Less is more

I'm on another clean out and get rid of stuff kick. It's nearing a season change and that always gets me all riled up to let go of a bunch of stuff. I know I did this less than a month ago but I didn't get very far, only going through our junk closet. A friend on facebook posted an article about a woman who writes a blog about living with less. Her blog is:

www.theminimalistmom.com

Truly interesting and inspiring stuff. I mean as I said before, pretty much a change in the wind can make me want to declutter but this gave it a whole new spin. Only having what you need and use. It just got me to thinking on so many things. Do I really need two cake pans? Or even one really? How often do I bake a cake? I think I could count the number of cakes I've baked since moving out of my parents house on one hand. And even so I think most of those were baked at my parent's house. So I could just borrow a cake pan or go over there to bake a cake.

This woman went so far as to only have enough clothes as she can wear in a week. She literally has to do laundry once a week in order to have anything to wear. I find that really impressive since she has a son only about 5 months older than mine. I think I would only be able to weed it down to two weeks. Just in case.

The best part about a minimalist life is that you're not living cheaply. You are living with less at a higher quality. Buy good quality, even though it might be more expensive and then you will have to replace it less often. Wouldn't you rather have 2 beautiful, nice fitting jeans than 8 pairs that kind of fit and are sort of nice? Or one fantastic purse rather than 5 $20 purses that are ok? Quality over quantity.

She was pretty ruthless and says she can fit her wardrobe into a medium suitcase now. Impressive. She didn't keep anything that she didn't love the way she looked in. What a concept, hey? Don't keep stuff you don't like or don't use. So simple, yet how many of us actually do it? Same goes for food though right? Don't eat it unless your body can use it. So simple, yet how many of us actually think about that before taking a bite of food?

I really have some questions for this woman though. For one I would love to see her spreadsheet of what she considers necessities and basics for wardrobe. Something to go off for when I do it myself. Also how does she deal with different wardrobe genres? She is a stay at home mom with no current plans of returning to work so she doesn't have to worry about an office wear section. But she is an athlete so there is something she needs. I need yoga wear for doing and teaching yoga. I also need office wear, casual wear, I would love to have a more fun wear-out-to-dinner-with-my-husband-and-look-fabulous wear section but alas I don't, and maternity clothes and I would like to keep a section of clothes to wear after baby but before I'm back to my regular weight section. It's frustrating to keep that many types of clothing that you only wear for 3-9 (or 8 in my case) months at a time!

So my trek to a more minimalist life began with a list today. A list of everything I think I can do without. It's long. Some of it will make us money (I smell a good garage sale coming!) But it's exciting. We also went through all our paperwork tonight and cleared out pretty much our entire filing system. It felt SO good!! Plus I found a lot of things I had feared lost forever.

Another thing I did was divide Eli's current toys into three baskets. I plan on switching baskets every week so he enjoys and plays with his toys more and then every week he gets a basket of ones he hasn't seen in two weeks. I'm hoping it'll work well. His megablocks stay put though, that's a lot to move all the time. Plus my mom would miss playing with them too much.

Here's to living a higher quality life!