I truly believe that the most important lesson that we learned during the last two years is to pay attention to what is truly important instead of what is noise. Spending more time at home made us realize that we really wanted a more peaceful environment.

The last year has been one of purging, decluttering and simplifying. I’d love to say that we are done, but years of putting off decisions has made a lot of clutter. And it isn’t all physical stuff.

We’ve let go of a lot of old expectations and goals that we no longer cared about. We’ve moved away from friendships that both sides had outgrown. And we’ve chosen to spend time with family who are the important ones instead of the ones who thought they were the important ones.

And stuff. So much stuff. There have been many donation runs, a lot of bags of trash and there is space. Our mantle has nothing on it, tables have 50% less on them and we’ve put art on the wall that is less chaotic.

It seems silly to say that it is hard to simplify but the world tries to push more instead of what is necessary. Decision fatigue is totally a thing too. Buyer’s remorse is too. But we are in a different season of our life and we only want to carry along the things we need.

It’s a lot of work. But each time we simplify just a little more, the rewards completely outweigh the work. The residents of the Snake Den have so much we want to do and this is a huge part of how we’ll get there.

“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life; it’s so easy to make it complex.”

Yvon Chouinard