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I sold my home in 2013 and every time I move I seem to shed more stuff. I am not quite at James Altucher’s level where at one point he only had 15 things. But I could probably move again in 2 carloads.

Since furniture is always the hardest to thing to move, I have been slowly moving in the direction of a furniture-free life.

Stand More and Sit Less

When we look back at our ancestors, we see that humans were built to stand or lay down. Sitting isn’t really something that we did a lot of since we spent most of our time hunting or gathering.

The short video below breaks this down:

Standing

Standing more definitely takes some getting used to.

The most important thing to keep in mind when making changes (from working out to just standing more) is posture.

I ended up building an ergonomically correct computer stand for a few hundred dollars that is easy to wheel out of the way when it is not in use giving me more room.

Sleeping

When I moved for the first time, I had a California King. I would take of one corner and my dogs used the other two-thirds. After selling the bed, I experimented with a few options.

The first was to try the floor using a traditional Japanese futon mattress. These are the type that can be rolled up and stored so you could actually use the space in your room the other 12 hours a day. This worked great in theory until I found I just couldn’t get comfortable in the middle of the night.

I was animatedly opposed to buying another $1000 bed and really tried to think about what I needed:

  • If my dog had an accident, I didn’t want it to run the bed
  • I wanted to be able to move it myself
  • I didn’t want it made of something that was on the Prop-65 list
  • I wanted something that wouldn’t generate a lot of heat
  • I wanted something that was on the stiff side

Out of all the options, the best fit was actually an air mattress.

Now, there is a BIG difference between that Coleman mattress you got at Target for $20 and one that you would actually want to sleep on.

After doing A LOT of research, I landed on the SoundAsleep. If you can remember the “Pepsi Challenge,” many people can’t tell it is actually an air mattress when they sit on it. I also read a number of reviews of people that said that they had used theirs for over a year without a problem.

Think about it, you could buy 10 of these for the price of a Purple mattress.

The only caveat here is that you need to use the manufacturer’s warranty, do not tell them that you sleep on it every day. Aparantly that is not what they are “made for” and it could void the warranty.

Guests

One of the first thoughts that come to mind is “what about when people come over?” After reading an article on minimalism, I found I was not the only one that wrestled with this question. I don’t have guests over a lot and planning for hypothetical situations turns out to be the real problem here. It’s like buying a bigger house with that extra guest room to have just in case.

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Wrap-up

There are no absolutes in life. What works for me might not work for you, but the willingness to experiment is the key. Try standing for part of your day. If “sitting is being called the new smoking,” isn’t trying something new worth a try?