💚New_ Minimalist Family HOUSE TOUR 🏠 _Don't make us look WEIRD!_😉(Family Minimalism 2020)

Basically he said, just don't make us look weird. And I think that's been our goal all along. I'm Dawn from The Minimal Mom. If we haven't met before, this is my husband Tom and we have four kids ages four through nine. And we enjoy sharing tips and tricks about how you can simplify your house quickly. So you are currently standing in our entryway. It is not enormous, but it's fine. There's a closet on the side. So our minimalism journey started about five years ago. And basically I just started simplifying our house without letting Tom know. You come into, I don't know, what do you call this? A hallway? Half hallway? Over here is our half bath, which is, it has laundry attached to it. And so I think when most people come into our house, they're probably just like, Oh, it's, it's neat. It's tidy. It's clean. But what you don't notice is when you open the drawers and the cabinets, that nothing is more than half full. Most of it's not even near half full. And it just feels so good not to have them stuffed full of stuff that we don't need and that we weren't using. And that was causing us guilt to just not have that stuff in there anymore. It did get to the point though, then where I was like, okay, I'm going to have to let him know what I'm doing. And I was only getting rid of my stuff and the kids' stuff. I was just wanting to see what a difference it would make in our house before I decided to tell him what it was. And we're still working on my stuff. So we are definitely not like, okay, finish line over. No, no, no, no, no. This is our living room. But I would say the house itself is pretty close to done. Tom keeps a lot of his stuff like outside in our garage and sheds. And so it's out of the house. So that's all I needed. Dining room, kitchen. But when we were getting started on this process, basically he said, just don't make us look weird. And I think that's been our goal all along is to not have our house feel really any different than other people's, except for that. It's just easier to keep clean. You could stop by unannounced and it's really not that big a deal or tell us you're 15 minutes away. That would be our preference. And we can get everything pulled together really quickly. The kids' play area or sorry, the girls' workspace, crafting and such. This is Dawn's desk and work area. How does she get stuff done next to children? And so I think what a lot of times when people come to visit our house, they can't really place their finger on what's different about it. What you might notice as you look around our house now is that we've just gotten rid of a lot of furniture and different things that tend to collect clutter. So we don't actually have any bookcases. We don't have any like China hutches. Those things aren't bad. They just, for us in this stage of life, were too much for us to keep clean and to keep decluttered. And we have had those things in the past. And here is our TV room, which only the kids use. So does that mean we can get rid of the recliner? So what we've found is we've highly simplified our house. Now this started out as just a house cleaning tactic. So in the beginning, I've shared my story on why I became a minimalist. I'll link to that down below, but it was a housekeeping tactic. I wanted to be able to keep our house clean, but still be able to do some of my work projects that I was really excited about. But what we found as we've simplified our house is that it's spilled over to every area of our life, to our finances and to being able to eat healthier, to how we parent and to how we interact, how Tom and I interact together. We've simplified our schedules. We're more effective employees. We're able to prioritize better. And so what started as merely a housekeeping tactic has turned into so much more. Okay. You want to see the kids' room? It's upstairs right this way. On the landing, we have our little library area. Upstairs just has one bedroom and that's where all the kids are right now. They fit comfortably. They actually really like sharing a room together. So that's been really good. So this coming winter, we'll plan to remodel the upstairs to make it two bedrooms. But really for now, it has been functioning totally fine. Okay. So then this makes a full loop. You can go either to our bedroom, bathroom, or then back to the kitchen. Our bedroom is tiny. But what's so great about it is we don't keep as much stuff then. I mean, I don't know what your experience has been, but the more space we have, the more stuff we tend to keep. So over the course of the past five years, we've gotten rid of about 80% of our stuff. And what's so funny is that we don't miss any of it. You know, in the beginning, like I said, Tom was like, just don't make us look weird. And now looking back, I think how we were living before was weird with all this stuff in our house that we didn't need, that we didn't use, that caused us stress. This is our full bath. It is the only full bath. The only shower or anything in the house. It's fine for now. I realize now that every item that comes into our house is something that I have to manage, that I have to take care of. And by having fewer items in our house, it's just so much easier to manage. I mean, it practically manages itself. And so this way of living, it doesn't feel weird. It doesn't feel odd. It feels natural. It feels like this is how we were meant to live. So it is fun to get to show you around our house today. And for you just to get to see that minimalism for a family, it doesn't have to look like cement walls and all black and white. We definitely still like to have color. It's a really quick tour. So what do you think about how our house is now compared to how it was in the past? I like that. There's not stuff everywhere. It's amazing how now 1,500 square feet feels more than big enough. And I know it depends on where you live, what part of the world you're watching this from. But for our, in our region, this is a small house, especially if we're having six people in it. So I think our encouragement to you, it's not necessarily, Oh go sell all your stuff right now and become a minimalist. I would say it started with us just questioning things. Do the kids really have to have this many toys? Do we need this extra furniture in this room? Does our wardrobe need to be this big? And what we've found is that we've pared things down as our wardrobe has been simplified as definitely as we have simplified the kids toys. Our house is so much easier to manage. I mean, yes, it's, it's much easier to keep clean now, but it's just a more peaceful place to be. You know, we're the same as you, right? We're just a little bit further down the path. And so if you have, you know, paper clutter or your closet's overflowing or your kitchen isn't how you'd like to be just to hang around with us because we've been there and we love sharing the tips and the tricks and the ideas of how we simplified our house so that you can do it too. But, but hopefully do it a lot quicker than we did. I wouldn't mind going further. Yeah. No, I mean like the whole RV people living, like that would be awesome. Like if you could just go travel and see the world for six months, that would be sweet. You're freaking my mom out right now. Mom will, we'll talk about it. But what's funny is that Tom would have been the one in the past who was like, I would like a big, nice house, right? That's not wrong. That would, that was our goal in the beginning. We're in America. We wanted big, nice house. We wanted new, nice vehicles. We wanted to wear cool clothes, different vehicle every day of the week. That's my goal. And so I feel like we've been there, we've tried that and we found it really unfulfilling. And so it is fun to be in a place now where I think we can say we're really content in a smaller, smallish house and just getting to do the things we want to do now, like building our garden and spending time with our kids and just pursuing passion projects like this. So thank you to all of you who have been along for the journey. I know I've been promising this home tour since August, so thank you so much. But, uh, we appreciate you so much. If you're new, if you're just finding us now to our channel, we'd love for you to join us. We enjoy sharing tips and tricks about simplifying, but we also just like sharing other aspects of our life, remodeling projects, things we're doing outside. So that's been fun to share as well. So we'd love for you to subscribe so that we can keep in touch and a thumbs up is the best compliment that you can give us. We'd love it if you'd leave a comment down below, tell us where you're at in the journey or what area of your house is giving you the biggest headaches or other questions that you have that we haven't tackled yet. So we're sure to address those coming up too. Thank you so much for watching and we will look forward to visiting with you again really soon.