Sell it all and sail away!
Let me tell you why it will be the best decision you’ve ever made...
Things Don't Make You Happy
Do you find yourself buying things but then never seem to use them or they just seem to clutter up your house and mind?
Stop!
I was a hoarder.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t THAT bad a hoarder! You wouldn’t have found me on the TV shows about hoarders, but, I couldn’t bear to throw anything away and whenever I went shopping, I always seemed to find something to buy – even if I didn’t go out intending to buy anything at all.
Our house was getting more and more cluttered with ‘stuff’ building up in lots of different places which drove Dave mad. To try and appease him a bit (and make our house look a bit more organised!), I became a storage and organisation Queen… or at least that’s what I was telling myself!
My storage solution at least made it look tidy in the garage, even if we barely used what was in there!
The reality was that the shiny feeling you get when you buy something new was beginning to wear off faster and faster. Things just weren’t making me happy anymore. I was going to work to pay for lots of random stuff but it didn’t enhance my life at all and looking back, it was all just weighing me down both mentally and physically.
Keeping Up With The Jones'
Part of the problem when you live in a street or in close proximity to your neighbours is that the feeling of being silently judged is never far away. Sometimes, it’s obvious that you’re being judged as they just can’t help but make comments. They might be direct comments or just subtle hints but either way, you know that they’re watching your every move and it’s an unsettling feeling. Ask me how I know that one…!
It starts with having to mow the lawn outside your house. You’d think that you could just get away with doing the front lawn but when your neighbours can see into your back garden too, then that plan goes out the window.
I got good at mowing stripes into the lawn (so our neighbours wouldn't make comments).
I get that grass needs to be cut. It grows, and fast, especially in the summer. However, it almost turns into a competition on an estate with who can cut their grass the neatest or who has the stripiest lawns. If your lawn mower isn’t up to the job of satisfying your neighbours, then you need to get a new one, maybe even the latest model.
Maybe comments are made about your car or you just want one that is newer and shinier to keep up with what your neighbours have around you. Don’t forget though, it needs cleaning every week to make sure it’s not the grubbiest car in the cul-de-sac.
My car after it had been polished to within an inch of its life!
After that you see your neighbour doing an extension on their house and suddenly yours feels inferior and needs decorating if not an extension too.
Your friend got a new, bigger TV that has all the bells and whistles on it or the latest gaming device and then when you turn to look at yours, it doesn’t seem quite as good as it was before.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it was the street we lived in. Maybe it was the people we surrounded ourselves with. It’s so easy to get sucked into the world of needing bigger and better things and keeping up with everyone around you, that sometimes, you just can’t help it.
It’s one of the biggest reasons we decided to get out of the rat race. We were literally going to work, to buy things. The more things we suddenly needed, the more we had to work. It was a vicious circle.
I came to realise that there will always be someone with newer, better things than what I have. It’s just a fact of life. I had the choice of either continuing to work my arse off to try and keep up with everyone else around me, or, accept that I could be happy with what I had and stop caring about having the latest model of things and what people thought of me.
Less Physical Clutter, More Headspace
When we decided to do exactly that and stop caring. It was such a relief.
Do you know what the next best thing is after coming to accept yourself and what you have around you?
Getting rid of stuff or selling it all.
My storage solutions had become towers of organised chaos. I didn’t actually know what I had on the shelving units that I bought especially to house all our crap on.
Enter the world of Marie Kondo.
Have you heard of the book ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever’? If you haven’t and you are a clutter monster, you NEED to read this book.
It saved me and my hoarding ways!
This book completely changed my way of thinking.
Marie Kondo guides you through the process of tidying up once and for all. She tells you how you can get rid of all the clutter that surrounds you in your home, guilt-free. If I hadn’t read her book, I’d probably still be drowning in clutter and surrounded by a growing pile of stuff I neither actually want or need.
Once I began following her process, I started to feel lighter. My head started to clear and I felt better than I had done in a long time.
It was addictive. The more stuff I sorted and began to get rid of, the better I felt and also, the happier Dave was!
Our garage AFTER it had been Kon-Marie'd!
Make Money
I didn’t just throw stuff away though. I worked out a way to do it that I was happy with.
The reason I didn’t throw stuff away in the past was because I can’t bear the thought of useful things going into landfill. I HATE that idea. So I just kept it instead.
My new way, once I came around to the idea that getting rid of things was a GOOD thing, was to divide everything into sections:
- Stuff that wasn’t any good to anyone or had come to the end of it’s life: recycling (or the bin (if it couldn’t be recycled) as a last resort)
- Stuff that was good enough to be reused but not worth reselling: charity shop
- Stuff that was good enough to pass on to someone else but worth more than ~£10, or nearly new if not brand new: eBay or Facebook Marketplace
I worked out how to use eBay effectively to make the most amount of money (that’s going to be a whole blog post in itself!) and made an absolute killing.
This is just a tiny fraction of what I sold before we left - eBay and Facebook Marketplace became my best friends!
I added THOUSANDS of pounds to our cruising kitty. The more I made by selling things, the more I wanted to sell. It was a win-win-win! Dave got the house decluttered and emptied ready for the next stage, I earned us a load of money, and the more money I earned, the more momentum I felt, so the faster everything went.
It was such a satisfying and freeing feeling. (Even if you don’t want to move onto a boat, I highly recommend decluttering your life and earning a bit of extra money while you do it!)
The Alternative Solution
So what next?
You’ve come to the conclusion that keeping up with your friends, family and neighbours is a waste of time – you’ll be happier without having to do that anymore.
You’ve read Marie Kondo’s book and started decluttering your life and hopefully earned some money in the process.
The next logical step is to start spending your money on experiences and making memories instead of things.
If you’re on land, that could be by having more holidays (because now you can afford to) or buying days out or experiences instead of things (a meal at that restaurant you’ve been eyeing up for ages or a skydive anyone?!).
If you want to COMPLETELY change your way of life, learn new skills, knock your job on the head and have new experiences every single day, why don’t you buy a boat?!
Buying a sailboat will turn your life upside down, especially if you decide to sail away like we did!
We have had experiences on a boat that there is no way in hell we’ve had had if we’d stayed living in a house on land. The places we’ve visited and explored, the meals we’ve eaten in restaurants abroad, the people we’ve met, the wildlife we’ve seen, they are burned into our memories as experiences we’ll never forget. Don’t get me wrong, they haven’t all been light and fluffy, positive, happy experiences but life doesn’t work like that anyway.
Our lives are so much richer now we've lived on a boat. The lows of life can be lower (puking up over the side and being confined to lying on the floor for hours on end during rough sails is utterly crap), but the highs are absolutely incredible.
We’ve had dolphins swimming on our bow at night that lit up the sea like fireworks because of the bioluminescence in the water. I will NEVER forget that night. It was absolutely magical. If we’d have stayed living in our house on land, I never would have seen that nor experienced the satisfaction of sailing our home from one country to another. It’s an experience I’d recommend to everyone.
Having dolphins swimming on your bow will NEVER get old!
What Next?
You only have one shot at life. Make sure you live it to its full potential. Have no regrets.
At the end of the day, you decide: are you going to live to work, or work to live?
Are you going to keep all the clutter you’ve accumulated in your life surrounding you, or are you going to let it go (and make some money in the process) and start living your life to the fullest?
Things are just things. Stuff can be replaced. Don’t let it hold you back or rule your life. I’ve learned that the hard way, but, I saw the light and came out the other side.
If I can do it then so can you.
Spending time with people and having experiences mean more to me now than things ever did. I have so many stories to tell about all the experiences we’ve had out on the ocean over the past 5 years and I can’t wait for Erin to be old enough to remember them too.
Allow yourself to lead the best life possible.
Start by reading Living on a Boat: The Ultimate Guide followed by Marie Kondo’s book and go from there. Take baby steps all the way from getting rid of your first item to sailing away on your very own boat! It will be the best decision you ever made.
Go for it! Start today.
You can do it! 🙂
This article was originally published on www.sailingmutiny.com.
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I really love this website and it has really inspired me to want to get back on the water! Thank you and keep up the good work!