I live with only 100 possessions and I am so much happier for it.

I had lived in the same house for 40 years. My husband passed away three years ago and at the beginning of this year I finally felt strong enough to tackle the task of clearing the house in preparation to sell it. <br><br>At first, I thought that I was going to have to hire a skip as I had little idea of exactly how much stuff I had accumulated. I have an attic that was crammed to the beams with boxes of possessions, a garage that had the door stuck shut, a loft above the garage with boxes stacked to the rafters and a shed that needed emptying. <br><br>So, I got on with it. I treated it as a task, a task that I needed to work through and then later be able to look back on and see that I had accomplished something huge. While working through this task, I began to understand the scale of the amount of possessions I had accumulated. <br><br>At first, I was very clinical in my decisions, I found it very easy to simply put items into boxes- keep, charity shop, bin. But as time went on, I found it far more difficult. Through my journey, I came to the understanding that my emotional connection to objects was a lot stronger than I thought. I found it terribly difficult to even entertain the idea of parting with an item. <br><br>My house was literally filled from the floors to the ceiling with boxes. Each box was filled with items that I thought "I could need one day" or "reminded me of a time in my life". I was able to get rid of the majority of items without too much difficulty. However, at the end, I was left with boxes and boxes and boxes of items that I just could not part with. <br><br>It was at this point that I decided to read up on minimalism. I spent countless hours reading articles, watching videos and listening to podcasts about minimalism and the minimalist lifestyle. I learned that to become a minimalist, you needed to live with under 100 items.<br><br>After watching countless hours of "minimalist" youtube videos, I realized that these people weren't really living with under 100 items. They actually had hundreds and thousands of possessions. <br><br>Even though I had parted with the majority of my items, I still had hundreds and thousands of possessions. Even if the items were now organized, it was still too much. <br><br>So I got to work and I cleared even more. I cleared all of my items down to exactly 100. It was the single hardest thing I have ever done, but I did it. <br><br>I have never felt happier or more free than I do now.