The equation for happiness.

So here I sit in my room/parents living room , not even noon yet and I have already: Vaccumed, mopped, gone to the DMV, gone to the post office, stopped by the sewing machine repair place, dusted, cleaned the cat boxes, cleaned the kitchen and dinning room and picked up my bed from this morning and I still have the rest of the day ahead of me!  Being here is VERY stressful for me. Over the last several months I have taken on a new attitude towards life: less is more. I'm tired of living in the "need" mentality. " I NEED this... I NEED that." Honestly, I dont NEED half the crap I have. And my parents don't NEED about 90% of the crap they have. In fact, their house is pretty much filled to the brim with, you guessed it,  Crap! Every drawer in this house is filled with SOMETHING. In fact yesterday while looking for some fabric in my moms armoir, I found shirts that she hasn't worn since 1961. Not even kidding. I tell you all this because lately my Mom has been very unhappy with , "All this" as she calls it, referring vaguely to the house, the cars, the garage, just life in general I think. She's tired. And I don't blame her. My parents have a 3,000 square foot house that they remodeled, 18 chickens, 2 dogs, 4 cats and currently 2 baby birds we rescued. 3 of the 4 cats have serious medical problems, 1 is diabetic and Im pretty sure is in kidney failure and needs to be put down (he has recently lost control of his bowel and bladder) the second has chronic stomach problems and needs an $80 shot every few months, and the 3rd recently was injured while napping under the hood of my dads truck and now is sort of.... special.  On top of which my parents have a trailer park in southwest Missouri that houses the lowest of the low in that area (druggies and felons) they also have a rental house next door to ours, a third house next door that they are remodeling, and a house in Fayetteville that they are hoping to sell. Can you say overwhelming! On top of all of this, my parents both worth full time, technically my mom works more than full time... about 60 hours a week... and thus.. all this "need more" has left them with less than nothing. They are stressed all the time, argue constantly, and live their lives wondering how they are going to afford the next, "NEED".  So for my parents, their, "Happiness equation" looks something like this: Too much work+ too many projects+ too little time + too big of a house+ too much crap in house = stress + poor + unhappy.
There it is. The more I look around the more I realize that the number associated with happiness is 0. Not too much, and not too little. Matt and I have had tons of talks about doing things differently. For example, neither him nor I watch TV.... and we dont want to. #1. its expensive  #2. its crap (most of it) #3. it takes up too much time and #4 We dont NEED it... I dont want to be a slave to my things and a slave to the things that need to be taken care of ... Basically from here on out, I want to live my life with less, that way I have more. :-)