May 3, 2018

The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don’t. – Marie Kondo

If you walked into our home at any time, you would never think to yourself, “Wow, a minimalist must live here.” Instead, you would probably think, “Wow, seven children and a wildebeest must live here.”  Which is a fair thought; I can literally see 3 fig bar wrappers lying on the floor from my vantage point on the cracker crumb-covered couch. But along with the two (but might as well be ten) children who do live here are two adults desperately trying to balance and simplify their lives.

About a year ago, Fox asked me to watch a “Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things” with him on Netflix. Not gonna lie: I was skeptical and had no interest in minimalism. I just kept picturing a wood-floored apartment with bare walls and a closet housing 3 identical white shirts. Not really my aesthetic. But as we watched the documentary, I began to realize that minimalism is a much broader spectrum than what I had assigned to it. It’s not about whittling down your possessions to a magical, minimal number: it’s about owning things that add value and joy to your life- however many they may be. This really spoke to me and, as I was heavily pregnant with my son at the time, I was desperate for anything that would help ease our transition into being a family of four.

Thanks to the combination of Fox’s analytical brain and my Type-A personality, we weren’t looking to blindly jump onto some fad bandwagon. If we were going to make changes, we wanted them to be personal and properly suited to what we want our lives to be. So, we began a process, a journey if you will, of really trying to narrow down what was adding to our lives and what was detracting. For us, it is less about living with the absolute minimum and more about being conscientious of how our time, effort, and money is being spent. The ultimate goal for us is to be able to look at our calendar and open our closets to see nothing there that doesn’t serve a necessary purpose or truly improve our lives. Are we there yet? I wish. But we are getting closer. Remember, I said it was a journey. Despite a lot of detours, we are making progress and are starting to reap the benefits of a life with “less.” So, what have we found that works? Stay tuned for upcoming posts on our minimalism adventure to find out.