5 Easy Ways to Test Out Minimalism

so i think some of us are more risk adverse than others like for example for me when i first heard about minimalism it literally took one podcast and i was just sold i'm like i'm in get the boxes load up the van like i think this is exactly what we need and i'm just going to try it out but i'm learning that not everybody works that stamp the same way and for some of us well or some of you you actually want to try it out before you just jump all in so today let's talk about five ways you can test drive minimalism to find out if it's for you or not well hi i'm don from the minimal mom my family and i have been living as a minimalist for about six years now and ah it's tough because i just think it's the best thing that ever happened to our family i mean sort of like i don't know our faith beliefs and getting married having kids i really look back now and see how significantly minimalism has impacted our lives even just today i just got home um from bringing corbin to the dentist all the kids were playing hide-and-go-seek and so he was hiding under tom's desk and then was coming out and tom's desk chair has like a metal bar that runs around the front and he hit his front tooth on it and chipped it off and so um it was just kind of one of those drop everything call the dentist go get it fixed luckily it wasn't too bad the dentist said he was able to repair it fine it is an adult tooth but he doesn't expect him to have any more problems with it and what's so cool i do want to talk about these five things but what was really cool about it was that this was i think literally the first time that my first reaction wasn't that stomach dropping of oh but now we have to pay for that right or where's the money gonna come from to pay for that and i was able to stop what i was doing the beginning of the week is always my busiest time to try and get as much done and i just was able to stop what i was doing put it on hold take him we went we went to the dollar store afterwards and got some stuff for his halloween costume and we were able just to have that time together and then i could come back and jump into things and so i think it's sometimes hard to articulate all of the benefits of minimalism because it shows up in so many different ways and so today i just want to talk about five ways you can try this thing out and to see if it's for you so the first thing that we can do is to clear off all of our counters so our kitchen counters as well as our bathroom counters and the benefit we get to experience through this is visual simplicity so i know the pushback is generally like oh you want me to pull out my coffee maker every time i use it or my vitamix do you know how heavy that is let alone a stand mixer right and so i have found places even though our kitchen is very small i have found places for my instant pot my stand mixer my vitamix the only thing that we leave sitting out on a regular basis is our little keurig coffee pot so we do leave that out because it gets used all throughout the day and so and it's it's little so i don't worry too much about that but otherwise i don't think any of us put enough value on visual simplicity there was a really interesting study where they took both men and women and they showed them a cluttered space in their home and then you know tracked the brain activity and they actually found that it was more stressful to women to see the clutter than to men and this surprised me because i've talked about this before but usually it seems like tom is one that's more impacted by clutter like it kind of raises his anxiety and his stress level a little bit so i kind of thought maybe because usually guys are more visual that it bothered them more but it's actually the women and what they found is that it stressed out the women more because for most of us we're the ones that are responsible for that mess we're the ones that you know by and large it's not always this way but that we kind of have to take care of picking this stuff up and taking care of the stuff that's inside the house and so i know like i know for a fact now that most of us do not take into account the stress that the stuff around us is causing and by doing this simple act of clearing your kitchen counters and your bathroom counters you'll get to test out for a little bit and see if that visual simplicity and experiencing that extra breathing room of space around you if you feel like that really does start to reduce your stress level and especially feelings of anxiety too while you're at home and so i have yet to hear a person and maybe they just haven't said anything but who has cleared off their kitchen counters and then said no i want all that stuff back on them again i mean truly if anything i hear questions like okay how can i get the knife block off my counter okay where can i put this and you get to decide what's best for you if you want to leave out you know one thing that's decorative or you really like your pencil caddy that's totally fine you do you but go as far as you possibly can and just try it out and see if other people in your household don't really love it too [Music] so the next best place to start is with your wardrobe and so i did this video on simplifying your wardrobe not too long ago but the benefit we get to experience with this is limited decision making there is something that magical that happens when you open your closet doors and everything in there is an option a legit option for something that you have to wear today even like when i had to get dressed to go to the dentist today like i still had just like leggings on a sweatshirt on and so i just went in put on a quick outfit wasn't a big deal and we were out the door and so to literally look at your closet and see everything as a potential option of what you have to wear today it feels so good and so i do have that whole video about how you can pair down your wardrobe and do it safely like you don't have to get rid of anything right away you can put it in quarantine you don't have to worry about that but if you find yourself hesitant or like it's not quite working for you usually that's because you don't actually have enough options of clothes that fit right now and so we keep all the extra stuff around us the stuff that doesn't really fit that we don't really like wearing because that gives us this like false sense of security that we actually have enough to wear but if this is difficult for you it's probably that even though you have a ton of clothing you don't actually have a lot to wear so this is awesome though because as you go through this process you'll get to realize where are these gaps and then you can intentionally fill them in and usually it only takes like a handful of pieces we're not talking about going and spending thousands of dollars but if you need to buy a couple tops that fit nicely or one new pair of pants it's gonna feel so good to to get rid of all the rest and just introduce those and have it a wardrobe where you do not have to think when you're getting dressed it's literally okay i want to wear that top these bottoms everything fits i like to make it so like any top basically goes with any bottoms but i mean you you do what you want to do i don't do a capsule wardrobe that stressed me out it's just literally everything in my closet fits everything's an option so i think that's an awesome place to test drive minimalism to see if it'll be a good fit for you [Music] all right so back to the kitchen now another great place is to simplify your dishes the dishes that you use every day your plates your bowls your cups and so by highly simplifying all of your dishes it makes it so you do not have piles anymore and so with very little dishes pots pans and those it is almost physically impossible for us to get a big stack of dishes next to the sink because they need to be used for the next meal again and so we can't do that thing anymore where yeah there's dishes that need to be done but we just keep pulling more stuff out of the cabinet right it has to be done after every meal and for some of us you're like oh that doesn't actually make sense that's just going to make it so i have to do dishes all the time yes it is but you are going to love that you don't have piles anymore similar with simplifying your wardrobe you can take my whole wardrobe and pile it up on my bedroom floor and it's not even actually going to look like that much because it isn't that much right but i don't do that because i need those clothes if all my stuff is piled up on the floor i don't have anything to wear today right and so it's amazing how limiting this inventory you would think that it would feel restrictive or like you know it's creating more work for yourself but i think you're gonna find that you love it you love the accountability that's built in that yes we do have to wash the dishes after every meal but do you know how good it feels when all the dishes are done after every meal when they're all they fit so easily in the cupboard and they're just put back away it's not even a big deal one week in you won't even think twice about washing your coffee cup or rinsing it out after you use it in the morning it's just you just get into this groove and then if you were ever to go back like so one time tom pulled our extra dishes out of the basement so then they were kind of out for a little while after i got back home i'd been i was gone for a week and so he pulled him out because he didn't want to have to do dishes all the time right which is fine the rule is that whoever does the dishes gets to choose how many dishes so um but they were back out in rotation for a little while then and i was so annoyed that there was always stacks of dishes next to the sink again and so it does take a little bit of getting used to people in your family your household might push back a bit against it but again this is a test drive thing it's a trial thing right so i think if you try it out for a little bit you're gonna think it's magical too and you are not going to want to go back to how things were before you know even with corbin's tooth i hope i really hope that didn't come off as breaking that is not my intention at all but i feel like minimalism has helped bring clarity to knowing the things we can change and the things that we can't so the serenity prayer right can i keep corman from chipping his tooth of course not but can we be in a place where we have the finances to dedicate to it and where i have a flexible schedule yeah we can even just a couple of years ago i wouldn't have thought it was possible to have as much flexibility as i do now i thought when we moved here i agreed to take on you know more of a responsibility with our income and so i just thought that's how it was going to be for the next what 30 years right and so again simplifying has just made it possible where we can have a little more creativity and think outside of the box and just have a clearer better idea of the things we can control and the things that we can't okay number three of how we can test drive a minimalism is to highly simplify one room in your house just one room try taking it down to like the bare bones like if you're gonna do your dining room not even having something on the table like i mean even a tablecloth that might be pushing it i don't know which by the way i always get asked where this one is from it's from marshall's four years ago it's an indoor outdoor one so it's lasted a very long time because it's very forgiving when stuff gets spilled but that's where it's coming from i'm sorry i don't think it's there anymore but take it down like highly simplified if you have small furniture that you can move easily i would take that out too take out anything extra for a while we had our old living room furniture we didn't even have end tables and all the time people were like how do you not have end tables hot where do you set your tea and i'm like i don't drink tea in there so we like literally did not need them so look at it through the lens of only having in there what you need for that room to serve its purpose but nothing extra so our old living room didn't need end tables so i didn't put them in there just because it's culturally expected same with your dining room you don't have to have a centerpiece right this room will still function as a dining room even without it and so strip down one room in your house and just see what it feels like you know what i think you might find is that people in your house gravitate to that room and you'll probably find them just sitting in there because we live in a very busy and chaotic world and there's not a lot of places that we can go to get a reprieve from that i mean think about it think i mean how many places do you have where you can go and just get away i think that's why sometimes we end up sitting in our car in the garage for a while right because it's just like it's the only place we can get some peace and quiet wouldn't it be cool if you had lots of places in your house like that too it's awesome and i know we don't often think of that that way but making your house into a retreat uh what's the word a haven it's invaluable and once you do it i think everyone in your household is going to agree that it's awesome and they'll want to try that in other rooms too okay so that was actually the fourth way um i'm a little off on my numbers the fifth and final way is if you have kids in your home or grandkids is to simplify the toys and so again the same thing of visual simplicity and fewer decisions to make we we think kids need a lot of toys to be happy marketing tells us that the toy industry spends billions of dollars telling us as parents and caregivers and grandparents that toys make kids happy i mean you see their faces light up when they open them and a lot of times it's it's deceiving when we give toys as gifts because it seems like they're so excited when they get it and everything they've ever wanted but what you don't see is a week later when that toy is tossed to the side and they're not playing with it anymore and now the parents have to figure out how to get it out of our house right and so i know it's so fun giving kids toys isn't it like i even realized this now like having nieces and nephews i want to be cool on dawn right like i want to bring them cool things i want them to like me but there are other ways to make kids like us like building up their self esteem spending time with them teaching them things doing activities with them i mean get a craft project and do it with them bake cookies with them and you are going to endear them to you just as much as by giving them stuff and so it takes a little bit of time i have lots of videos on simplifying toys but the best way to do it is to just box up all the extras quarantine them set them aside for a while to see if anybody misses them i don't know this is another area where i never hear of parents pulling all the toys back out everybody likes the toy is simplified and so i think you're gonna find that once you do that uh the kids are really gonna like it and you're gonna like it too all right speaking of kids they're trying to get back inside right now here's corbin is your tooth feeling better now yeah can you smile and and okay just trying which one was that oh adelaide's helping okay which one was it buddy yeah it looks a lot better does it feel okay now uh-huh yeah oh i know this isn't easy i know this can be hard work and sometimes it's easier to make excuses and say well i don't even know if we would really like it or that's too extreme for me but i just i think we're more alike than different and i think we all do really well in simplified spaces we can think better breathe better process better and we're just better human beings when we're not so stressed out and so i do think these would be some great places to try it out and again if anyone in your household may be not super excited about it you can just tell them like i'm just doing an experiment i'm just gonna try it out i'm not getting rid of anything yet i'm just putting it away or packing it away to see if we'll miss it um but i don't know i'd be curious how it goes if you've done some of these things will you please share down below it's so inspiring to others who are newer just starting this journey to read what other people are experiencing because sometimes they think oh well of course dawn can do that or whatever i i'm not that weird like i think i'm more like you than not um but but if you share your experiences too it's really helpful and we'd love it if you'd subscribe so that we can spend more time together a thumbs up is the best compliment that you can give us and i will definitely look forward to seeing you again soon

Channel: The Minimal Mom

Views: 339,960

Rating: 4.9719062 out of 5

Keywords: minimalism, family minimalism, minimalist, the minimal mom, the minimalist mom, minimalist home

Id: zjIbzmp3mDM

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020