I love this thread. I’m looking forward to reading through the whole discussion over time. I’m sorry to see though that the OP appears no longer active.

I’ve been refining my own approach to living simply for a long time. The challenge of temptation to acquire “more,” or to assign sentimental importance to what I possess now still comes up occasionally. So in a sense, living simply is a practice for me.

In started by accident. My drinking had gotten out of control, and resulted in the loss of my drivers license, and the need to begin sofa surfing around the same time. I had to start downsizing my material possessions dramatically.

Since then, and long after sobering up, independent stability has been restored, but the “art of living simply” has also sustained. I rent a studio apartment which has just enough room to hold all of my current luxuries. Yet I’ve grown to cherish the freedom of not being weighed down by frivolous material. To this day, if I had to, I could easily offload replaceable items such as furniture, and easily pack my essentials into a backpack, a guitar case, a cat carrier, and get along just fine.

The space, the mobility, and the affordability gained by an unattached relationship to “things” has been the great reward for prioritizing, learning to discern needs from wants, and for practicing a “simple attitude.”