20 things I QUIT to simplify and enjoy life MORE | Minimalism & Slow Living

Hello and welcome back to another video. If you're new around here, my name is Sherry. I'm an avid minimalist who believes that we can live a really good life with a lot less stuff. In today's video, I am gonna be talking about the 20 things that I have quit to simplify my life as a minimalist. Thank you guys so much for being here and for watching this. I think a few of these items in the list are gonna be things that maybe you haven't considered before so I would encourage you to stick around and watch all of them and see if any of them can apply to you. Without further ado, let's get right into it. The first thing that I've quit to simplify my life, I have stopped saying yes to outings or commitments that don't align with my values, that make my schedule too full, or that don't support my financial goals. And this one was a hard one for me because I used to be a chronic people pleaser and I always felt like I was almost being rude by saying no. But once I started to practice saying no when it was appropriate, I saw so much more peace in my life and it also made me infinitely more grateful for all of the time that I got back. The second thing that I quit was living in the future. I've always struggled with thinking about my life when I've accomplished X, Y, and Z and how great it's going to be then instead of taking concrete steps today and this week and this month to get me closer to whatever that goal is. So now instead of thinking about how great life can be then, I focus on what I can do today to get me closer to that goal. The third thing that I quit to simplify my life was I quit social media. When I was on social media, I was constantly comparing my life to other people, wanting things that I didn't have. It left me feeling behind in life and it took so much of my time away from the things and the people in front of me that mattered way more. I made another video about deleting social media and all of the benefits that you can reap from deleting yours as well. I will leave that linked here above and also down in the description if you're interested in watching that. Next up on the list of things that I have quit is wanting to have a perfectly curated house. This is something that I struggled with a lot more when I was on social media than I do now. Again, I just think that that's because I'm not constantly seeing what everybody else has and what's trendy right now. So being off of social media, I've really learned to be content with what we have and I'm not constantly pining for things that I don't have that other people do. We live in a very comfortable home. It's warm, it's cozy, and the most important is that it's filled with people who make life great. The next thing that I quit to simplify my life was wanting to have endless amounts of money. I have just learned to be content with the fact that we can pay our bills, that we have money in savings, that we can do a few fun things every year, and I've let that be enough. And I've stopped chasing the zeros at the end of a paycheck. Next up on this list is finding joy in shopping. This used to be a really big one for me when I was bored, when I was emotional. My way of dealing with those emotions was to go out and go shopping because the dopamine hits that we get when we go out and we buy things would very temporarily counteract whatever feeling I had that made me wanna go shopping in the first place. But I have finally learned that when I go out and I go shopping, usually I overspend and I buy things that I don't need, which leaves me decluttering stuff and then paying for it months down the line. So I have stopped shopping for enjoyment, and instead I find joy in things that genuinely fill my cup and don't empty my bank account. Very closely related to that is overspending. I have always been somebody that has made a budget, but I haven't been the best about necessarily keeping that budget. I'm good at telling my money where to go, but not the greatest at the actual execution. And that is a big reason that I'm doing a no spend because what I have noticed is that my overspending comes in these little extra purchases that I make that I really don't even think twice about. But at the end of the month, they add up to hundreds of extra dollars spent that were never allocated into the budget originally. So I am going to stop overspending in 2025. I'm gonna use my no buy to help train myself to do that. I'm really excited for that. That's gonna actually be a series on my channel and I've done a video on that that I will link up here, also down below if you're interested, but I'm really excited about that. But overspending, I have stopped doing. Next up on this list is living apart from the Lord. I haven't talked a lot about my faith on this channel, but I am a Christian, I love Jesus, and there have been some significant events in my life where I had a chance to run to the Lord and I did not. And yeah, it just, life is easier with the Lord by your side and that is something that I have learned very deeply over the last few years, is that when I am in constant communication with him throughout the day, when I start my day by asking him to fill me with his spirit, life is a lot easier. Things go a lot smoother. And when, you know, the Christian life is certainly not an easy one, especially in today's culture, but I noticed that when I am very conscious of keeping the Lord by my side and being in communication with him pretty much constantly, that when trials come up, when things get difficult, he never fails to get me through them. So I have stopped living apart from him because life is just a lot easier when you have him by your side. The next thing that I've quit doing is I've quit trying to force friendships. There have been a couple of people that have come into my life in the last year or so and initially I thought, wow, this is a great thing. We have so much in common. We vibe really well, like this is awesome. We're gonna have a new friendship here. And then it just sort of fizzled out and, you know, I would reach out and wouldn't really get a whole lot of response. And so I just, I've decided to pour into the friendships that fill me up and the ones that just aren't really there, they're just not really being reciprocated, to just let those go. Not because I have anything against those people, but I would much rather spend my time wisely investing in the friendships that fill my cup, that fill my friend's cup, and not worrying about the others. Next up on this list of things that I have quit doing is I have quit watching TV. I think the last TV show that I really got into was The Chosen. I love The Chosen. I went and saw the new episodes in theaters, but before that, I really am just not a person that likes to sit down and watch TV. I know a lot of people, that's a really good way for them to relax. I just haven't found that to be the case for me. So I didn't really quit watching TV per se, because I've never really been a big TV person, but it's definitely something that I do not do, just because I feel like there's more valuable way for me to spend my time. Next up, I have quit being a helicopter parent, and I should put quit in quotations here, because this is a work in progress, but I think that we really do our kids a disservice when we helicopter parent them. I see so many parents out in perfectly safe environments where they won't let their kid be further than, I kid you not, like five or 10 feet away from them. And I really think that that does our kids a disservice. They need to learn independence. They need to learn that they're okay by themselves. They need to learn how to handle situations with limited or no adult guidance. Now I say that, but of course, this is going to be very, very subjective to your child's age. But a really good example in my own life is my oldest son, who is 10, he'll be 11 in January, loves to go into this big pasture behind our house. But between our house and the pasture is a very thick row of trees. And so when he goes out there to play, I cannot physically see him. He doesn't have a phone or a watch or anywhere for me to contact him. Now that area, there's no houses, there's no roads. He's perfectly safe. And I genuinely love that he loves to go out there and play in the woods and build forts and do all of those things that I think our kids have just gotten away from that do them so much good. But I struggle, I struggle when he goes out there because I don't have a way to communicate with him. And I just have to remind myself, he's okay. He's old enough and he's very responsible. He's not far. And there's nobody or nothing out there that can really hurt him. He can handle this. This is something that I know he can handle. So that is something that I'm trying very hard to work on. I also have stopped making all the decisions for my kids. I try to let them come to conclusions on their own and try to think about what the different outcomes of different things can be instead of me telling them. I just think that giving our kids the ability to learn independence and learn how to handle different situations themselves is incredibly beneficial. So helicopter parenting is something that I have stopped doing. And I genuinely believe that my children are better off for it. Next up on this list, and this is one that I think a lot of us struggle with, is I have stopped worrying or caring about what other people have, about what they're doing, about what they have going on. I used to be somebody who was genuinely like pretty nosy. Like I was a pretty nosy person. And I would always wanna know what people were doing, what they had, where they were going, just all of these things that didn't pertain to my life. Again, often it left me feeling inadequate or wanting things that I didn't have that they did. So I don't have time for any of that. I have more valuable ways to spend my time. So I have stopped caring about what other people have or what they have going on. Next up, screen time. I don't think that this is a surprise to anyone, but yeah, I also wanna say this is something that I struggle with. I did say that I don't watch TV and I don't, but my phone. Oh man. Oh, I gotta work on it. I gotta work on it because I'm on my phone a lot. Now, granted, sometimes it's for things that I actually have to be doing. I need to know what's happening on my calendar. I check my emails. I respond to my YouTube comments. Some of the things are productive and good, but I find that I just love YouTube too much. You know, I talked about quitting social media and a big reason for that was because of the time that it took for me, but I find that YouTube can do the exact same thing. I can sit there and watch videos for hours in the day, not consecutively, but over the course of a day. I can spend two hours watching YouTube and it's not good. I do not recommend this strategy. And it is something that I'm trying very hard to work on. I actually have recently set up a one hour time limit in my settings on my iPhone for YouTube. That way, when I reach that limit, which y'all, I do every day, I reach the limit every day, but when that limit comes up that says, hey, you've reached your limit, it really makes me stop and think, okay, is this a good way to use my time? Have I gotten anything truly valuable out of the videos that I have watched? And sometimes the answer is yes, but a lot of the time the answer is no. And so limiting excessive screen time is something that I am working on. I also think it's really important to mention that, at least for me, and this also goes for my kids, when we are not on our screens, TVs, switches, tablets, phones, any kind of screen, when we are not on the screens all the time, we are more patient, we're more kind, our attitudes are a lot better. There's just a really noticeable difference in our attitudes and behaviors when we've been on screens a lot versus when we haven't. So we try very hard to make sure that we are reading, that we are playing, that we are going outside when it's not super cold, because those things are things that fill us up and don't leave us feeling empty and agitated the way that mindless screen consumption does. Excessive screen time is something that I have quit. Next up is multitasking. I think we all know that we don't actually get anything done faster when we multitask, but a really good example of this in my own life is when I'm cooking. When I'm cooking, I'm really bad about starting a recipe, something has to simmer, right? So then I'm like, okay, well, let's go do the dishes and then let's go clean the countertop off and then let's mop. But every single time that I do this, I mess the recipe up and my husband notices. And so I noticed that when I single task, that when I'm focused on one thing at a time, that I do it a lot better and that I do it faster. And another thing that I noticed, and I think that this is something that happens a lot of time that I'm gonna mention it again in this video, but when we multitask, our brains have to go into overdrive to juggle everything that we're trying to do. And when we single task, our brains can slow down a little bit because they're only focused on one thing. And I noticed that when I single task, my brain slows down, my body slows down, and I'm just more calm and relaxed, which is the state that I try to live my entire life in. So I have quit multitasking because it is not beneficial to pretty much any value that I hold. Next up on this list is speeding while driving. This feeds into what I was talking about with multitasking, where your body can't just relax and kind of chill. I used to be really, really bad about this. When I was a lot younger, like 18, for reference, I'm 35 now, I actually had my license taken from me. I was given a red license because of the amount of speeding tickets that I got. But even after that, even in my early 30s, late 20s, I would still speed, and not excessively the way that I used to, but I noticed that when I speed, my body is in hyperdrive almost, because it's not just that I'm speeding, but I'm also, okay, where are the police? I don't wanna get pulled over. I wanna make sure I don't hit anybody. Like there's just all of these other things that I have to think about and juggle, and my body just gets like amped up almost. Versus when I drive a speed limit, I don't have to worry about any of that, because if I'm going to speed limit, I don't have to worry about a cop over there. I don't have to worry about, oh, hitting a car. I don't have to worry about any of that because I'm just doing what I should be doing, which is driving the speed limit. So this is a great hack if you want to start slow living, because when you drive the speed limit, if you want to force yourself to slow down, just drive the speed limit. And it will change your life. And then you can come back and thank me later. Driving the speed limit is a great way to slow down, but there's no benefit in speeding. I don't get anywhere faster. So speeding is something that I have stopped doing to simplify my life. Next up on this list is wishing I was in a different season of life. And this is quite similar to my second item on this list, which was living in the future. But I get caught up in wanting to be in a different season of life, whether I want to go back to a season that was easier, or I want to jump ahead to a season where, you know, we don't have all of this going on and X, Y, and Z, whatever it is. There's just no value in that because we're not in whatever season of life that is that I'm wanting to be in. So I try very hard to remember all the good things about the season of life that we're in right now and push aside all of the other seasons of life that we're not in right now, because it doesn't matter because we're not in them. Next up on this list is mindless scrolling. This is something that I quit doing when I stopped using social media. I don't really have anything to scroll anymore. Your brain can't rest. You're wasting time. I would argue that it has literally no value. Yeah, so I do not mindlessly scroll and lovingly encourage you to stop doing it as well. Next up on this list is beauty products. I quit using a bunch of beauty products. I was never really somebody that got into the beauty world. The most makeup I would ever wear was foundation, bronzer, mascara, maybe eyeshadow. I just prefer a more natural look. I'm very thankful that I'm confident and comfortable in the skin that I was given. And I prefer to just have a more real look. So the only makeup that I currently wear is mascara. Of course, I wash my face, put lotion on, all of that. But I do not wear any makeup. I don't get my nails done. I don't get pedicures. None of that. I really think that people look beautiful when they're just their ordinary selves. Maybe that's a controversial topic. I don't know. I just lean into the beauty that God gave me. And I don't worry about buying all the beauty products that promise us perfect, flawless skin, which isn't reality anyway, guys. Not realistic to have perfectly flawless skin. It's okay if you don't. Totally fine. Leaning into being more realistic and saving myself a whole lot of money by not buying every beauty product that is marketed to me. Wow. Okay, we're almost done. We're almost there. We have two more to go. This video was actually a lot longer than I anticipated it. So if you have made it this far, can I just genuinely thank you for being here, for watching this. I love making these videos. I want them to be valuable. I want them to help you live a better life more simply. And I want you to find the things in life that are actually valuable, that fill your cup. And so with my videos, I really try to bring those things to light. And I hope that you recognize them. If you've made it this far in the video, thank you so much for being here. I really do appreciate it. If this video is helpful, if you like it, please give it a thumbs up. Comment down below about your favorite thing that you've heard so far. Let's jump into the last two things that I quit to simplify my life. This is a big one. It will change your life. If you're not doing it already, please start today. And that is, I have quit not preparing for the next day, the evening beforehand. Especially if you have kids, this is a game changer. A game changer, okay? So things like setting out your kids' clothes, making your kids' lunchboxes, getting things loaded up in the car. I set out my dog's leash and my jacket right by the door so I can grab it and take him out in the morning first thing and I'm not looking for things. Making sure that your keys are where you know they're gonna be. Just preparing yourself for the next day makes your morning calmer and more relaxed. You're not rushing around. You're not rushing kids out the door, which I would argue can have an impact on their day because I know it does for my kids. When I'm, you know, you're gonna be late, the bus is coming, hurry, hurry, hurry. That really impacts how they start their day and then how they go through their day. Versus when things are ready for the next day, when everybody knows where things are, when we're not in a rush and our mornings are calm, that calmness follows us throughout the day and just makes our entire day better. So if you're not preparing for the next day, the night beforehand, I cannot recommend it enough. I promise you it'll change your life. Last on the list is I have stopped being, and I should probably say I am trying, this is something that I'm still trying to do, stop being busy all the time. And when I say busy, I don't mean, you know, with commitments or outings, things like that, I've already talked about that, but in my house. And moms, I know that a lot of you will be able to relate to this, where there's always something to do, right? There's always laundry to fold, there's always something to clean, there's always something to tidy, there's always something, some project, there's always something to do. And if there's not, there is a loving child who needs you for something. There's always something to do. And I'm really bad about not giving myself time to just be throughout the day. I always am working on a to-do list. And I know that there are some hacks around to-do lists, and that's actually something that I wanna do some research on, because I think it can be really beneficial. I think it's important, especially for moms, for homemakers, when you're constantly go, go, going, to give yourself pockets throughout the day where you rest. And I mean, you could take a nap, sure, that's rest, but I'm talking about more like sitting down with a cup of your favorite hot beverage, or whatever it is, and just being. Not reading a book, not scrolling, just sitting there and observing what's around you, listening to things, and not giving your mind any type of input. It allows your mind to just slow down and rest, which genuinely, for me anyway, affects the rest of my body, like a whole body rest, when we just sit down and give ourselves time to just be. If you're not doing this, or if you struggle with this, I'm right there with you. But I think it's a valuable thing to practice and get into the habit of, because just like not rushing the beginning of our day, when we add these little pockets of quiet and rest, and just allowing ourselves to be for just a few moments throughout the day, it changes the entire vibe of our day, because we're not constantly going. You know, I think that's exhausting. I know it's exhausting, because I'm really guilty of doing it. You get to the end of your day, and you are exhausted, because you won't, or feel like you can't slow down, or stop, or give yourself those little pockets of time. So, I lovingly encourage you to find time in your day. Not even find, because if you try to find it, you're gonna talk yourself right out of that. Make pockets of time, especially moms, especially homemakers, those of us who feel like we constantly have something to do, somebody to serve. Find pockets of your day to sit down and rest. Woo, we made it. All right, that is 20 things that I have stopped doing to simplify my life as a minimalist. I really hope and pray that these are things that maybe you haven't heard of before, you haven't considered, but I hope that you find some of these that you can apply to your own life, to slow down, to rest, to simplify, just to allow yourself to fill your cup up when our world is so bent on emptying your cup. All right, guys, that's a wrap. Those are 20 things that I have quit to simplify my life as a minimalist. I hope that you find value in a few, or maybe all of these things. I would love if you would comment down below which ones you maybe hadn't heard of that you're excited to apply to your own lives, and which ones you already do that you have found to be beneficial. Again, thank you for being here, and I'll see you in the next one.