What Minimalism means to me

My approach to Minimalism isn’t the text book view.  While some people would retain only things that are useful to them - and remove everything else - I love being surrounded by beautiful things.

I love looking around my home and seeing the artwork we chose on our travels.  I love seeing our wedding photos, and pictures of the kids. I love seeing their artwork displayed so I can look at it proudly every day. I love being surrounded by pot plants and fresh flowers that breathe life into a room.  I love the colourful pieces of furniture and the beautiful things that we have carefully selected to reflect who we are.

Does this mean I still place a bit too much importance on “things”? Probably. But my approach to “things” has certainly changed, which is why I place myself in the Minimalist camp.

Like many people, we went through the KonMari tidying approach a few years ago. Of course, the approach of surrounding yourself with the things you love resonates with me, but I also love the mindset shift the whole process provided me with.

By sorting through what you have, you quickly get a clear picture of just how much stuff you actually own! By touching and considering every piece, there’s nowhere to hide. You find near new items (Oh that’s where that is!), duplicate items (Why do we have so many iPhone chargers? or white t-shirts?), things that serve only one purpose (When was the last time we used that?), or things that no longer serve a purpose at all (What are all these cords for?).

So we diligently sorted through, donating/ selling/ giving away/ disposing of a lot of it, and by doing all of this our purchasing mindset has totally changed. We rarely buy anything new now, knowing that what we had at our place was often brand new/unused, we look to online resellers and will only buy new if we absolutely must.

As much as we think we’d like to, I don’t think we’ll ever live in a tiny house (maybe a holiday home!). But we do have a really clear view of how we want to live and how we want to purchase - mindfully.

My philosophy is to make life simple. Maybe I can call myself “Minimal-ish”!