Starting a Journey to become Minimalist Me!

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

                                                                                         ~ Lao Tzu

(Photocredit - Becoming Minimalist)

A week ago I stood in the center of my living room. I had been cleaning for hours and yet as I looked around, the counters remained cluttered, the toy boxes over flowed and were halfway crammed onto the shelf. A stack of DVDs sat loose along side  a stack of empty cases. I hadn't started supper and I had been putting off playing with the kidlets in lue of  'just finishing this room'. Hours later - you couldn't tell.

I  felt defeated, exhausted and completely overwhelmed.

I had gone through a lot of changes in the last year, from the birth of m daughter, to starting to homeschool my son, and lastly, the passing of my husband.  I felt out of control of my own life. It was  a terrible sinking sensation.

I had realized a month or two before that the house was something that really got me on edge. I would wake up with a to do list and spend the day checking things off , only to go back to bed with another list for the next day.

I didn't see a way to get ahead of it.

Then I stumbled across a video about Minimalism.  I laughed it off at first. Come on, seriously? MY family? I have a toddler and a six year old who own more toys then the big box toy stores.  It would break their hearts if I slimmed down their choices! Of course, then there was me - Closets packed to the brim with never anything to wear.  We were the typical american consumer family - the prospect of living with less while having more of a life was a joke.

Then I watched another video.

Some of the things they were saying started making sense. They pointed out that kids could have 1000 toys, but more often then not they were broken, or misplaced in the pile on the floor. If a toy broke, we simply replaced it with another. There was no consequence for not taking care of your toys, no real responsibility in it.  I couldn't help but think of my sons room covered in blankets and toys and movies and books - yet never with any room to play. They had a point.

Then another video.

This one about kitchens, how we always had to buy the next new thing, or we just couldn't pass up a deal. I thought of kitchen gadgets I had bought on sale and never even plugged in. Did I really need them? Would I ever use them?

The rest of my day was spent folding laundry and watching more videos and listening to audio books on the topic. Things like "a 15 hanger closet" or "Dishes done in ten minutes" sounded like poetry. Could such a thing really exist? Could I really be playing or reading with my children right now instead of fighting the battle of the horde of dishes left on my counter? Did a family of three -really- need 30 plates and 36 cups?

By the end of that day I decided to try it and was met by a ton of support by my friends and family. They asked me to start this blog to follow my journey as I work through 27 years of clutter to find the more Minimilist ME!

Coming soon... DISHES