Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Lose a Ton Lessons - Freedom in Limits

Having a Lose a Ton trial before my "actual" 10-day challenge proved to be helpful in many ways.  One way was that I began to see the freedom in limits.

On Day 3 of my trial run, I went through my massive collection of gift bags.  I was able to weed out bags liberally because I decided an appropriate number of gift bags for our house was 3 bags per size per holiday.  Having that limit enabled me to discern which bags I liked the best quickly.

Limit-setting also played an important role on Day 4 of my trial run.  I saw how nice life could be with a DVD cabinet where you could actually see each DVD without having to move around stacks of DVDs and VHS tapes.  Seeing the benefit of a limited number of DVDs helped me to make some tougher decisions regarding which movies to keep and which to sell.

When I began my official 10-day run, I started going through my kitchen linens.  I implemented a limit on my place mats after discovering I had 8 different place mat sets.  Sadly, I must admit many of them have not made an appearance yet in our house...which we've lived in for 5 years now.  I laid them out according to how many settings were in each - I had place mats for 4, 6, or 8 people dining.  I chose to keep just one set per group.  Having that practical limit helped me push through the obligation I felt and the irrational thoughts of what scenarios I might encounter later in life that would require me to need all 8 sets.

I need to remember limit-setting in the future.  When storage space seems infinite it's easy to hang onto everything.  When a limit is set only the truly important things stay.


1 comment:

  1. Nicely explained, Amber! Thanks for sharing specific examples of how setting limits for yourself actually gave you a sense of freedom. This is an encouraging reminder for me to practice doing this, too!

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