Practicing a minimalist lifestyle is a process that takes time. My journey started from the inside out. First, I started by discovering which were my priorities and things that made me happy. It changed my way of thinking, and without realizing it, I learned the benefits of detachment. However, practicing detachment from material things took more time. Today I think I have gone up a step in this aspect.
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I am a music lover. It seems to me that it is the most sublime artistic manifestation there can be. Each musical note is capable of generating so many emotions in me that for me it is therapeutic.
When I got married, I found in my husband a person who also appreciated good music. For 15 years, we dedicated ourselves to collecting CDs with the best exponents of the music of all time.
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Our musical tastes are very varied from rock to instrumental music. Throughout this time, we managed to have almost 400 CDs. This is not counting some that were taken in a robbery that occurred in our home. In the robbery, I estimate that almost 200 discs were taken. So I think we got to have 600 discs.
We always said that when we had more time at home, we would dedicate ourselves to listening to all that music. But in reality we always listened to 1% of all the records.
It was 4 years ago when we considered emigrating that I felt the need to think about getting out of these records. This decision hurt me a lot as I considered some of these records great gems. To tell the truth, many of these records had also cost us a lot of money. So the first thing was to think about selling them. But for one reason or another, (excuses at last), we never got out of the records.
What I did at that time was upload all that musical compendium to the cloud. However, the records were still taking up a lot of space in my house.
For many years now my husband and I have been enjoying streaming services to enjoy music from all over the world. Was there any point in keeping these records in my house? I think that without realizing it, I had placed a lot of sentimental value on these items, and that's not so good especially when they are unused. After all, who cared if I had the best collectible records? I didn't intend to win any Guinness World Records for that 😃.
I think that knowing that it is already the end of the year, leaving the records was something that I could no longer postpone, and I just picked up all the records and donated them. At first, I thought I was going to feel uneasy about this act of "madness". But to my surprise that night, I was so happy to see the shelves in my house cleared and to know that someone else would enjoy that good music.
I still have many lessons to learn on this minimalist path. My biggest challenge is to donate my recipe collection. However, if I was able to let go of the records and know that I can still enjoy the music stored in the cloud, I know that I could do the same with the recipe books.
It may seem like a paradox, but getting rid of material objects is much easier nowadays with technology.
Have you recently let go of something material that you cherished?
All images are property of the author
(Camera cell phone: POCO X3 Pro, Xiaomi)
