I think deep down I’ve always tended towards the idea of less being more. I was the kid who actually wanted the smallest bedroom and who loved to declutter and rearrange my mom’s cupboards. I was the college student who thrived within the confines of a dorm room, where life was all about living tiny and having only what you needed and loved. The first home my husband and I purchased, a 600 square foot condo in Boulder, Colorado with its small balcony overlooking the Flatirons, was probably my favorite place we ever lived, because it provided just enough space to live comfortably and efficiently in a beautiful location.
Somewhere along the line though I bought into the bigger is better culture. When we built our first house, its 1800 square feet provided us with ample space, until we quickly filled it with our first grown up brand new furniture. The furniture was followed by children and all of the stuff we believed they required. It was the mid 1990s and we had entered acquiring mode, a mode which would continue for twenty years.
During those twenty years we moved from an 1800 square foot house with a partial basement to a 2200 square foot house with a full basement to a 3700 square foot house with a full basement. As we acquired bigger houses we acquired more stuff. We had the space, plus all of the stuff was well-organized so what was the big deal?
The big deal was that I was feeling at odds with my personal values. I started my professional organizing business in 2006 and for my first ten years in business I primarily helped people gain control over their space and their stuff. Even though I had nowhere near the amount of stuff my clients had and no one would call my house cluttered, I couldn’t help but notice that every time I came home from a client’s home I wanted to clean out my own closets and cupboards.
My personal downsizing process started with the downsizing of commitments as opposed to cleaning out of closets. It was 2014 and I had recently read and been significantly impacted by Greg McKeown’s book Essentialsm: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less . If you haven’t read it and are interested in living a life more focused on what’s most important to you I highly recommend checking it out. The more I began to focus on what was essential to me, the more I began to say no to what wasn’t.
My husband couldn’t help but notice that my time was freeing up and I was able to spend more of it with him. As we took long walks together in the evenings he shared his dream of moving closer to the city, now that our kids had gone to college and we were no longer tied to the suburbs. The move would significantly shorten his minimum seventy-minute daily commute and free up more time in his life. The more we walked and talked over the course of a number of months, the more the plan took shape.
Our goal, to move to a smaller house in or near the city, would allow us to better honor our values. We both care about the environment and driving two hundred miles each week just to get to and from the office, even if it was in a Prius, no longer seemed like the right thing to do. We both valued having time to exercise, relax and read at the end of each day but my husband’s day was being eaten up by commuting, which he didn’t value in the least. My husband had grown up in a more minimalistic household and looked forward to having less house and less stuff to care for. For me, the idea of living in a large house in the suburbs was beginning to feel inauthentic and I welcomed a change.
At the end of 2015 we found a 2000 square foot home in the city just four miles from my husband’s office instead of twenty. As I write this on the last day of January in 2018 we’re where we imagined we’d be as we began this whole process. Because of our move and our minimizing of our stuff and our commitments we’re now able to spend significantly more time doing things together. Our personal energy levels have gone up because we have less house and less stuff to take care of and our energy costs and gasoline consumption have dropped considerably because of the smaller house and shorter commute. Most importantly we both feel like we’re living in line with our values. Though we’ve already released what we estimate to be about sixty percent of what we owned in the suburbs we release a little more each week as we continue to notice what we really use and what we don’t, what matters and what doesn’t. We are slowly becoming minimalists and we’ve never been happier.
Have you ever considered a more minimalistic lifestyle?
Maybe, like one of my past clients, you find yourself craving the uncluttered feeling of a hotel room. Maybe you find yourself fantasizing about a tiny home somewhere. Maybe you dream of more open space on your calendar or on your kitchen counters. Maybe like my husband and me you want to connect more deeply with certain values you hold tightly.
Minimizing is the bridge that can lead you from your overwhelming current life to the life you crave, fantasize and dream about. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you’re considering minimalism and how you think you might approach the minimizing process.