Becoming a minimalist has changed everything about the future for my family, it has completely changed the way we interact with the world. With every item, with every decision to let something go, a tidal wave of rationality comes over me and I chuckle at how silly the whole thing is and has been for so long.
I've had THAT for X amount of years??
It's always a large amount of years for something hardly touched since acquired. Maybe it was a pretty something, maybe it seemed like a useful something to have someday, maybe it was something that was given to me and 'too nice' to get rid of. As a renter, it was never my own home to stuff it all into, so it would all have to be moved again and again into the unforeseeable future. All of these somethings had become the somethings that took up my precious time, energy, and space. These somethings were everywhere and it started to feel like they were closing in on me and I could no longer breathe.
It was emotionally draining just looking at it all. Staring at this stuff and knowing it would have to be dealt with eventually after not using most of it made me start to feel unhinged. My understanding of the purpose of my environment felt lost. What was it all there for really? What was the point of it taking up so much of my attention if it hadn't been used in the last month or even the last year? Was this stuff somehow controlling my world and would getting rid of it all make my life simpler and with less stress? Could it really be that simple?
It seemed like the more that I had, the more stress there was, the more there was to clean or organize constantly. If I just had less, a lot less, my world should be simpler too. This was the idea anyway, and it was something that would end up changing my life.
A complete makeover was in the making.
I had already accomplished the first step into minimalism without even realizing it. The first step was the shift of my perspective, a shift of mindset. I mentally detached from the idea that these items were useful and instead started to see them as a hindrance to my creative flow. It wasn't practical for world travel to rent a 12 x 15 foot storage filled to the brim of stuff. I knew it was time to let it all go. It wasn't going to be an easy task, not only because of the sheer weight of it all, but that I had formed unhealthy emotional attachments to most of it.
Here I was emotionally attached to an inanimate object and nothing was making sense anymore. What was this attachment real and was it something that I could overcome with ease?
I knew that there must be something to this minimalism mindset after all.
Simply live with less and all of a sudden your stress is reduced and nearly eradicated. All of a sudden the 20 loads of laundry per day becomes closer to one load once a week? I needed to find out for myself if this lifestyle was as life changing as it sounded and the only way to do it was to LIVE it myself!
If we keep only the things we truly love and need today and tomorrow and for perhaps the next month, when it comes up that we need something later, we can get it or borrow it from someone for the short time we need it. There is nothing stopping us from getting all the things we need at the time we need them. We live in an abundant universe and take for granted our willpower to bring whatever we need whenever the time comes. When you no longer live with a 'lack of' mindset and believe that you have what you need always, you stop holding onto items you come across as you are perfectly content with what you already have. When finished with these things and they are no longer being used, let them go, so there's room for the things that you are actually using.
Most of the stuff we keep we do not need duplicates, triplicates, or quadruplicates of. We could just wash that dish when we are done with it instead of using fifteen more in the same day that all need to be washed later. We could have one thing that works really well like, for instance, a minimalist capsule closet. This capsule closest phenomenon recently came over me and I must say getting rid of all my clothes in favor of a closet like this has been a total game changer. I let go of all the old clothes in favor of new ones that look great and that work for both business and pleasure. My new clothing can all be used interchangeably with one another so there is less decision making when it is time to get dressed. Instead of spending an hour trying to figure out what to wear and not being happy with any of them, now it takes no thought at all and it's guaranteed to feel fantastic no matter what the combination. My life of sifting through mountains of clothes is over! Finally, a functional option to my once dysfunctional world. What a relief. Maybe this new minimalist thing isn't just a fad. Maybe this is going to be my new life purpose!
Maybe you know what it feels like to be emotionally or physically hijacked by your stuff. Maybe you've bent over backwards a few times as well for your stuff. Every single item was like a massive burden on my shoulders. The sheer weight of it all together must have weighed 15,000 pounds or more. This was, what I like to consider, a huge problem. A problem with stuff, hoarding it, buying it, selling it, giving it away, rolling in it, throwing it around my rooms constantly trying to look for the needles in my haystacks, washing loads and loads and loads of it, the mess was never ending. The stress was never ending. None of the clothes looked that good on, it was stuff from high school, stuff from my moms closet, stuff from years gone past that started to gain their own identities because I'd had them for so long.
The Patagonia sweater from the early 1990's, got it on a vacation to the ski slopes with my family as a kid. I kept that thing all the way up until this journey began 3 months ago. 26 years later. After not wearing it for 15 years bc it looked weird like the polyester was melting from age. I kept it still, it had too much sentimental value, and what harm was it doing just sitting there in my boxes of clothes in the basement? There was no place in my heart to even consider letting it go, it was a part of me, a part of my story of who I was. These pieces of me floating outside myself. I'd subconsciously succumbed to the idea that these items were a part of me, and would always be there, comforting my past self. They'd prove to be the hardest items to release in my making of a minimalist adventure. But they were the most rewarding because when letting them go, I let go of all the emotional baggage and attachment to the fabric along with it. With letting them go, letting other less significant things go became so much easier. I not only let go of these items from my past but at the same was reinventing my self of the present and future. The stuff started to flow through my fingers like water. It was happening, I'd caught the minimalist bug and there was no turning back, no item was safe from my purge. It was all or nothing now. Either you were adding to my life or taking from it, letting go was my antidote to a simpler life and nothing was going to stop me from experiencing this life with ease.
So many of us go through this without even realizing it until it is too late. Our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents also live surrounded by their collection of precious things that they are also convinced they'll need someday. Who is left to deal with it all once they are no longer here? You! Will you hold onto all of your parents stuff in addition to your own things? Will this continue to grow for your children and their children? Where does the consumption of more stuff end?
Let me tell you a little story:
Two years ago was just like any other move out day. I had rented a storage unit for 100 bucks a month and thought to myself, 'Hey, it's a solution even though we have nowhere ourselves to move yet, at least our stuff has somewhere to live!' LOL. I stuffed that storage unit to the brim, took what was 'essential'. It was so full there was no way I could get anything else out of there so better take what I needed. I found a Workaway not far away. www.workaway.info is a work exchange living situation where you work in exchange for a place to live and most of the time you get all your meals in exchange too. I left my mountain of stuff in a storage unit and moved with my kids an hour and a half away. The storage stuff was heavy in the back of my mind..looming there..this gnawing feeling that you have something huge to deal with but really don't want to. Yet, you know you have to because you are paying for it, so every day that ticks by is another day you pay for your own hoarding problems. It was a few months later before it was finally emptied...when we signed the lease for our beautiful 100 year old historic house on the Isthmus overlooking Lake Mendota in Madison, WI. We lived in that house for two years and over the two years I decided to acquire a ton MORE stuff on top of the stuff I had already brought over from the storage. For two years I kept filling that house, thinking to myself, well we have a house now that is what houses are for right?! Stuff! I had fun acquiring stuff. A little too much fun, at one point I had 7 fishtanks set up! Got really into growing aquatic plants there for a minute.
The rental dream never lasts long though and our landlords were aching to move back into their house. We were outta luck and we were being forced to move sooner than we'd considered. This time something had changed, this time I had been learning about the minimalism lifestyle for months and had been slowly reducing my things. This time the move didn't seem like it would be such a big thing because this time I wasn't planning on moving any of it! I wanted to let go of it all before the move and finally had a reason to just go for it.
Two weeks ago, our lease ended.
Today,
I am proud to announce that this time I didn't stuff a storage unit full of stuff. I have what is in my car. My clothes all fit into one carry on luggage case. My kids clothes fit in each of their carry on cases. It's such a relieving feeling, such a freeing feeling without the 100 dollars a month looming over me, chock full of 10-15k pounds of STUFF that was all mine to deal with. This time, I feel amazing! This time, I have clothes that feel really good on and don't have to worry about dealing with 20 trash bags full of clothes floating out there in the abyss that I didn't even really like and have unnecessary emotional attachments to them.
What's next in my minimalist journey? Stay tuned to find out :-)
Blessings bee,
Kate from the land of Eternal Zen
You
Me
Tennessee