If you are an artist or crafter or a creator of physical things in any form, you may find yourself in some predicaments when trying to incorporate a Minimalist lifestyle. If you have any sentimental urges then this post is for you.

These four nagging ‘what if’ questions arose for me during this week of serious minimising:

* What if I need it at some point?

How many things do you keep for just incase? How many times have you needed these things?
Somehow we manage to fill our spaces with so many extra things that are hardly, if ever, used. Or even worse, we fill it up with duplicates that seem to start collections of their own… Just incase. The creative potential of every item is so obvious that we feel we just might need it if the opportunity ever arrises. Unfortunately the rate of problem solving opportunities seem to lag way behind the accumulation of more things.
This conundrum brought on other questions for me:

* What if the other one breaks?

We seem to feel obliged to have back-ups. Back-up buckets, jars, toothpastes, blue eyeliner (incase I need it for a dress-up party!) t-shirts and towels (so many towels!). Unless you live somewhere in the wilderness, far from amenities and people, you probably do not need a back-up for every item in your home.
Honestly, though, I have been thankful for my stack of towels when the washing machine overflowed all over my kitchen floor. But I realise that the towels we actually use would have sufficed for the job. And the mop could handle the rest… And it meant fixing the machine and washing the whole stack of just-in-case-towels anyway. So. Maybe the extra towels were still not entirely vital or necessary.
All those extra socks just mean waiting longer for washday and having a bigger job to do when it arrives.

* What if I miss this item when it’s gone?

Many minimalist bloggers mention how they have never missed or regretted donating or selling an item. This is a problem for me because I have regretted giving items away or selling things in the past. Not entirely sure why, though? But I suspect it could have something to do with a person’s mindset at the time. I haven’t regretted anything thus far in my minimising experiment and this may be because my mindset has changed in relation to my possessions.

We tend to assume that our possessions are a part of our identity. They may reflect some things about us. They might make us feel connected and they may even tell stories about our lives. This is not a problem. The problem is when we cling onto things because we think that they are part of us or our history. We confuse sentiment with true expression and value. We are not our stuff and the balance is easily tipped. We let our things start to take the reigns and lead us instead of the other way around. They dictate to us who we are and who we should be. You might decorated your whole house around some sentimental furniture, that you don’t even like anymore, just because they belonged to someone, remind you of something or tell a story of who you once were. The truth is that they are probably holding you back and limiting the “you” that you have become.
This is a wonderful way of looking at it: You do not need to get rid of things that still serve you only those that do not. Those that smother you by controlling or limiting you or your choices. Things should be an extension that aid not hinder. You should be surrounded by what is authentic. This is a topic that I will get back to very soon in a future post.

* What if I forget?

I have kept so many momentos over the years. Things to remind me of events or people or places. Some of these things do trigger memories. Yet, those memories are obviously still inside me and not in the items. Some of the things were mysteries. No memories were recalled. Many of the momentos turned out to be quite negative. Things that brought on stress, sadness, shame and regret. This is not constructive.
When we hold onto items because they remind us of things from our past, we need to be selective. I realised that even the seemingly ’positive’ things only made me judge present me for letting down past me. So all these things had to go.
The only things I am keeping are some photographs of good memories and these will be put into digital format. We will also keep things that are actually used and add value to our lives. Blogging or journaling are also methods of documenting without cluttering.

Do you have any additional thoughts or advice on letting go and dealing with the nagging doubt? Please leave a comment 🙂

Tea time!

This is such a huge topic. There are so many aspects to it that it would be too overwhelming to cover everything in one blog post. The concept of Minimalism is so simple and yet it seems like an enormous task to take on. So here we go… Let’s make a dent.
Could we drastically change the way we live?

Mindfulness and laying the groundwork

A little more than a year ago I started practicing daily mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness had been something that I had been aware of for quite some time and knew a bit about the research and all the benefits it promised. But it took a long time before I started my own meditation practice.
After desperately seeking some kind of calm, purpose and a way to deal with anxiety and the distracted chaos within my mind: I finally started by just doing 3 to 5 minutes of guided meditation a day. These are the free mindfulness meditations from UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center that I started with – and still rely on sometimes.

Mindfulness brought me an incredible calmness. Things seem clearer now. My mind has been uncluttered (mostly). When it starts to get frantic or anxious I can mindfully take note and know that it is temporary like everything else. Of course it is once again a simple concept but definitely not easy. It takes time and practice. It has shifted my view on everything. But mindfulness is not what this post is about. Definitely a future one, though!

My mind is calmer but my immediate surroundings seem to be entirely chaotic. Our house is cluttered, we have huge debt, we live paycheck to paycheck. The usual old story that everyone shares and complains about when visiting with friends. I deal with it thanks to my mindset. But maybe I don’t have to deal with it at all? Is there a way out of the trap?

A week ago:

In anticipation of Sam Harris’ new book Waking Up, I read an interview with him on theminimalists.com. He discusses the benefits of mindfulness and I would highly recommend a read.

In my naivety the thought in my mind was: The Minimalists, mm… what is a ’minimalist’ anyway? Why would people identify themselves as a style choice?
This led me down a new and very intriguing road of research into the topic. Frantic reading and a few Pinterest searches revealed something that was right in front of me all this time. It is not a style choice, it is a lifestyle choice. Aha! And it clicked. It is a philosophy. And it just fits so well into the mindfulness mindset.

Check out the tedx talk by The Minimalists.

Now:
As a crafter and artist, I am a collector by nature. Okay, okay, maybe ’hoarder’ is more apt a description. My husband is too. We always seem to see the creative potential in every rusty and broken object. Yet, these ‘projects’ are never finished or even taken on. So they end up somewhere in a box or a cupboard or a drawer or stacked somewhere – mostly in the garage. So, the car we can’t afford doesn’t even fit in it!
To top this all off: I tend to be a sentimentalist and do not easily part with items and struggle with saying “no” when offered something from somebody else who is obviously purging their clutter!
We also love new gadgets and we love beautiful things.

When you combine all of these factors, becoming minimalists will be one of the toughest things we have taken on as a family.
Yet we are stuck in debt, weighed down by pointless possessions and we need to drastically change the way we live. We need to free ourselves.

Minimalism promises to give us:
freedom from pointless consumerism,
better clarity in terms of our financial situation and some or all freedom from it,
more clarity and time in terms of the important things like spending time with our family and friends,
more clarity about and time to do what we truly find important

Mindfulness has set a good foundation. Now we need to free ourselves from the physical things that are holding us down.

This is an invitation to join us on our big lifestyle change. You don’t have to become a minimalist too. You are welcome to watch the process we go through and read about all the ups and downs. Hopefully you might learn something or feel inspired or at the very least find some entertainment in it all!

The (rough) plan:

*Declutter. Declutter the house, garage and my studio of obvious junk.

*Assess. Assess what remains and decide what we truly need. A wonderful quote by William Morris sums it up: “have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”

*Sell. Sell things to pay off debt. Try to sell as many things as possible and use the money towards paying off our debt.

*Donate. Donate things to charities.

*Reassess. Reassess what is left. Which of these things do we really need? Which things are essential? How can we minimise some more?

*Make Time. Spend more time together doing stuff not acquiring stuff. Do fun and free things and make time to do these things. Like my doll making and new pursuits.

We will be starting in our garage (shudder!) this weekend. And then we will tackle the house.
Updates on our progress will happen every Monday and Friday. Can my husband, my daughter and I become minimalists? Let’s see how it unfolds.