How to Simplify Your Life —
For Snowbirds on a Shoestring

You will find your life calmer, and you feel freer when you simplify. How to simplify your life? Here are a few suggestions and ideas we’ve found helpful.

As a snowbird, you want to spend your winters in warm southern locales. Keeping your life simple and living with less will add to your freedom.

Simply a Beach

How to Simplify Your Life

Do it one step at a time
Declutter
Develop a minimalist mindset
Deal with paper
Identify your priorities
Downsize
Build your nest egg

Do it One Step at a Time

It took years to gather everything you’ve got, so don’t feel you need to sort it all out immediately. — And risk getting overwhelmed and quitting.

Commit to simplifying your life and look for ways to make that work for you. Look through your rooms, garage, outbuildings, vehicles, and toys.

Find your treasures, must-haves, and many things you can do without. Then deal with them. You’ll find this is an ongoing process.

Declutter

Declutter your living space. Go room by room, closet by closet, and drawer by drawer.

Your possessions lying about weigh you down and stress you out. And hiding them in overstuffed closets or renting storage space doesn’t help. Keep what you need and ditch the rest.

Quality used clothes are always welcome at your local goodwill or Salvation Army. Even office wear or dress clothes are helpful for needy folks with less. And you’ll feel great dropping your bags off and making a difference in someone’s life.

You can get lots of advice on decluttering. Marie Kondo suggests only keeping what you love.

Develop a Minimalist Mindset

After some serious decluttering, you’ll find yourself inclined to live with less. Pause before you buy more stuff. Do you really need it? Does it have a place in your home? Will you find it useful? Or will it just become more clutter you need to re-home?

Of course, the best way to save money is by not spending it. A dollar saved is worth about two earned.

Keeping your possessions to a minimum is easier on your wallet and allows you more freedom to travel.

Deal with Paper

Taking care of paper is a big deal. Not only does paper add to your clutter, but dealing with it is a major part of how to simplify your life.

Become a bit of a digital nomad and go paperless. You’ll have access to your mail, books, magazines, bills, and important documents wherever you are. And best of all… no clutter!

Go paperless with your mail, credit cards, bills, and banking. Access them electronically and pay them with online banking.

Go digital with your books. Buy ebooks with a Kobo or Kindle account, and read them on a reader, iPad or even your phone. Or you can rent and download ebooks through your library. You’ll always have your digital library with you.

If you like magazines and news, consider subscribing to Apple News. You’ll get access to over 100 magazines and current news outlets.

Scan or save your important documents to your laptop computer or the cloud. Then you’ll have them at home and when you travel.

Identify Your Priorities

What is most important to you? Finding out what truly matters most to you will allow you to focus your time and goals on what you value.

Narrowing down your list and knowing what to direct your time and energy on is a vital part of how to simplify your life.

Put some thought into deciding whether you should rent, buy or RV over the winter.

Your time is valuable, and allowing yourself to spend time on things that matter to you and avoid unnecessary commitments is freeing.

Downsize

Another step forward on how to simplify your life is to downsize. Look through your possessions for things you no longer use or need. You can sell some items, and gift other things on to those who want or need them.

Check your old sports equipment, past hobbies, vehicles, a seldom-used boat, kids’ toys, etc. You can have a yard sale or advertise on Facebook. Whatever you’re comfortable with or is popular in your neighborhood.

Maybe now that you’re ready to live with less and travel more, you can make do with a smaller home? Or, like some snowbirds, you may decide to sell your home and move into an RV.

Build Your Nest Egg

As you liquidate your unnecessary possessions and buy less stuff — Build up your nest egg. Put aside some of your extra funds to make your winter travels fun and carefree.

Check out budget travel tips for more ideas on living a snowbird lifestyle on a shoestring.

Find what works best for you from our tips on how to simplify your life, and get ready to travel to the sunny south and avoid frosty northern winters.