EVERYTHING I OWN [99 Items] EXTREME MINIMALIST [Carry On 60L Total]

I think we tend to get this idea in our head that in order to be a minimalist or a good minimalist or the perfect minimalist, we can only have two kids. We have to have a specific number of possessions. We can't have color in our home. We have to live sustainably. At the same time, we can only buy really, really high quality, pricey items. Also, we need to be tidy and organized all the time. We shouldn't keep sentimental items. We shouldn't have duplicates of anything. These are some of the stigma or some of the ideas of surrounding minimalism that I completely disagree with. Although you might consider yourself a minimalist and you might follow some of these rules, you actually don't have to do or be any of these specific things in order to consider yourself someone who's minimized or simplified their life. In fact, let's throw out titles all together. You can call yourself a simplifist, a reducifier. I mean, you can make up anything you want, anything that leads you to eliminating distractions in your life from the things that you really love, the things that you wanna pursue. I love one definition of minimalism. It is, minimalism is not defined by strict rules, but by embracing specific principles. So I wanna talk about that. Let's talk about these principles and how whoever you are, no matter what you consider yourself or what phase of life you are in, you can still reap the benefits of a minimalist or a simplifier or whatever you wanna call it and make your life run a little bit more smoothly. So in addition to removing distractions, and this could be things in your schedule, it could be things, actual items in your home, it doesn't matter. Anything that you're kind of pursuing or that's pursuing you. Katie Wells, she's got a podcast that I love. She talks about how each of our items is a magnet. It's actually pining for our attention. It's trying to draw us in and get our attention, take our attention away from other things. So once you kind of look around your home and realize that everything is kind of begging for your attention, you start to prioritize what you're going to keep and realize that if you have too much, it's taking away from other areas of your life that you really do want to pursue. Oh, I love the concept of striving for more simplicity in your routines. All right, I have a sock system that is no longer working. I, for about a year, tried to force this system to work. It was so organized. It was these mesh bags. Once you put, everybody in the family had one. Put your dirty socks in the mesh bag. Once it's full, we toss it into the washer. In theory, this is a brilliant, brilliant plan, but it was not working. For whatever reason, whatever phase of life we're in right now, this does not work for my kids. So now you do a sock dive. All the socks of the kids are just in a bin. It is not pretty. It is not ideal. It's not how I would like it, but it is working so much better. I don't want to spend my time battling the socks. So the point here is that the system and how the system looked wasn't actually the goal. The goal was to get my sanity and my time back. And however I can do that, that's what I'm going with. So now it's the sock dive. Tell me how you have solved the sock problem in your house. I've also simplified mealtime significantly. We eat the same meals over and over again, week after week. I do a very limited rotation. I know what we like. I know what I like to cook. And I just keep those items pretty much on hand at all times. I want to talk about a study that was done in 2016 by UCLA. And they actually quizzed some people and asked them if they would describe their homes as cluttered. And the people they found that did describe their homes as less tidy and more cluttered, had higher levels of cortisol, the stress hormone throughout the day compared to those who didn't. And I can tell you that this 100% is believable. Before I had reduced the clutter in my home, I was living in a pretty much constant state of anxiety, a constant state of fight or flight. When you're in this constant state of anxiety and fight or flight, it can really lead to less healthy sleep. And more depression. It can also lower your ability to think clearly and make decisions. So I would encourage you to pursue more simplified living and a more clutter-free space, not so that you can call yourself a minimalist. And if you do, that's great. But don't be intimidated like I said earlier by the title and let this stop you from enjoying the benefits and eliminating the stress, the anxiety. Now it's not a cure-all. I can't say if you declutter your space, it will cure your anxiety, it will cure your depression. No, but it can definitely help. A few more characteristics of minimalism that I think are really beautiful to focus on rather than rules are knowing the value of time. I feel like if you're kind of in this, I'm gonna simplify, I'm gonna reduce the clutter, the amount of things on my schedule. When you're kind of in this frame of mind, you start prioritizing your time and seeing time a little bit differently. It's also been shown that when you have more time available to you, you are less likely to procrastinate. Maybe you've been dreaming of decluttering your basement or dreaming of decluttering your closet. You just don't feel like you have enough time. And maybe it's just because all the things that you're doing are taking your energy and you really aren't left with much at the end of the day or even at the beginning of the day. And so you're not able to get to that priority because you've got so much on your schedule. That's why I feel like you've gotta think beyond reducing the physical inventory in your home, but go even farther and think to, how can I reduce my schedule? How can I make my routines run more smoothly? You just get all this time back. So no matter where you are in the decluttering process, it really is beneficial to have as much kind of peace, peaceful and relaxing time as possible, such that you can get to these things that you are wanting to prioritize. People who follow the concept of minimalism tend to prioritize experiences over physical items. And I first thought of this thinking, oh, it's gifts. Like instead of giving you a toy for Christmas, I'm gonna take you to the zoo where you're actually doing these kinds of experiences for holidays and birthdays. It goes so much deeper than that. And I realized that when you are able to reduce the inventory in your home, you're then not focusing on physical possessions, but the experiences that you yourself are living in life and having with your family on a daily basis. This does not just have to apply to a few times a year on a special occasion. Maybe you wanna spend more time in devotion or you want to learn how to knit or spend more time baking or spend more time reading or focus on your physical health, whatever it may be. When you're not having all these magnets begging for your attention all day long, you're able to prioritize experiences. And I think this is one of my favorite elements of minimalism. Another characteristic that I love is it just minimizing, it just lends itself to more contentment and more gratitude. I am not perfect at anything. I wanna make sure you know that I've got it all figured out. No, these are things that I am also just striving for, but I've definitely improved my life by embracing or striving for some of these principles. This goes right along with the next one. When you are trying to embrace characteristics of minimalism, you are rejecting the idea of FOMO. I feel like our society is just so conducive to not missing out. We are able to connect to people at every point of every single day, see what everybody else is buying, see what everybody else is doing. And it can be really easy to get caught in the trap that in order for us to be up with the times and order for us to be relevant, we need to be buying and doing all of these things. But when you reduce the inventory in your home, you see your time a little bit differently. You've simplified your routines and you're striving for just a little bit more of a calm and simple life in general. You don't care if you miss out. In fact, I love when I miss out and I did not used to be this way. It's just a happy coincidence that now, and I'm not saying I never, I never wanna buy anything new or I never wanna go and do something fun. I feel like missing out is honestly just more time that I get to spend at home, taking care of my home and taking care of my family. And that makes me the most happy. But just to hit this last point again, because I think this is what it's all about, is embracing more simplicity. Whatever that means to you, however you interpret that. If that means you're gonna reduce your wardrobe so that you don't have to spend so much time making decisions in your closet in the morning, simplifying your makeup so that you can do a quick five minute face, whatever that looks like to you, I think simplifying in any way possible is really gonna help you reap the benefits of a more minimalist life. Again, forgetting the titles, but just those characteristics that you're striving to enjoy and you really want in your life. And remember, when you're able to pursue a more simple life and a more clutter-free environment, you have more time, more energy, more freedom, less stress, less anxiety, and easier time making decisions. And your home just runs for you instead of you working for your home.