.