Transcript Podcast Episode 2: Our Journey to Minimalism
Our Journey to Minimalism
Wannabe Minimalist Show Transcript Episode 2
You’re listening to the Wannabe Minimalist Show, Episode Number 2.
Welcome to the Wannabe Minimalist Show. I’m your host, Deanna Yates and each week on the podcast we will talk about what it really takes to be a minimalist with a family. No, I do not think you need to throw away all of your kids toys or live with only one plate per person. I believe minimalism is a mindset for how see stuff, but more importantly, being mindful of the items we let into our lives, homes, and relationships. Let’s do this!
Well, hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Wannabe Minimalist Show. I’m your host, Deanna Yates. Today I’m diving into my journey with minimalism and how my family and I, quite literally, packed our way to a new mindset.
It started about 6 years ago. I was working from my home office, when I looked down at my then 6 week old daughter who had just dozed off in my lap. In that moment an idea that would change my life hit me like a ton of bricks… since my husband and I were both working from home, we could be anywhere in the world as long as we had a strong internet connection.
What followed after that morning was our first stab at minimalism. After almost a year of planning and just after our daughters 1st birthday, we became “those” people who sold everything and set out to travel the world.
All we had left to our names were the suitcases we traveled with and family heirlooms we packed into one 5 foot by 8 foot U-Haul U-Box.
Only we failed.
Six months in, we moved back to the US and settled into what most people would call “normal” life. While traveling had been great, the stress of running a business and raising a baby became too much when we added new cities to explore and no support system to fall back on.
We rebounded and purchased a houseful of stuff and toys that we felt our daughter was missing out on. We thought, perhaps it was the American Dream we had been searching for and having a home filled with things was what would make us happy.
But can you guess what happened?
Yep! The home full of stuff felt wrong too. But to make matters worse, I took on a full-time job as a property manager of a brand-new 300 unit building in downtown Chicago in order to pay for all this new stuff and the life we thought we wanted.
But, we were more stressed out than ever. Someone else was raising our daughter, our schedules were chaotic, and I burnt myself out so badly that it took over a year to dig myself out.
The only thing we could think to do was to travel again. But, this time we didn’t sell everything.
We put the stuff in storage and completed our goal of traveling for a year. It turned out to be the perfect thing for us. The funny thing is it wasn’t really about the traveling, but the ability to get back to basics and focus on what matters most to us.
Time with family
Experiences over stuff
Space to think
Trying new things
And while we spent 5 months traveling around Europe and then 7 settled down in Munich, Germany, this can be done from ANYWHERE. I promise you don’t need to quit your job, sell everything you own, and alienate those around you just to try on minimalism. But, more on that in just a minute.
For us, settling down in one spot on our year of traveling turned out to be the perfect thing for us. By living a more quote unquote “normal” life we caused our mindsets to shift. My top 3 mindset shifts were:
We really could be happy with bare essential home goods and only a suitcase of personal items like clothing and toiletries. When we were away, I rarely thought of our stuff sitting in our storage unit back in Chicago. I did not need it to function on a daily basis and I learned to live, dress, and even cook with less.
Almost everything you need can be rented or purchased used. This is better for the environment and your mental clutter. For instance, we taught our daughter to ski in the Bavarian Alps! We were able to rent all of the ski equipment we needed and purchased our clothing second hand. If she hated it, at least we had not invested too much money in it. Another example are library books. In Munich we made bi-weekly trips to the library so we always had new books to read together (and yes! They did have English books at the public library).
But the MOST IMPORTANT MIND SHIFT WAS that The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. Everything in life has pros and cons. There will always be somethings you like and somethings you dislike no matter what your circumstances. As humans we have a tendency to romanticize the unknown while doing our best to avoid change. It makes no sense. But being able to realize that everything has good and bad things about it, makes it so much easier to be happier with where we are in life. We no longer long for something different because we know that would have some new things we liked along we some things we missed. This was such a freeing concept!
With these mind shifts, we are now back in the US. We made the conscious decision to end our traveling so we could start our daughter in elementary school and moved to sunny southern California.
We are currently working through all of the stuff we accumulated in the years before this last one and these are the lessons I will be sharing on the Wannabe Minimalist Show.
Living with less stuff, chaos, and clutter for the past year firmly planted our feet in the “we want to embrace minimalism” camp, but I know that if I start out too extreme it won’t stick - just like a yo-yo diet.
Instead, we’re embracing this thought of practical minimalism for our family. It’s this mind shift toward minimalism and exploring how to live with only things that bring you happiness, meaning, or that are useful that I want to share with you. That’s what we’ll be exploring on this podcast and I can’t wait to go on this journey together.
If you found this helpful, I would love it if you would subscribe to this podcast or newsletter at LittleGreenBow.com/subscribe. I have a ton of freebies including a free 30 day simplicity calendar that I think you’ll love.
Next week on the podcast we’ll be discussing five unique strategies to decluttering your stuff quickly and easily. You won’t want to miss it. See you then.
So, this episode is might be over, but we don’t have to say goodbye just yet. Head over to my website, LittleGreenBow.com for tons of great resources, freebies, courses, and a link to join my free Wannabe Minimalist group on Facebook. Let’s tackle this thing together.
And if you loved this episode it would be really helpful if you left a rating or review so more families can find the show.
You’re awesome!
Thanks and see you next week.