Experiences, Not Things

This is a philosophy that hit home for us not long after our house fire, when we had no more things.  We drifted away from it a bit, because things are easier than experiences.  It’s simpler to buy a thing for that instant, immediate lift that makes you feel better – but then of course you have to deal with the clutter build-up.  It’s harder to plan an experience, but much more worthwhile long-term.

It goes hand-in-hand with our decision to no longer save things for “special”.  We lost a lot of things that we had treasured, and hadn’t used, because we’d been holding onto them for a special occasion.  Now?  If I have a cool dress I adore I’ll wear it to Wal-Mart, I don’t care.  I don’t care what anyone else thinks; if I’m enjoying the experience and getting to use something that I adored, what anyone else thinks doesn’t matter.  Life is too short for that.

With our last trip, we started talking about our travel bucket lists; all the places we wanted to go and things we wanted to experience, and we decided that we would both blog about it, so this is going to become a new series on our blog, that you’ll see tagged with “Travel Bucket List” under our Travel category.

Life should be an adventure.  Don’t bide away your days watching TV, or staring at the same four walls.  Get out into the world, because the longer you put it off, the less likely you are to be able to do the things you want to do in the end.  There will never be a perfect time; you’ll never have just enough savings or just enough time away from work.  You’ll never be able to do it just right, but you are able to do it right now.