Less is more

Lately, I've been following the round the world progress of the Andrus family. Their story is quite interesting. A couple and their 4 kids (preschool, 1st, 6th and 9th grade) are spending a year travelling around the world. The father, Tom, took a leave a absence from his job and the mother, Anne, is a free lance writer. They saved their money, put their life on hold, packed up their kids and hit the road. They decided they wanted their kids to learn some important life lessons about gratitude, perseverance, adaptability, humanitarianism and how to gain a sense of accomplishment, all while seeing the world. Isn't that brilliant? They've been visiting all sorts of exotic locales from Vietnam and Cambodia to Argentina and Peru. They're chronicling their journey with stories and beautiful photos on their family blog. You can read all about them here: www.sixintheworld.com

I think I've been so fascinated by their story because it is so simple, yet almost unheard of in today's world. Back in the 60's or 70's, you might hear about something like this. But today, most people would never dream of taking their family on this type of jaunt. When I was about 3, my parents decided they wanted to leave the harsh Illinois winters behind them and move to an island, something my dad had dreamed of since he was in high school. There were only two criteria, it must be warm and wet. They bought a motor home, he took a leave of absence from his job and we traveled the country for about 4 months, in search of our new home. Our travels took us from the outer banks of the Carolinas through Florida and Texas, on to the Pacific Coast, then on up to Washington state, making stops along the way at various points of interest (my brother, Josh, was conceived somewhere around San Francisco). We roamed like a family of gypsies across the country in our holiday rambler until they had narrowed it down to 4 cities they liked, one in northern California, the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound, one in North Carolina and one in Florida. We lived in Illinois a few more years before they decided to make the move for good. They put our house on the market, packed our things and we headed south. Of course, you probably know how this story ends already. They decided that Cedar Key was the place for us and the rest is history...

I’ve been spending a great deal of time trying to streamline our lives lately. I have decided that we have entirely too much stuff (Dayven has been telling me this for a long time). More stuff just means more stuff to trip over and more stuff to clutter up our lives and how much stuff do we really need anyway? When Dayven and I first moved to Nashville, we lived in a furnished apartment for four months while our house was being built. We packed our clothes, our dog and our tivo (ok, some things we really DO need) and headed to Tennessee, while all of our things went into storage. I was so worried I’d need something that was packed away and it turned out I didn’t need anything. It made me realize how little we really can get by with. I keep thinking about the Andrus family and the fact that they are circumnavigating the globe with all their necessary possessions in their backpacks. How freeing that must be! In the words of a famous Tim McGraw song, “If I ain’t got nothin’, I’ve got nothin’ to hold me back.”