This post is going to be a little off from my normal food and travel topics, but since my blog is also a place for me to share my experiences with others, I felt that this was important to share. I’ve decided to take on a project.
I recently read a book called “Simplify” by Joshua Becker. In this book Becker details 7 guiding principals to de-cluttering your home and life. I have always been a really organized person, and I have spent hours upon hours cleaning and reorganizing my home because I enjoy the simplicity of an organized home.
Here in lies my problem… I spend hours upon hours cleaning and reorganizing my home. This is tiring, and after reading through Becker’s book, I realized that I can reduce my time spent organizing and cleaning if I reduce my possessions to only what is necessary and valuable to me.
Principal one is “being convinced” that a minimalist lifestyle is worthwhile. Joshua Becker goes through a list of reason why he adopted the lifestyle, and below are the reasons that I agreed with…. the reasons why I want to adopt this mentality.
- The things that I value the most in life are not my possessions. They are my family, my friendships, my personal character… etc.
- I enjoy my home being clean and organized
- I like minimalist design as far as art and interior design go
- I like the idea of entertaining (once I have a apartment with room for a dining table, ha!)- a minimalist lifestyle keeps the house in order
- Less stuff and less clutter equal less stress. When I already deal with a stressful school schedule, the last thing I need is to feel stressed when I get home
- The fewer things I have to clutter my home, the easier it is to clean
- I can be more productive- “our possessions consume our time. Whether we are cleaning them, organizing them, buying them, or selling them, the more things we own, the more time they rob from our lives. We only get one chance to live this life; we would be wise to make it as productive as possible.”
- By forming new habits now, I can hope to be an example for my future kids (long time from now, but still)- Becker states that, “becoming minimalist has modeled for my children that personal belongings are not the key to happiness, that security is found in their character, and that the pursuit of happiness runs a different road than the pursuit of possessions.”
- By spending less on myself, I will be in a better position to financially support other causes
- I can focus on quality over quantity. “More is not better… better is better.”
- In adapting this lifestyle, at the end of my life, or at some other unforeseen point in my life where I require the help of others, My stuff will be less of a burden on other people.- “consider the fact that at some point in your life (or in your death) every single item of your belongings will be sorted by another human being.”
Becker had more reasons in his book, but these are the ones that hit home with me.
Principal two is about making minimalism work for you. Each and every one of us is different, and we have different passions, and we find value in different things. “Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it.” I am not exactly sure at the moment what minimalism will look like for me. I am not really looking to get rid of everything in my life, more like, I am looking to reduce things that I have more than one of, things that I don’t use or won’t ever use… I want to declutter. For instance, I enjoy cooking.. a lot. “Minimalizing” my kitchen will probably look a lot different than other parts of my house.
In the past I have always just “reorganized”, I never really took the time to think about why I was holding on to some stuff. Now that Sam and I will be moving in July, the thought of having less baggage sounds really nice. Moving is a pain, and I imagine for the next few years of my life we will be moving quite a bit… so the less baggage we have, the less annoying it will be.
Principal three is about jumping right in. So here I go. I tackled one room today, our bathroom. It seemed like a manageable evening project. Lets start by looking at all my stuff… I took everything out of the drawers and put it on the floor.
Yikes.
Lincoln’s a lot of help….. not.
OK, so I am going to show you a few examples of how I minimalized my bathroom, and then I am going to show some before and after photos.
Do I really need 7 different kinds of body lotions? No. I got rid of all but one.
I probably thought to myself one day, “I will fix these nail clippers later.” Several years later, here they are… and I already have 3 other pairs. So I threw these broken ones away, and narrowed my collection down to just one pair of nail clippers.
They kept shipping me these, and I was not going through them fast enough. Thus I have accumulated quite a collection here of face washes. So here’s what I did… first, I called proactive and canceled my account completely. I obviously can go a couple of years off this supply. Since this stuff is expensive, I am keeping them all… but I am just going to slowly try and deplete this “stash” of face washes.
Alright, so I basically had this thought process with all of my stuff, and here are the results.
I’m pretty satisfied. There were some things in there that I could’ve gotten rid of but would’ve felt wasteful if I had. For instance, I have a little box filled with travel sized shampoos and conditioners. So, for now I am just going to try and deplete that stash whenever we travel… but I am going to stop bringing them home now. I think this is a good start, and hopefully I can continue to carry this onto my other rooms. I’m thinking my closet may be next since it is the next smallest room in my apartment.
Oh, and I’ve started three boxes in my living room. One that says donate. One that says sell, and one that says new home (meaning it didn’t belong where I found it originally).
Take Care.
You’re amazing
thanks for making our life an organized one.
Anytime. Thanks for being patient with how long it is taking me to finish the house.
The first one we tackled was our bathroom too. It sure felt good! We’re not as good at documenting the process as you are, but we can hardly wait to finally look around our house and see that everything we own is good and useful.
Yes! It is a great feeling!
Good job. Keep it up. Remember to get rid of those “just-in-case” stuff too.
Thanks! We have been doing our best to not hold onto the “just-in-case” stuff. It is a work in progress.
Great job! I too was inspired by “Simplify” when I read it about a year and a half ago. It was a breath of fresh air. Simplifying my home has been a long process – it’s still going on – but changes are definitely taking place, and I can see and feel the difference. Keep up the good (but hard) work
Thanks Clara!
What amazing progress! Joshua Becker tweeted this, and I’m SO glad he did! I love a good decluttering story
Also, if you’re concerned about creating waste, you can get rid of half empty bottles of lotions and such for free on Craig’s List. I know it sounds weird, but I can attest that there are those who welcome and will use such products. That way, the product is kept out of the landfill, empty bottles recycled, and someone who may not be able to afford such a luxury enjoy it.
That is a great idea. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on how to recycle some of our items I’ve found that we don’t use anymore like old phones, electronics.. etc.
I’ve read Becker’s book too and even linked here from his Twitter post. Why is the bathroom always the first place to minimize? I did the same thing years ago, but couldn’t bring myself to throw things out. This is why I’m just now getting to the end of my supply of tiny hotel shampoo bottles.
Something I always keep in mind is a quote I can’t remember who to contribute to, “I want to want less.” Enjoy your journey.
Thanks Brett! I started in the bathroom because it was the smallest room in my apartment (excluding my closet, which was intimidating at the time)… I guess it seemed like an easy place to start. Now I just have to get past that urge to bring home hotel shampoos whenever we travel.
Great blog post~I just ordered the book “Simplify”.
Great! I think you will enjoy it and the new perspective it can give you.
Glad to see you are coming over to the dark side…Hey, we got cookies! Seriously though, it sounds like you are off on the right foot. Take your time, this doesn’t happen overnight, be sure of what you are doing, and keep perusing the minimalist blogs for more ideas and inspiration. They helped me to get down to where I wanted to be. Keep at it and by all means, keep blogging about it.
Capt. Fritter
Thanks!
Pingback: Another minimalist in the making… » Manatee Fritters
I LOVE the before and after pictures! The visual representation of how much “stuff” has built up can be quite shocking.
One unexpected blessing of my current very small Brazilian apartment is that it just doesn’t have that much storage space. My bathroom has a single really shallow medicine cabinet – no drawers, no closets, no countertop. The nice thing about it is that it simply doesn’t let me accumulate.
Happy minimalizing!
Thank you!
Nice job! I, too, am a big fan of Joshua’s
Glad he pointed us to your blog, and I look forward to seeing your progress!
Thanks! We are slowly making progress.
Your bathroom storage in the before photos looks pretty organized, but the storage in the after photos makes me want to tackle my bathroom. I’ve been getting rid of stuff for months now, but have lots left to do – was so happy the day I donated a car load of “storage solutions” after days of de-cluttering. Joshua Becker’s site is one of my favorites, and one of the first minimalist sites I found –helps clarify what I want from simplifying things. Thanks for the inspiration!
It feels so good to take a car load of stuff to donate. Our living room had become our stuff to donate room, and we finally loaded everything up in the car the other day and took it to good will. It was a nice feeling having it out of the house now. Thanks for reading!
You’re famous!! I actually finished reading “Simplify” yesterday. I have been very inspired by it. I haven’t done a great job of taking before and after pictures, but I am definitely enjoying the after. My closet is super clean – and staying that way. I can’t say the same about my bathroom because Autumn keeps going through my cabinets and pulling things out and re-organizing them. She particularly likes taking out my gallon size ziploc of tampons and taking each one out one by one and then putting them back in one by one. I have pictures to prove that she does this! A nearly 16 month old’s organization system isn’t quite the same as mine. It is funny that she seems to be an “organizer”. I think she gets that from me, you and Mom. The other day she took my Toms and put them in Andrew’s closet and shut the door behind them. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she put them in the wrong closet (nor would she actually understand me if I did). Miss y’all!
I know, haha, it really throws off my wordpress stats. I was averaging about 15 views per day… 40 on a new post day, and then 360 yesterday. Ha! “Simplify” is a really easy read. I only took before and after pictures of my bathroom, but I’ve tackled a lot of my other rooms as well. I imagine this will be a semester long project for me. I will get to really go through everything when I begin to get stuff ready to move this summer, so that will be nice. Autumn is such a wonderful helper. Maybe she will be like me when she gets a little older. I used to ask mom if I could organize her pencil drawer, or the game closet (for allowance of course), but still. Miss you guys too!
I thought I would share an experience. Last year I did this, every corner of my house. I am doing it again right now. I kept it up surprisingly well. I’m finding that I’m throwing out very little. There was a little trick I learned from thousands of different sites. When you go through a room, come back to it in a week maybe two, no more than four and you will find that you will throw out even more.
Good luck!