😱*gasp!* MINIMALISM "RULES" I DO NOT FOLLOW 😬 am I a fraud? FAMILY MINIMALISM | Messy To Minimal Mom

the good news is that there are no rules to minimalism the bad news is that there are a ton of people out there who will tell you that you're doing it wrong if you're not following their set of minimalist rules so in today's video i'm just gonna be real with you guys and i'm gonna share with you the minimalist rules that i break oh it's so good to be free your rules don't applaud on me no hey everyone so glad you stopped by my channel for today's video welcome if you're new my name is natalie and i love sharing videos about simple living intentional living some people would call that minimalism we got rid of over 80 of the stuff in our house over this last year and a half or so and my life has never been better seriously the freedom that i've gotten with getting rid of so much stuff has just made me fall in love with simplicity and with family minimalism it's been wonderful for our whole family if you feel like you are being boxed in by other people's arbitrary rules and opinions then this is the video for you because i am living proof that you can reap the benefits of minimalism and a more simplified life and still break the rules which actually don't exist so everyone has their own opinion and i'm not going to state the silly rules i've literally had every comment under the sun if you can think it someone has commented it to me saying you can't call yourself a minimalist if you have more than one kid you can't call yourself a minimalist if you wear makeup i've literally been told that among other crazy things i'm sharing with you the minimalist rules that i break that are pretty conventional as far as minimalism goes and i'm in no way saying any of these guidelines or rules that i'm gonna talk about are bad nor am i throwing shade to any of you who choose to follow these rules i'm just sharing my experience i would love to hear in the comments what are minimalist rules that you break when you see videos on youtube or blog posts about minimalist habits or minimalist rules for a simplified home or you know fill in the blank these are some of the things that show up and these are some of the things that i definitely don't do and i'm doing just fine the number one minimalist rule that i've seen that i break is i have seasonal decor now i have a small supply of seasonal decor i don't have 10 12 20 totes of seasonal decor i do have a small more minimalist collection but i do have seasonal decor the idea from a like a more staunch minimalist perspective is the more seasonal decor you have the more inventory and items you have in your life to keep track of we all have a different capacity for how much inventory we can handle and if a good little stock of christmas decorations brings you more joy than the grief that it takes to keep that inventory in your brain and to find a place to store it then it's absolutely worth it and that's sort of where i fall i switch out a pillow on my couch i have a bunny pillow right now that still needs to go away it's definitely past easter now and sometimes i'll switch that out for a little pumpkin pillow sometimes it's a little turkey pillow at thanksgiving and sometimes it's a little snowflake pillow at christmas time i just switch out the pillowcase i set up a christmas tree i put little christmas candles around my house i love decorating for the seasons i have three or four wreaths that i put on my door that i just have in rotation throughout the year i love it so much and as a minimalist i am much more focused on being intentional about the things in my house rather than seeing how little i can get away with so that's my mindset that's my way of thinking about things and seasonal decor totally fits my mindset when it comes to minimalism here's another minimalist rule per se that i don't follow and that is having multiple spots around my house for the different categories of items so for instance i have a little drawer for my kids books that we keep out here in the living room and i also have a spot in my daughter's room for books and a spot in my boys room for books conventional minimalism or more staunch minimalists would say all books in one place we even have books oh yeah i just realized this in our tv unit in our um front room here this is like adult books like what my husband and i read for like bible studies and stuff like that we keep those separate and those are in a separate place i also have a little stack of books in my closet in my bedroom i understand the concept behind having one place for everything and i actually think this is like a konmari method concept um this is part of it is just having one place for that category of items but i think sometimes with having kids in your life separating out those categories or having multiple places around your home for that category totally makes sense and it actually can make your life easier especially if you live in a house with two stories honestly someday if we have a house that has two stories i can totally see myself having my little collection of essential oils for my downstairs and my collection of essential oils for my upstairs just because it doesn't make sense to constantly be going up and down to access the the large collection if that makes sense so that's definitely a minimalist rule that i break kind of going along with that another comment i get all the time from staunch minimalists is um you let your kids play with plastic toys minimalists kids only play with wooden handmade montessori style toys i've literally gotten that comment and this is so not true this is such a myth when it comes to minimalism that you have to look a certain way or you have to have a certain type of thing like we would be limiting ourselves so much if we only allowed ourselves to do what other people told us to do like i'm just gonna say it i recently shared a video where i talked about how i organize my kids toys and what toys they love and in that video i was sharing like you don't have to have this perfectly curated montessori style you know what is that like sensory play pinterest worthy play room in order for your kids to have a good time playing with their toys you don't need to go out and buy all of these fancy schmancy technologically advanced steam toys for your kids for them to learn grow play imagine and have fun heck give them a box and they're happy right my kids love playing with cardboard boxes but that doesn't really fit into this like sort of idyllic minimalist sort of i don't know like just what you see on pinterest and in these videos of people with their kids and i think that there's definitely a time and a place we have wooden toys i love wooden toys we have wooden train tracks we have special little nativity stuff that the kids play with little peg people all sorts of like little wooden like magnet dolls and stuff love those so much it's not realistic for our life our family the people giving us gifts the stores that are local to us that we shop from to only insist on a certain specific type of toy my kids play with plastic toys they absolutely loved their paw patrol toys when they were little toddlers and they are obsessed with hot wheels and legos right now it's great and as long as i'm really intentional about the collection it doesn't matter what's in the collection what matters is is the stuff that i have actually serving my children are they actually using it and playing with it because all the montessori wooden toys in the world can just turn into a pile of clutter on the floor just like legos can too much of a good thing is still too much here's a minimalist rule that i break and i've actually been breaking it more as i become more of a minimalist if you can believe that i have color in my home so i was talking about this in another video which might be up on my channel by the time this one goes up i don't know which one is going up first but back in the day i would try to have a really neutral color palette in my home because it made me feel more peaceful because there was so much visual clutter and so much physical clutter around us that at least my couch was gray my piano was white my picture frames were white i did the whole gray and white thing but now that i've reduced the physical clutter around my house and i'm not dealing with as much stuff and inventory i now have the freedom visually to add little pops of color here and there and little bits of warmth our styles change and evolve over the years so that's probably part of it just as i've gotten older and trends and styles and stuff has changed my tastes have changed um but i now feel so much more free to have maybe a little pop of color in my wardrobe or a cute little orangey throw pillow on my couch i would have never considered that a few years ago because color and and the visual clutter that color sometimes adds to his space was just like the tipping point like it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me and so i just did everything super neutral and and it really worked for a while until i learned like oh i actually need to get rid of stuff in order to truly have a calm and peaceful space sometimes i'll get people who come onto my channel and see my videos and like you're not a minimalist you have an orange pillow on your couch minimalists black and white or maybe natural wood nothing else a big minimalist rule that i've seen is that you do one place setting per person you can just wash it throughout the day and have it you know ready for every meal but the thing is with our family because we have friends and family so close by especially now as world is opening up a little bit more we're starting to get back to normal a little bit more and we can have a few more people in our house i have people that i'm serving i have guests and friends and family um i weston has a buddy that comes and works out with him all the time and he stays for dinner sometimes and if i was limited to just enough for my family it would not work it's just not something that would work the number that seems to work for us is six of everything with the exception of our utensils we have 12 of everything of our utensils but six small plates six large plates six bowls six coffee mugs six drinking tumblers and it's literally the perfect number for us because it's just enough for us to entertain but not too much that our cabinets are overflowing there's still some space and less visual clutter in our cabinets and so yeah that's a rule that i break i have more than just one place setting per person in our family and it's working just fine another minimalist rule that i break and this is a biggie and this is one that has actually brought me a lot of criticism if you've seen my pantry decluttering videos um is that i stock up on things so conventional or strict minimalism says keep only what you can consume within a short period of time having extra on hand is wasteful it is uh clutter in your inventory in your mental inventory as well as your physical inventory for me it is just not the case i it might be because we have so many people on our house we're always consuming the extra food that we have and it's in my opinion very prudent to have uh some stock of of your food cleaning supplies whatever it is um i used to have 12 bottles of shampoo i have like two or three extra now um and i there have been plenty of times where i have had stock of canned goods that actually expired and they went bad and that was a waste and that was unfortunate as the last couple of years have gone on i have learned a lot about rotating stock first in first out what we eat what we don't eat and would just go bad no matter how many times i try and buy it um and so having a good stock it helped me when i was postpartum because i didn't have to go to the grocery store and back then grocery delivery was not available grocery pickup was not it just was not a thing um and so going to the grocery store meant physically going into the grocery store with newborn twins uh-uh having a little stock in my pantry i could open a can of chili and i had a 50-pound bag of rice i could have rice and chili and we were fed for that evening it also helped during the global pandemic the hit when the stores in our area were completely just wiped clean it was insane so my extra little package of toilet paper that i bought six months ago when i when there wasn't a run on the store and it wasn't rude to buy two packs of toilet paper that really served us well the extra food the frozen you know loaves of bread that i had in my deep freezer i was so glad i had those because not only were we able to feed our family when the store shelves were completely wiped but we also gave some to family and friends we were able to donate to our local food bank that was desperate for food because everyone was just stocking up and wiping the shelves clean so having a reasonable little stock of food cleaning supplies stuff like that like i had lysol wipes and bleach and stuff like that that i had purchased a year ago when there wasn't a run and when it wasn't like totally just rude to elbow your way into the store and buy extra like people were doing at the beginning of the lockdown i had what we needed and i had enough to share with those around me if they needed it so i was really glad about that that's not to toot my own horn it was just one of those things that's how i was raised i was always raised that part of your grocery budget goes to adding a little bit extra to your stock each month um it wasn't this horde everything you know what's the end of the world and that's that sort of mindset i'm not you know necessarily like doomsday prepping although there is actually a lot of prudence that goes into that won't get into that in this video but um having a good stock on hand has saved my bacon multiple times multiple times and it is a minimalist rule you can take my minimalist card away from me if you think that me stocking up makes me not a minimalist anymore you can have it because it has totally saved my bacon so many times i'm not gonna give it up here's another minimalist rule that i break and this one might be a little controversial so take it for what it is but i go shopping for fun i hesitate to say this one because i don't want to sound like a hypocrite because i have talked so much about being intentional with our purchasing choices so one of the biggest ways to reduce what's in your house is to cut back on the amount of stuff you're bringing into your house which a huge part of that is what you're buying what you are spending your money on and a lot of those extra things that come in are impulse purchases so i am always talking about being really intentional go to the store with a plan make a list look at your wardrobe find the gaps make a list of the things you want walk into the store and buy just that i totally encourage that because it can help so much but there is a time and a place for going out and having fun walking around the mall my mom and i we love walking through michael's hobby lobby marshall's target home section during the fall time it's like our little tradition we go and we get a pumpkin spice latte the first pumpkin spice latte of the year it's usually like in late august and it's way too hot to be wearing cardigans and boots but we still do it and we go and we walk around and we just enjoy the sights and being in the store and and doing that for fun this is an area where you're going to have to weigh your own tendencies and proceed with caution because if you're someone who just cannot say no to impulse purchases then marshalls is probably not a good place for you to go but that's up to you and so um like the whole minimalist mindset and like if you're being really strictly minimalist it's you you don't just walk around aimlessly with no plan with no intention and while i adhere to that most of the time there is a time and a place for enjoying shopping like as a social thing or just for fun or dude if you want to walk around because your kids are driving you crazy and your husband's going to take him for a couple of hours and you just want to walk in the air conditioning of target with a coffee in your hand and just chill for a second that is totally okay and it doesn't make you not a minimalist if that's something that brings you joy and that you can reasonably do without having other areas of issue in your life so take it for what it is and i don't want that to sound hypocritical but everything in balance right everything in moderation it's good to have a balance of your ideals and your your strict rules that you have for yourself as well as those areas that you allow yourself a little bit of leeway and that's something that just it breaks my heart for my old self because i used to think this way and it breaks my heart for people still who think that minimalism has to be the set of rules that the very dogmatic or strict minimalists set for you no one can tell you what to do with your life in your house and we can just share our own experiences and we can share what works for us um and i always want my channel to be a source of like that encouragement and that inspiration that if she can do it then i can do it because she's a messy person but she's also it's easy for her to clean her house because she has 80 less stuff than she did last year so if if that mom of three can do it then maybe i can i can give it a try and i still have a lot to learn i'm still figuring it out i love learning more about minimalism and simple living i'm going to link a few of my favorite minimalist channels below for you guys other people who are really just like non-judgmental they just share their own lives and what has worked for them and we're kind of like-minded in our approach of just sharing minimalism and what it looks like for us and what it could be for you so i hope you guys enjoyed today's video it was really fun to make i think it's always fun to kind of not have an excuse to defend myself but have an opportunity to really share what reality is for me and i get comments every single day telling me that i'm not a minimalist because of xyz and it it's literally anything like those crazy comments that i was sharing with you at the beginning of this video and those just make me laugh because it's like oh man you're missing out so much on a life of freedom if you feel like minimalism or simple living or intentional living has to be by the book there is no book there are no rules and that is what has given me so much freedom and so much joy so thank you guys so much for spending a little part of your day here with me on my channel so let me know in the comments if there is a minimalist like a conventional minimalist rule that you break let me know i'd love to read those i love chatting with you guys in the comments and i love seeing you guys chat with each other so thank you guys for watching today's video be sure you're subscribed to the bell button turned on every upload in the month of may is going to have a giveaway on it for the first 48 hours only so you want those notifications on so you don't miss when that video first goes up so thank you so much for spending some time with me today and hanging out and chatting about this have a wonderful day wherever you are and i'll catch you later your rules start on me and no i blow away all the pressure to measure what i don't need nothing oh i'm finally free [Music]

Channel: Natalie Bennett

Views: 68,850

Keywords: minimalism, family minimalism, minimalist, the minimal mom, the minimalist mom, minimalist home, minimalist rules, minimalism rules, minimalist habits, beginner minimalist, beginner minimalism, minimalism tips, minimalism for beginners, minimalism decluttering, natalie bennett, messy to minimal, how to declutter, decluttering, minimalist living, non judgemental channel, cozy minimalist, minimalism for moms, minimalism for parents, how to be a minimalist, how to do minimalism

Id: 8368XGE1Th8

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021