RL Tips: How to Live with Less

As a child, I used to dread my mom’s version of spring-cleaning, which she liked to schedule around the beginning of each year. That was the one day my mother tied on her bandanna and did her full-on hausfrau routine, sparing nothing—she terrorized dust bunnies, cobwebs, and purged our home of all filth and excess in time for Chinese New Year. The end result was always a spotless home and more space for the kids to accumulate junk until the next major cleanup. 

Speaking of mothers, our current throwaway consumer culture has finally met its match—Mother Nature, heaving back at us with floodwaters choked with trash and belongings ruined in an instant. The recent weather calamities prompted us to rethink our purchases, to give to those in need, and to be more mindful of disposing our garbage. These disasters also make us ask ourselves: Do we really need all this stuff? Think of this guide as your way of defragging and rebooting your home, getting rid of non-essentials and giving you new room to grow. After all, if you can’t make space for good things to come into your life, how can they fit in at all?

Read the original article in the January 2010 issue of Real Living Magazine. Download your digital copy of Real Living on the Real Living App now! Log on to summitnewsstand.com.ph/real-living for more details.