I downsized from a 2-bedroom house to a 42-foot sailboat, and my life has changed for the better

• My partner and I moved from a 1,200-square-foot house onto a 42-foot sailboat with our dog.
• We kept the necessities and items that mattered to us and donated or sold nearly everything else.

In early April 2021, a little over a month before my partner and I were supposed to move aboard our 42-foot sailboat named Luna, I looked around our 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom house and started to panic.

I had no idea where we were going to put all of our stuff, but by the time we moved at the end of May, our home was eerily empty.

Today, we live on the boat with our greyhound, and I don't miss a single thing we got rid of.

Downsizing didn't mean getting rid of things that were important to us

Despite how much we downsized, there were still items we didn't want to sell, either because they have sentimental value or we knew we'd use them again someday and didn't want to repurchase them.

Once we knew what we were keeping, we started calling friends and family to see who had space to store some of our items. We ended up dispersing these things all around Maryland — we have speakers in Baltimore, snowboards in Annapolis, and kitchen appliances on the Eastern Shore.

I even have a spreadsheet outlining what stuff we have stored and whose house it's at when the day comes to collect our things.

We were able to make money selling our things to friends, at yard sales, and on Facebook Marketplace

On the flip side, we needed to figure out how much stuff in our home people would actually pay for.

For the six months leading up to our move, every time I would hear that someone was moving into a new place and looking for furniture, I would insist they come over and buy anything in our house. This is how we sold our coffee table, toaster oven, and a few bedroom dressers.

By the time spring rolled around, we only had a few weeks left in our house, so we needed to take more drastic measures.

At the beginning of May, our community had a yard sale, so we brought everything we could carry onto our front lawn with no intention of bringing it back inside. By the end of the day, I was selling vases for a dollar and giving away party supplies to neighborhood kids.

In the end, we made a few hundred bucks and had a lot less stuff to deal with.

Lastly, I sold our living-room couch on Facebook Marketplace for $600 in just a few days.

We donated whatever was left over instead of throwing it away

Our goal was to donate as much of our leftover stuff as we could.

At the end of our yard sale, we posted a picture of what was left in our local "buy nothing" Facebook group. That afternoon, people came by and picked up a lot of the remaining items.

As time ran out, we started taking carloads of kitchen supplies, decorative items, and linens to the Goodwill near our house, in the hopes that they at least wouldn't end up in a landfill.

A friend was even able to donate our five large dog beds to a local animal shelter.

The process has given us a new perspective and sense of freedom

Now, we have one dog bed, a small couch, and no extra kitchen appliances, but living more simply has helped us prioritize what's important.

In the year we have spent on the boat, we've sailed from Maryland to Boston, then down to the Bahamas. Along the way, we have gained a ton of unique life experiences and a new appreciation for nature.