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I’ve been meaning to become more minimalist in my life for the last couple years. When you have a mobile lifestyle and move every year, it makes sense to live by less is more. But this move, more than any other (even more than my original move down to Virginia) is really testing me and forcing me to purge. Here are three easy steps you can follow to learn from my new move-imposed minimalism!

1. Hit a deer with your car and drive it back to your parents house to be fixed. Load up your car with your last-priority “stuff” that you haven’t used in months (or if ever) in your current pad. Be excited, because you’re taking back a car slightly larger than what you originally rode down in so you can bring more things with you!
2. Go to a conference in your new city, and half-assedly pack up your car and drop some things off to store at your friend’s house. This is the “second in command” trip – things you use, maybe not every day and not immediately, but things you’ll need in your new house.
3. Assemble your A-list possessions the weekend before you move and have a complete meltdown as you slowly begin to realize that not everything is going to fit in your car, no matter how much bigger it is. Move boxes into your car in order of importance and try not to panic as you realize you’ll probably have to part with that great little black dress you never got to wore, or your hair dryer (which should have been replaced months ago because the motor sucks your long hair into it,) or the ten plain white tank tops that should go anyway because they’re old, stretched, and stained. Slowly reconcile that you’re losing and no matter how prepared you thought you were for your move this time, you are and were not.

So there you go! Three easy steps to becoming a minimalist.

I know that this isn’t the worst thing and that downsizing is good. I had just hoped to make it to Nashville with at least one piece of furniture in tow (my club chair, which I should have in retrospect brought down to Sixx’s last week) and enough groceries to get through at least my first week there.