In the summer of 2017 my husband and I watched a documentary on Netflix that rocked my world and introduced me to the idea of embracing practical minimalism. Minimalism: A Documentary examines the many flavors of minimalism by taking the audience inside the lives of minimalists from all walks of life.

I was already drawn to any documentary, blog or show about Tiny Living. Here we are living in this beautiful home and yet my heart was so utterly drawn to the idea of selling it all and moving my family of 6 into a shipping container! I think the idea of Tiny Living captivated me at the same time it did our nation because of the attention it was receiving in the media.

What it boiled down to was the desire to spend more quality time with my family and less time having to clean my house. I have 4 children under 10 and while they each complete age-appropriate chores the vast majority of housework falls to me. I wish I could say that I have it all together and that there is not a pile of laundry right now sitting in my bedroom. Actually, I wish that I could type out that sentence and not feel guilty for lying, because it’s actually a mountain of laundry and it seems to always be there.

I’ve also noticed over the past several years that if my house is in a state of chaos I am more likely to have anxiety induced anger. I didn’t even know that was a thing until I read THIS article and learned that some forms of anxiety manifest as anger and that I was not alone. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t a bad mom. I remember crying when I read it. I could immediately recognize that a trigger for anxiety that led to angry outbursts and yelling at my children was a messy house. I think on some level when I feel like the house has gotten out of control… I feel like I’ve lost control. Like most people, I don’t like to relinquish control and that leads to anxiety. I look at the unnecessary mess which is almost always caused by my children and they are the ones I take it out on. I’ve struggled with anxiety in the past that manifested as a deep-rooted fear of the end of the world. While the Lord has walked me through that season, the lesson remains. Anxiety can often time attach itself to something that might not make sense to somebody else. So while the quest for an orderly home might not make sense to you, it has been a crucial part of my journey toward health. You can read about my journey with fear and finding peace here.

Back to this idea of Tiny Living. I think a part of me daydreamed about the idea of eliminating the trigger. I assumed less stuff = less mess. Voila, my solution. I started a Pinterest board of Tiny Houses and enjoyed the little escape of thinking what our life would be if we just went for it and lived in our camper for a year. 

This is the time frame in which we sat down on a Saturday night as we often do and picked a documentary to watch. I loved how Minimalism: A Documentary looked at many different people and how they walked out this path of choosing minimalism for their lives. One of the people they interviewed, Joshua Becker, really had an impression on me. He talked about practical minimalism and what that looked like for his family of 4. It showed his house and while it was uncluttered and modest, it was a regular sized home. A home like ours.

Everything Joshua said really resonated with me so I searched his name and found his Facebook community; Becoming Minimalists, and quickly discovered he had written several books, one of which titled The More of Less. I purchased it and in the summer of 2017 while swinging in a hammock at our seasonal campsite in Northern Michigan; I devoured his book cover to cover. That weekend I learned the very same principles we are still learning to implement in our lives today. I didn’t have to move my family into a tiny house to find contentment, I could find it right where we already were. 

I want to first share this quote with you and then I’m going to share the book I read immediately following The More of Less and reveal how implementing them cured much of the chaos we were experiencing in our lives.

“Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from them… the goal of minimalism is not just to own less stuff. The goal of minimalism is to unburden our lives so we can accomplish more. In the end, your particular practice of minimalism is going to look different from that of everyone else.” Joshua Becker, The More of Less

Two Life-Changing Resources

Immediately after finishing The More of Less I started reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Marie’s name is gaining in recognition after her new show Tidying Up launched on Netflix! I am absolutely loving all the transformation pictures from my friends Facebook feeds who are being inspired by her show! Last year, I took the principles and advice from The More of Less and used them as I employed the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing from Marie’s book. I want to share a summary of each book, the main takeaways for me after reading them and how I used that knowledge to cure the chaos!

I want to first say that I appreciated how Joshua refers to his Christian faith in The More of Less and related the idea of minimalism to freeing up space in our lives to pursue our passion and find our purpose. It’s not a major theme in the book, but it really resonated with me because of my own faith walk. While there is some controversy in Christian circles with some of the meditation and more universal reference to energy in Marie Kondo’s book, I gained immense value from it. If something doesn’t resonate with you, throw it out. It doesn’t mean there is no value to be had from the source. I feel like this is common sense, but worth stating!

The More of Less

The student in me wants to go back through the book and give you a thorough outline and description of every chapter; however, then there’d be no reason for you to read the book and I’d probably be in violation of copyright law! Instead, I want to share the key points that stand out and a few quotes from Joshua Becker.

Introduction– Joshua starts the book with a story of the day his family found minimalism. It was Memorial Day 2008 and he was spending the day emptying out his two stall garage. How many of us can relate to having a garage we can’t park in? We’ve sure been there! As he’s in the midst of this monstrous chore his son asks if he will play ball with him. Like many of us do to our children when something  ‘has to get done’ he told him “no” and the boy retreated to the back yard alone. Joshua shares how he talked with his neighbor about this guilt and frustration and through that conversation had the realization “What if I don’t have to own all this stuff?!” The rest of the book describes how his family adopted minimalism and how it changed their lives. 

The Meat– In the first chapter, Joshua talks about the Universal Benefits of Minimalism and introduces the principles he’d be covering in the book.

• More time and energy
• More money
• More generosity
• More freedom
• Less stress
• Less distraction
• Less environmental impact
• Higher quality belongings
• A better example for our kids
• Less work for someone else
• Less comparison
• More contentment
  

Favorite Takeaway– I’m not a natural pack rat, but what I struggle with most is sentimental items. I think the thing I share with people most about this book is his ‘only the best’ concept Joshua talks about when it comes to sentimental items. Items that are hard for us to get rid of because of the memories attached to them.

He shares an example of his wife’s grandma and how the hardest part of minimizing for his wife was choosing what to keep of her belongings. He shared some personal stories of some of the items, one including a candy bowl that was always filled anytime she’d visit her grandma. All those years it was stuck in a box, bringing no joy to their life. Joshua’s wife ended up choosing the three most precious possessions ‘the best’ of her grandmas to display in their home, where the memory of the item and her grandma would bring JOY to their family. This practice is similar to how a museum curates their collection, choosing only the best items.  He gives tips on how to adopt this principle, like taking photos of the other items so you can remember them without having to keep them. This reiterates that our memories are attached to people, not to things. A photo of the item will elicit the same warm memories without the excess clutter. 

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

After reading The More of Less I jumped into Marie Kondo’s book. I had seen many pins on Pinterest that talked about the KonMarie method and purchased both books at the same time. After reading Joshua’s book I felt like my heart was in the right place. Marie Kondo’s book gave me even more practical tips on how to achieve practical minimalism for my family. Even though that’s not how she describes it, that’s what it did for me!

Introduction: In the introductory chapter Marie says, “A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective. It is life transforming.” Marie dives into some of the root causes of an untidy living space but focuses more on practical application. If you’ve read her book, watched her show or come across any blogs that reference her you’ll know that the key question she asks you to consider is “Does this spark JOY?” She created a tidying up process in which you  physically hold each item and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of or donate it. I absolutely loved this application and found that asking myself that question really helped me to get rid of the excess in order to make room for the things that brought me the most joy.

The Meat: Most of the book talks about her process for tidying, the KonMarie method. In this method, you tidy by category, not by room. The reason for this she says is because in most households items that fall into the same category are stored in two or more places scattered through the house. If you go room by room you’ll have to repeat the process of choosing what to keep in each category and that repetitive process can kill motivation. She recommends that you tidy by these areas in order: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos. Why this order? Marie says in her book:

“This order has also proven to be the most efficient in terms of the level of difficulty for the subsequent task of storing. Finally, sticking to this sequence sharpens our intuitive sense of what items spark joy inside us.”

Favorite Takeaway: I found a lot of value in her method of moving category to category and holding each item in my hand. I was able to easily determine if each item sparked joy or not. This was not a fast process and I did follow her recommended order. The two areas of my home that were impacted the most were my clothing and personal mementos.

I was able to donate over half of my wardrobe that didn’t spark joy or make me feel confident. I had a lot of clothes that were practical because they still were intact, but I learned that I didn’t have to keep the sheer number I had because they were ‘practical’. Our closet was radically transformed! I would have gotten rid of more but didn’t have the budget to replace all the practical items with higher quality ones that did spark joy. The next big experiment I’d like to employ with my wardrobe (not form KonMarie) is the 333 Project which is based on the trending term ‘capsule wardrobe’. You can read about that here.

The second area greatly improved after reading Marie’s book was personal photos, notes, and cards that I had been holding onto since high school. In her book, she talks about this category and how it is one of the most difficult categories to tidy. I loved this quote:

“The purpose of a letter is fulfilled the moment it is received… it is not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure. This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them.” – Marie Kondo

The same is true for photos. She recommends sorting through photos with the same “does it spark joy” process and keeping about 5 per important event. She mentions that photos of scenery that you can’t even remember probably belong in the garbage. Of course, these may spark joy for you, so use this as a guideline.

In my application, I had a big box FULL of letters from middle school and high school. Every great once in a while I’d pull one out and read it. Sometimes I’d laugh and sometimes I’d shrivel up in embarrassment. This was old school texting, and I kept them ALL! I realized that what she said was true. These letters and people helped shape me into who I am today but they didn’t make me any more or any less of who I am by sitting in a box being moved from house to house. I didn’t even have the motivation to read the hundreds in the box. I threw them all away, and it felt really great. I don’t regret that for a moment. I kept cards with special letters from my Mom and other family members, but if it was just a signed card I didn’t keep them. The same was true for photos. I was able to throw out at least half of the photos I had. Now that my collection isn’t so big, I might actually look at them!


How the two books were similar:

The main similarity between The More of Less and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is that both books go deeper than just tips and tricks for ‘organizing’ your home. Both require you to look inward and ask yourself some hard questions to get beneath the root cause of your clutter. These are two books that I will keep on hand for reference and apply the principles over and over again.

I highly recommend reading both of these books. They have been life-changing for me as I chase after practical minimalism for my family. I will be rereading and posting updates to my facebook page as I go through the KonMarie method a second time and whip my home back into shape!

Make it personal

Have you adopted any of these principles in your own homes?
What practices have been most impactful at curing the chaos in your house?
Would you like to be part of a decluttering challenge with the Live Wise Love Well community!?

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