My Journey to Minimalism
How minimalism changed everything for our family.
It was 2016. My house was a disaster despite the fact that I felt like I was cleaning ALL day. I used to joke that it looked like we had been robbed. I was in a horrible cycle of finally catching up in one area of our home to turn around and find another area completely destroyed. The dishes covered the countertop , the laundry piles were more like mountains and the kids toys had taken over the entire house.
I COULD NOT KEEP UP!
I thought okay, well maybe I just needed to be organized! Organizing was always something I was naturally inclined to and I would spend hours rearranging my belongings as a kid. I even had a subscription to Real Simple Magazine as a teen and have always loved shopping for cute containers and organizers. However, I finally realized that no amount of organizing was going to make a significant difference. There just weren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done. I needed a better solution. After weeks of searching I finally fell upon the idea of minimalism.
I had always thought the term minimalist was reserved for people who live in tiny homes with all white walls and only own 100 items. This was until I uncovered a whole world of bloggers living out the principles of minimalism with their families. My favorite influencers are Allie Casazza, Joshua Becker, Marie Kondo and The Minimalists and they all taught me different things that lead me on a path to becoming intentional with everything we have in our home.
It started with decluttering the kitchen and reducing our dishes to sets of 6 which helped eliminate the dish pile up since it forces you to do dishes before the next meal. Then I went after the clothes! We tossed or donated anything that we didn’t love and kept the kids wardrobes to no more than ten of each item. All of a sudden I was doing one load of laundry a day and not having huge mountains growing everywhere. The last big thing to go was the toys and we probably reduced the toys to about a quarter of what we previously had. From there I tackled just about every other area of our home from bathrooms to the basement. I loaded car load after car load of trash and donations until I felt like I could relax in our home.
It was like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I was no longer cleaning all day long and felt like I could take a moment to sit and play with my kiddos. They also agree that having less is easier because they can easily put their toys away and find what they were looking for. It’s a win win. They also stay much more focused on the toys they do have now because they are not distracted by #allthethings!
Its been close to two years since we started minimizing and we still find things to get rid of all the time but our home and possessions are completely manageable now! We also do mini purges every few months to make sure we stay on top of the things coming in.
If you are a Mama and have no idea how to get started with decluttering I highly recommend checking out Allie Cassaza’s courses at alliecasazza.com .
Wishing you health and happiness!
Kaitlyn McCarthy
Feed with such ID does not exist