The Joy of Less

I have decided to spend a little dough and purchase a minimalist book. At first I thought to myself "This goes against what we're trying to do by not spending money" Let me tell you, I've spent money on a lot of silly things, but this was not one of them. I'm only 17% of the way through the book (says our Kindle), and I am very impressed. It's so much more than just "get rid of your stuff!!!". The first handful of chapters are just thinking about why we do things things, ect. It really opened my eyes so much.

We live in a culture that just lives to consume, not consumes to live. How much do we really need? Do we really need to keep up with the Jones'? Why? Why do we feel compelled to have everything, when we already have so much more than we ever needed? Yesterday the book had inspired me to go through a lot with a fresh mindset, and it worked! I was able to get rid of a lot. This past weekend I had a baby shower to attend. I had all these Mommy Necklaces (these are cute little necklaces basically meant for nursing mothers to give the baby something safe to play with while nursing, vs your hair). I kept them because they're so pretty and I do wear them once in a while. But then I thought about it, and I really thought my friend would get much more use out of them than myself. So, I passed all of them to her. Not only did it feel amazing to pass them on, but she really appreciated it, and even her husband thanked me later at church saying that they meant a lot to her. WOW!

Anyway. I feel so refreshed in my minimalist journey. I had already made SO much progress, but reading this book is really just energizing me more than ever! I want to change my whole way of thinking. Not just purge a few times a year, but keep bringing things in. I highly recommend this book. You can find it here The Joy of Less

Don't forget about the clutter in your head!

I have to keep telling myself this is a journey. Think, marathon, not sprint. I keep hearing that, but seriously, it's the best way to describe it. I have slowed down a wee bit on minimizing while focusing on getting everything done that needs to be. It has occurred to me lately that I just have too much going on again. Some things I can't avoid, much as I'd like to. But some things I just reeeeeeeeeeally didn't want to let go of, though I know it was at a point where it was creating more stress for myself, and more to do.

Ever heard that saying "too much of a good thing"? I definitely think there is. When it gets to the point where there's more of something than you can use in a year, yeah... Too much. Especially if it's creating more clutter/stress. I have gone through some slight obsessions. For example, baby legs. Heard of them? They're itty bitty leg warmers for babies. Seriously adorable, and very useful. So I took that, and ran with it! My daughter had almost 30 pair. It was INSANE. To think of the money I spent on that, when a few pair would have sufficed.

I read my devotional today and it was talking about the American dream. You know, bigger, better, faster, stronger... More more more. It's so hard for my generation especially with all the mommy wars, and social media. Everyone wants what others have. I do too, sometimes. I was just talking with my husband about this yesterday, actually! Then to have it right there in my face today was almost like the answer I was looking for.

Back to my original idea for this post (I saw something sparkly, sorry!) I tend to think SO much. I get the gut feelings, but the I have to rationalize EVERYTHING. I pretty much just drive myself crazy. So, when you decide to take it from gut, to brain, ask yourself these questions. Does this add value to my life, or stress? Do I really need ALL of this, or just some of it? If you find yourself thinking a ton about it, maybe talk about it out loud with someone. You never know, the answer just may come to you in a really unexpected way.

But my point is, I want to stress less. I am going to be taking the time to face these things that are stressing me out, and find a solution to them. Getting rid of the mental clutter, as well as the physical clutter :)

Do you have anything on your mind lately you're trying to sort out? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I hope my journey is helping others who're wanting to try this out as well!

Another bedroom down! Our sons room!

This weekend I helped my oldest son with his room. I have been dreading this because he wants to hold onto everything. I'm talking rocks from outside, acorns, papers galore, ect. His room isn't tiny, but it's not that big. He has a full size bed in there, a dresser, and a desk. His desk was full of papers and all kinds of stuff. He had even stashed stuff under his bed, and in his closet. It took a good few hours with breaks between to get it done.

But you know what? I think I planted a seed. I had him bring one drawer full of items to the middle of the floor, and we created 3 piles. Throw away, give away, and put away. When everything was said and done, we had an entire box of donations, 90% of his items had a place (we're looking for some smaller sized bins for lego's and such) and he got rid of most of his papers and misc items he brought in from outside. I think he even had fun!

When we first started it, he didn't want to really get rid of much, but when he saw the piles filling up, he got more into it! We humans are very visual. It seems like with me and my family especially, the more progress we SEE, the more we want to do! What I really liked about this experience, is that he was fully involved, and I could almost see the way he was thinking change! I hope that this will help him as he grows up, so that things are always manageable for him and stress free!

I highly encourage you to try this with your child if they're at an age where they can help you. For one, it's always nice to have company when doing this, and two, they might really enjoy it :)

Our bedroom. One HUGE task we've been avoiding since we moved in.

A little back story. We bought our house in Feb of 2013. It has 4 bedrooms so each of our children finally have their own room. One of the rooms used to be a garage, so we do not have one. We have a little shed in the back of the property, but it's not fit for storage. So, our closet is our storage. No real attic to speak of, or basement. That's it. Now, our bedroom is ENORMOUS! Which you'd think is great, right? But the issue is it is also my craft/office, and our workout room. So, too much going on to say the least.

My parents are here for a few days, so instead of them watching the kids so we could have a date (I'm too sick to go out anyway) we asked them to watch the little ones so we could figure out our bedroom and closet. I know, so romantic :) It took us a solid 2 hours. We went through probably 85% of our belongings both in our room and closet. Let me tell you, it was no easy task. Boxes and boxes of items and photo's and such we've had for years. Some things for decades.

We took a lot of trash out, and filled up my car with yet another load of donate items. I am only posting a few photo's because we still have a little work to do, but now we can do it here and there since the bulk of things are gone. I refuse to let it get to that point again. I refuse to bring in more things that will just take up space. Our lives are changing for the better so we can focus on what's really important :)

Please excuse the black squares. Hubby has a photo of him by the treadmill after his first deployment of non stop working out as motivation LOL.

2014 is going to be fantastic

Aside from still being sick, I have a feeling this year is going to start pretty well. We're already on a roll on our journey to minimalism. Really, we just want to keep up the momentum. And actually, my parents are here right now for a short visit. Our bedroom has really taken a back seat because we're trying to get the main rooms of our house in check, so our bedroom has been our catch all.

I think my new years resolution, is to be able to just maintain this new lifestyle. Meaning to have all the big things pretty much taken care of, and just maintain all that we've achieved. And also, to really get my business going, while keeping a minimalist mindset while doing it. Not having way too many supplies (I've had more than I need in a lot of things, and it's just created too much clutter)

Ok, maybe one more. To take better care of myself. Mentally, emotionally, and definitely physically. What are your new years resolutions?

Our laundry room, AKA, the black hole.

On our journey to minimalism, we know there are certain areas, and rooms that are going to be harder than others. Sometimes we're feeling brave, and sometimes we want to go hide in a dark room and curl up into the fetal position. Yesterday we did our underwear drawer. That was fairly easy. My husband had to work, and I have been pretty ill, so we kept it simple. Today, it was time to go big, or go home. Looking back, it was honestly harder to make the decision to do it, than any of the work itself. I'd guess it took us about a half hr working at a slow-moderate pace. And the end result surprised us both.

The husband actually got a little cranky when we first started, saying the room too small to do anything in. Turns out, it's not that small at all. Before and after photo's below!

                                                 Before

                                                  After

 

So, something that we've been putting off for months, took us a matter of minutes, and took a huge chunk of stress out of our lives. Quite a bit was trash, some was donate, and a lot of stuff belonged in the shed. Seeing before and after pictures just reassures us we're doing the right thing for our family by changing the way we think, and changing our lifestyle.

Another view of our new lifestyle

Hey everybody, This is Danny (the husband). This is my first post on here, and I'm told it won't be my last. We just wanted to get another point of view on this minimalism thing we're trying out. My point of view is a little bit different than Stacey's. I think that's why we work together so well. It may also be why we butt heads sometimes...

I have to say, I was less than thrilled when Stacey mentioned minimalism. I thought "oh great, lets just get rid of all the stuff we spent so long collecting". Then as she started, and I started watching, I started thinking. She had me read a few posts on another minimalist blog, and it started to click with me too. We won't ever be a "true minimalist" family, but we can surely minimize our "stuff".

Today I went through my nightstand. I filled an entire small garbage basket with "stuff". I had old papers from our move, receipts, copies of deployment orders, books, medals, flashlights, and even sandpaper. Why did I have sandpaper in my nightstand? Beats me. So I trashed the trash, reorganized what I actually want in there, moved what didn't belong in there, and made a ton more room. The top became a catch all and an eye sore. Now it's functional and looks much better with just my watch case on display. 

We also cleaned out our linen closet. We found expired OTC meds, duplicate meds, and even empty boxes of meds we've used. So we gutted it completely, cleaned all the shelves, and chose more wisely what we put in there. We have our towels, face cloths, meds up high, and spare paper towels. We consolidated the meds, keeping only what we really needed, allergy and children's cough mostly, and some toiletries. Again we filled an entire small garbage basket.

So, seeing all that we've taken out of fairly small areas add up to this much, almost a full kitchen bag, I'm excited to see what we can do with the rest of the house. I may be less than thrilled for us to get to some areas, like the kitchen and my shed, but that's why it's a process. One step at a time. Plus, getting rid of all the "stuff" we don't need, will help us identify what we do need. Not what we WANT, but what we NEED. Then we can focus on quality, not quantity. If we aren't buying so much, we can buy better. Simple math that's escaped my mind for my entire life.

So I guess with that, I'm sold. We can start to live a better life with less, so we can focus on what's really important.

2 heads are better than one! Huge progress in the last two days! Before and after pictures :)

My husband is so lucky to have the next two weeks off for Christmas and New Years. Well, other than one day. I've been the one really doing most of the work as far as our journey to minimalism. I of course consult with him about some stuff, but he works a lot, and doesn't have as much time as I do normally. But since he's home for a while, we agreed to make an effort to work together a little bit each day toward our goal.

It wasn't all rainbows and kitty cats, though. He's in the military, and is used to being in a leadership position, so he's very headstrong. And me, well I hold down the fort while he's gone, and even when he's not overseas because I am the one home and who handles things here. So, both of us working together was super interesting. I will say that though we butted heads a few times, and probably got in each others way, the end result was fantastic. We now know that we need to work on being a better team, but we also know that we can really get a LOT done.

So, yesterday we cleaned our a hutch, and got rid of quite a bit. We also found some things we were missing and needed, hiding in there! Amazing what you can find when you clean up. But today was a HUGE step in our journey. I'm actually including some before and after pictures. I'll tell you what we did below the photos :)

                                                 Before

                                                 After

Now, you have to kind of look close, because it still sort of seems like there's a lot in the after photo. I can tell you we will never be true minimalists, but we are making huge strides in becoming MORE minimal. The reason it looks like there's still a lot, is some things were not even there before. I had no place for them because there was so much already there. Things we got rid of:

An entire shelf of books. Gone, in the donate box, buh-bye! All my precious moments items. Gone. 1 photo. Put away to maybe put up elsewhere. The stars and stripes box on the right, gone. The bottle decoration. Gone. And some things were moved around/added. Also we deep cleaned EVERYTHING. What you don't see, is all the items that were inside those cupboards. About 75% of what was in there, is now gone. What is still in there, is organized, functional, and CLEAN. Oh, and the DVD player, and Wii now have an actual home inside the cupboards, so they're not an eyesore.

Also, a lot of the decorations up, are Christmas stuff. Those will be put away very soon, so there will be even less going on in this area. It will be back to just basics, with a little décor. I cannot even put into words how happy I am with this transformation. And none of the items that we got rid of has any negative impact on me. Not even the stuff I've had for decades that I thought were important.

Just because you stop bringing things into your house, doesn't mean your kids do!

We are choosing to kick this into high gear at a funny time. We didn't know I'd get so sick, so that's slowed progress (but hey, even slow progress is progress), and also Christmas time. Christmas time also means our children are bringing ALL kinds of things home. And, we're supposed to provide all kinds of things for each of their classes. Oh boy! That was a tough one, because although we are trying to live a minimalist lifestyle, it doesn't mean everyone else is, nor will everyone understand the desire to live that way. And that's totally fine.

So, we made gifts for one of our sons class, and for all their teachers, and bus drivers. We didn't get any fancy bags, but instead used the wrapping paper we had already. So that was partially going along with the lifestyle we want to live. But then came all the things they brought from their school parties and such. Ornaments, decorations, papers, gifts, JUNK FOOD. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Some of the ornaments went on the tree. Others, yes, we threw them away. With 3 kids, if we kept every single thing they ever made, or brought home, we'd probably have to buy a storage unit to put it all in! Also, I think back to when I became an adult, and my mom showed me all the stuff from my school days. It was neat, but a lot of the stuff, I honestly didn't care about. Certain things, absolutely. But I didn't need to see every finger painting I ever did, and the things like it. So, a lot of their papers went into the trash. We've kept special things, and what I do is laminate them, and stick them in their school album I have for each of them.

A lot of the little cheap toys and stuff, trash. Yes, I know, it sounds terrible. But honestly, they'll get broken anyway, and they had so much stuff they never noticed anything was missing. The candy, after break, whatever is left over, trash. I suspect after Christmas, we'll really be able to kick this back into high gear, without anymore hiccups. Till Valentines day ;)

This is where it begins. My journey to minimalism.

For YEARS I have struggled with "stuff". I'm not at all a professional therapist or anything of the sort, but I do have some ideas of how I got to where I am today. A little about myself; I am a 28 year old woman. I am a wife, and a mother. I have been married to my life long friend for a little over 5 years now, and we have 3 children. 8, 4, and 3. My husband is in the Army, and I am a stay at home mom. That in itself is a struggle for me at times because I worked my tail off before we got married, and was a single working mom. Our oldest is mine from a previous marriage. So not working is a bit of an adjustment for me even still.

So, where I think it all started. My parents are closet hoarders. Not the kind you see on T.V. They're not gross in any way, and they don't have items stacked to the ceiling. Well, actually they do in some places. Back when I was younger, they had a lot of stuff, but not anywhere near what they have now. My dad had rental properties, so that's where some of his stuff came from. He really got into yard sales when I was young. He'd go to yard sales, and he'd have them. The amount of time spent going to yard sales, and preparing for his own. Where my dad got into it, I think comes from his childhood. Growing up with a family of 9, they did a lot of hand-me-downs, and they just didn't have a lot. This way my dad can have a lot, but save his money. Makes sense.

And you know, that's fine. That's what they enjoy, and they don't have any issues with the amount of stuff they have. But with me, it makes me crazy. Seriously, I think I turn green sometimes and grow 10 times larger than I am. It takes a big dose of Snickers to calm me down. So, I think I get the habit from my parents. Stuff makes us happy, right? Then when my husband and I got married, we had nothing. I mean, we used our laundry basket as an entertainment center, and slept on an air mattress for a while. Now, we live in a somewhat small house for our size family, but we have SO MUCH STUFF!
So, here are the problems I see with this much stuff. I have ADHD, and Anxiety. The amount of stuff we have us just flat out unmanageable. I can't keep up with cleaning, and there's just too much clutter. When my house isn't clean, my Anxiety, and ADHD is in full swing. When those are in full swing, I am CRANKY. I have read that those who choose to try the minimalist lifestyle, end up with less stress, more time, more money, ect. So, here goes!

Today I am doing my best to get started, but not go crazy. This is going to be a process, and is going to take a very long time to get a real habit going. So, I've started in my kitchen. I want our teeny tiny little kitchen to be fully functional, and not an eyesore. I would absolutely love it if anyone is following along to post your thoughts and suggestions. I am hoping that along my journey, I can inspire others, too.