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Millennial Minimalism: Simplifying When It's Simplest
My life did not suit me, and I wore my new reality like a straight-jacket..
Millennial Minimalism: Simplifying When Its Simplest
I finally got around to watching the documentary from last year by the Minimalists, Josh and Ryan, and I enjoyed it! It reaffirmed everything I already believe in and talk about here on the blog.
I couldn’t help notice though, that every person speaking about the concept were 5, 10, even 40 years older than myself.
Why was there no voice of a millennial?
Maybe someone young, supposedly naive to real life, only at the beginning of their adult-ing journey, wouldn't appear a credible minimalism advocate...
Or maybe it’s because so many people had to have a decade or more of adult-ing, a long period of working, acquiring and consuming, before they felt the call of minimalism.
I suppose I had my mid-life crisis super early, 22 to be exact, when my first ‘corporate’ type job sucked the joy out of my life and the hope away from my outlook.
There was nothing too terrible about the job itself (I worked in a bank) and its a job many people do happily for years, their whole lifetime. But either way, it was still a job where I felt like I was inducted in the hall of life cynicism and I was supposed to just deal with it and make the best of it (with my debit card).
I had aspirations, and they weren’t being met even slightly.
I had skills and abilities that were irrelevant in that environment.
I had something real that I had worked hard for and truly thrived at, my degree in Media, and yet I was working in a customer service job with a heavy dose of sales thrown in.
It all felt like a whole load of bullshit to be frank.
My life did not suit me, and I wore my new reality like a straight-jacket.
Over the next year I found myself changing, responding to what I had been through; a depressing job where spending was my only release, and where my mental health suffered immeasurably as a result.
Now 4 years later I call myself a minimalist, albeit one who remains a work in progress, but the belief is there, the true passion for living a simpler life. And I’m not 45 and talking about it in a documentary, because I luckily got to this place a little sooner than some of my counterparts.
I was just finding my feet, only just stepping onto the carousel of adult life, when circumstances conspired to create a disillusionment, within my own mind, at probably a similar time in the late 2000's, as my older counterparts too begin to debate the idea of mindless consumerism.
I feel fortunate that events conspired when they did, to afford me a clear and open passage into the minimalist mindset.
The concept was increasingly providing a true solution for so many individuals feeling disengaged and disenfranchised, and I knew I had nothing to lose (except of course, most of my stuff and my consumerist habits).
I like to think that the sooner and earlier you welcome the minimalist mindset in, as a millennial, the better it is for not just you, but all those around you, including your unborn distant children, and your ageing parents.
Soon, as in now.
Before the boxes of 25 toys make their way to the attic, before they are even bought.
Before you find yourself feeling gut-wrenched, clearing out 10 rooms of your parents belongings.
Before you feel the need to spend more than you earn to finance a bigger life, and enter into debt.
Before you climb the property ladder and invest in a house with more rooms than you can hope to fill.
Before you slump down, surrounded by reams of things in your own space that don’t even belong to you, on top of those that do.
Before the task of change appears too giant to even begin.
Simplify your life and your lifestyle, while its still simple enough to do so. Set a precedent for generations to come and generations behind you, and change the way the world works.
Thanks for reading!
Hannah here, one half of NomaderHowFar. I love reading, the beach, proper fish and chips, and a good cup of tea. But I mostly like to chat about minimalism, simplifying your life, the beauty of travel and sometimes I get a bit deep. Get to know us here!
Be social and come follow us across the virtual world!
A Minimalist Mindful Moment: 10 Things Challenge
The following few things could be deemed resolutions, but since I don't do that shit, they are generally realistic and hopeful intentions..
A Minimalist Mindful Moment: 10 Things Challenge
You made it. You are here. Another year has passed in your brief lifetime.
You are likely altered in some way, be it mood, attitude, outlook or personality.
Its reality that the world fundamentally changes around you, for better and for worse, despite your best intentions, or your inaction.
You are changed, carved into something different every year by the sharper edges of your life.
What do you seek?
Are you seeking the same thing you have sought for what feels like years?
How close are you to reaching the elusive subject of your obsession, your passion, your greatest hope, or even your greatest fear?
You are looking forward or looking up, wondering, if, how and when. Your mind's eye is consistently looking into some other reality, imagined or desired.
But how often are you looking around you?
How often are you absorbing the very environment you are surrounded by, the people within a touching distance, the achievements but a stone’s throw away?
How often do you observe your thoughts and reactions, instead of just letting them play out habitually?
I discover these questions and ask myself them, as I type them out and implore you to join me in switching up your thinking.
When you think of each facet of your daily life, be it your job or your routines, how do you feel?
For too long now in recent months, juggling the building blocks of my life, the elements which truthfully actually keep me afloat, alive and kicking, have appeared to me as albatrosses around my neck.
My short-term hospitality job, maintaining contact with my family in England, the challenge of travels ahead; they feel like weights instead of representing freedom. Freedom that I worked for, fought for and have maintained for two years now.
I advocate simplifying your life and yet I spend my days holding on tight to my painful and negative thinking habits.
I need to de-clutter my brain and massage my attitude.
I need to remember the function of literal minimalism, in my space and my things, and I need to visualize my mind as a place too, needing of a deep clean and some re-organisation.
Do you need to de-clutter your brain too?
The following few things could be deemed resolutions, but since I don't do that shit, they are generally realistic and hopeful intentions...
10 things I intend to do:
- Limit time spent on social media. I plan to monitor how much of my day is spent mindlessly absorbed in something that brings NOTHING, well at least very little, to my overall well-being. Too much scrolling of carefully crafted instagram's, banal tweets and repetitious Facebook adverts is taking me away from the important things that build my mental and physical health.
- Increase time spent talking to my friends and family. Stop using the excuse of being 'busy' to put off those emotions of missing home and feeling like I have to choose between one world, home, and another, the great unknown of travel, the slog of working and the pull of creativity.
- Watch more brain-food. A favourite relaxation pastime of mine is to watch Youtube, but I know that I am watching things akin to a soap opera; they bring me nothing but momentary distraction and escapism. They don't feed my brain, or my life. I plan to cut back and add in some more food for thought.
- Truly listen to inspiring people talk. I love words, writing, reading and speaking, but I too often don't let in the words of others who have something important and useful to say. I don't give them enough undivided attention. What I have to say, what I want to express, is only one side of a broader opportunity to grow and exchange inspiration in this life.
- Measure my daily achievements, not failures. I bought a 2017 diary weeks ago, and I couldn't wait to begin using it to map out my time, but instead of just noting the boring stuff, I am going to write down one brief line about what was so good about that day. Even if I didn't do something I fully intended to do, something I might have needed to do, the focus should be on what I did achieve.
- Let myself believe that things will be good, great even. I tend to live by the 'expect the worst, hope for the best' because I am always afraid. I am afraid something will go horribly wrong (a lovely symptom of my anxiety) or even worse, afraid it will be so amazing that no subsequent moment could compare. But this defence mechanism doesn't change anything or allow me to miraculously control the future, it simply means my outlook is more fraught and my energy low.
- Expand my mind about the world. Its a common reaction to our complex and challenging world to shy away from knowing things. But I want to know things. I get the bad, the sensational and the terror thrown in my face constantly, we all do, but I intend to seek out knowing things that empower me and will enable me to help myself and others.
- Dismiss the need to fill each moment of my day with productivity. The lofty hopes and ambitions of above are all good and well, but not every passing day has to be life-changing. I don't need to try and save the world 24/7, because holy shit, you gotta have some fun and some switch-off time.
- Embrace the parts of my day that threaten to ruin my mood. Work at 5pm? Great! another chance to build my savings for travels, to meet people, to make customers happy and to broaden my skill range. I need to flip my momentary negativity on its head and see it for the positivity it really is.
- Having less of a plan and not thinking ahead too much. This is truly a big one for me. I spend so much time thinking about how my current actions influence my future, down to the next day, week or month. Of course its a sensible way to be, but it also limits spontaneity and open-mindedness. It puts me in this little box where I limit myself for some distant goal instead of sucking the joy out of every day. It stops me pursuing friendships, fun and enjoying some of the fruits of my labours. You can plan ahead, but there's a healthy limit to forward-thinking and I aim to balance that.
So many new years resolutions fail because they are based on moving from point A to point Z with no regard for the part in-between.
Instead of envisioning a better or different future way down the line, or the accomplishment of some long-term goal, envision each day of the coming week.
Envision how today, right away, you can be different, feel different, better, if you pay some attention to cleansing your mind, the true home where things grow, build and come to life.
Come on this endeavour with me, and lets take a moment each week to check back in with one another, over on our minimalism newsletter list.
Thanks for reading!
Hannah here, one half of NomaderHowFar. I love reading, the beach, proper fish and chips, and a good cup of tea. But I mostly like to chat about minimalism, simplifying your life, the beauty of travel and sometimes I get a bit deep. Get to know us here!
Be social and come follow us across the virtual world!
Looking for more minimalism?
The Problem With Hygge: A Minimalist Perspective
If you haven’t come across the Danish concept of Hygge, it's an emerging trend posited as an antidote to the trying times we find our society in.
The Problem with Hygge: A Minimalist Perspective
If you haven’t come across the Danish concept of Hygge, just as I hadn’t until about a week ago (I exist in a full-time working Australia bubble void of social media), it's an emerging trend posited as an antidote to the trying times we find our society in.
Based on carrying out daily routines around creating comfort, cosiness and extracting pleasure from the simpler moments of life, Hygge is gaining lots of attention across the blogging world and is increasingly penetrating popular media conversation.
Search the hashtag and you will find many quotes and imagery across social media with scenes of warmly filtered contentment.
On the surface it seems like a wholly common sense concept around cherishing time spent with family, friends and deriving inner relaxation and happiness from doing so.
Who would argue against that, or, simultaneously give it a hard-to pronounce name that basically means ‘Stuff that feels nice and is good’.
Is Hygge worthy of being a trending topic or a bestselling book? Is minimalism even worth the attention? Probably not, even if some of us could do with being reminded of the peace to be found in simplicity...
And yet many people are jumping onto Hygge and it’s taking on a life that might seem bigger than the actual concept at hand.
As soon as I became aware of it, I felt the need to wade in and understand it, and establish if it can bolster and complement minimalist principles, because on the surface it does feel like it might...
However so far I have found it actually has the potential to take you away from the true essence of minimalism, and yet also, bring you closer towards it…
Buying into Hygge
This article comments on how a crazy amount of lifestyle texts were published on how the Dane’s have cracked the life-code, all churned out in a short period of time, despite Hygge seemingly being something I could explain in 2 or 3 words.
This happening really does parallel the trend around minimalism, the lifestyle obsession predecessor of 2015/16.
I myself even contributed an e-book to the conversation because I think it’s a topic that everyone can have a different take on, or be on a different spot in the minimalist lifestyle spectrum.
Hygge seems a little too simple a concept to warrant you going out and buying 4-5 books on the topic. But people are. And the people who sell the stuff to the people who are, are using Hygge to sell more stuff, as that same article proffers.
I am not so cynical as to suggest that there isn’t some comfort to be found in having a warm quality cashmere blanket, or furnishing your home in a way that cultivates cosiness, but, as a minimalist, I am all about creating a simple and equally Hygge-like life that doesn’t require your debit card.
A More Relaxed Take on Simplicity
Hygge seems almost like a mild resistance to minimalism as opposed to an expansion of it.
So much of minimalism is about having less stuff, commitments, financial burdens and concerns to clear the decks of your mind and your life, so you can place people, love and growth at the centre.
Minimalism fundamentally means having less of the tangible, with the aim of building an entirely individual and intangible 'more'.
It’s possible however that some people would find the process of simplifying a period of extreme restriction and stressful change, with the subsequent need to alter the habits of a lifetime, not a very warm and pleasant experience at all.
For example, in my book, I talk about how to keep your home clutter-free and one of my suggestions, is a 5-minute blitz where each day you quickly tidy your spaces in 5 minutes. The goal is to make cleaning a short activity for those who really hate it or don’t have the time to clean for longer.
Some people might feel this isn’t a very Hygge concept, along with other clutter prevention methods that form much of minimalist thinking. Its possible a minimalist lifestyle can appear too disciplined or rigorous to be enjoyable.
I would however argue that Hygge, and those moments where life feels wholly pleasant and calm, can be the very end result of creating your more minimalist life and home.
A functioning simpler life requires some upkeep outside those hours where you might just drift off on the sofa with a good book.
Distracting The Masses
This article mentions the dark side of the seemingly light and wonderful rules behind Hygge living:
“The persistent quest for cosiness tends to deny the existence of anything that might ruin the mood, “the place where politics are set aside” — a dangerous state of being, when you think of the many things that do need to be discussed openly in 2016”.
This links back in my mind to how in my minimalism journey, I always viewed the transition as a way of rejecting capitalism and the manner in which is it used to distract the masses from the inherent problems endemic in our unbalanced society.
I wanted a simpler life, yes, but one that cared more about being part of a broader and wider social change, around environmentalism and other societal progress.
I actually see minimalism as an indulgent and privileged lifestyle concept just as much as it can be part of a wider more noble and aspirational movement.
Hygge seems problematic amidst that world-view.
Accounting for Individuality
A cosy moment or life experience is lived differently by all, just as minimalism can be adopted to differing degrees.
Hygge can be a complementary concept as long as we remember that the things which make us feel good inside can range from running 5k at 6am everyday, to attending a protest, to sleeping in in the morning and having breakfast in bed.
Hygge is fine, any popular lifestyle concept of late is fine, as long as we recognize that life is dark and light, good and bad, hard and easy.
We don’t all need to rush out and buy scented candles, giant blankets and a sack of fire-wood to cultivate moments of our day that make us feel alive, whole and at peace. We don't need to live in a way, 100% of the time, that excludes the truth and injustice of the world just to make our day a little more pleasant.
We don’t need to bandy the word around in our everyday vernacular, bashing people over the head with how badly they need to borrow the 4 books about it on our coffee table. And that can be applied to Hygge and minimalism...
Live as you wish and cultivate your own personal experience, as minimalist or Hygge as you desire, but think twice about advocating a set of basic principles with your debit card. Adopt the best of all these principles in their simplest form, setting aside time for self-care, home, and family, without leaving your social consciousness behind.
Thanks for reading!
Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
Be social and come follow us across the virtual world!
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8 Must-Know Minimalist Camping Tips
Camping a lot over the past year and half has taught us some valuable tips for how to travel comfortably yet with minimal gear.
8 Must-Know Minimalist Camping Tips
As nomadic minimalists, we prides ourselves on travelling light; for the sake our backs and our budget.
But you may wonder how on earth do we camp, despite not owning a vehicle of any type, and travelling often via hitch-hiking?
During our 2 years in Australia, when we have set-up home in a hostel or a house-share, we do gain a few more kitchen/cooking items and other random living things, which we promptly ditch and donate when we move on again.
We accept that there will be some amount of pain involved in lugging around our entire lives plus our home (a 2 berth tent) plus an inflatable bed (and pump), but we try to make it as easy as we can.
In the UK, we camped a lot, and thankfully we had a car to fill with kitchen-ware and other gear, but it always felt like a such a task preparing all the stuff, ticking off check-lists and ultimately feeling weighed down, when camping was supposed to be a simpler and cheaper way to experience travel.
Over the last 2 years traversing the East Coast of Australia we have picked up invaluable knowledge on how it is certainly possible to camp, without a car, as a frugal and nomadic minimalist.
The two main fundamentals are: having a comfortable tent, and the baggage room to carry your accessories.
Its not about adding lots of separate bulky baggage and thus needing another two arms attached to your body in order to get from place to place.
These 8 minimalist camping tips will help you travel and camp without the aid of a vehicle and without completely sacrificing comfort!
DON'T PICK A TENT TOO BIG OR TOO SMALL
We made the initial error of purchasing a quality tent which also happened to be the size of a coffin when you insert two people and their two rather large backpacks. The tent was very much designed for short-term hiking, not potential week-long camping stays.
We returned this one, purchased a slightly larger tent, and have never looked back.
With our bed inside there is still room at the foot for your shoes etc plus a small separate zipped compartment for other items.
I still occasionally lust after tents with more stand-up room but they are so much larger and heavier, when really you will only use that headroom a when entering/exiting the tent.
Don't try to save weight by buying a tiny tent, or add tent room by buying a bigger one;go for the tent that you can happily sleep in or sit in during bad weather.
We found out the hard way by spending a week in this 'coffin'...
CARRY GROUND-SHEETS
We have had a couple of incredibly annoying incidents where the ground water seeped through our tent and not only damaged the bottom of it, but also made everything inside super wet. This is pretty uncomfortable to deal with when you are already tolerating bad weather during a camping session and so you need to keep the tent as dry inside as possible.
We carry two tarpaulins which just about cover the tent's footprint. We place both underneath covering the length and width of the tent, with a little poking out the front to leave our shoes on throughout the day. It keeps the tent base cleaner, protected from the various terrains we pitch on.
However this has in the past created some pooling which has made the tent wetter inside than it might have been without the tarp, as our floor material is a thin and non-waterproof material...in this scenario, where the ground is hard/concrete (and thus has minimal drainage) you might want to skip ground-sheets.
You could also use the tarp as the base for a cooking or picnic area outside your tent if the weather or ground is dry.
These tarp's easily roll-up and attach to the outsides of our bags and due to their small size, they really do not add extra weight.
When you invest in a decent tent, naturally you want to protect it, and so we really recommend this tip in order to maintain the integrity of your new home.
CONSIDER WHERE THE SUN WILL RISE
Australia is unsurprisingly hot, and as soon as that bad boy rises in the morning, your tent will become an oven, which can make a nice leisurely lie-in an impossibility.
We don't necessarily select a shaded spot from the get-go, but instead, we consider the path of the sun and where it will rise in the morning and try to cook us.
To help you do this you can actually download an app onto your phone, and we specifically use Starchart which you can hold up and fast-forward the clock on it to see where the sun will rise the coming morning!
The great thing about camping is often the pattern you fall into of sleeping as the sun sets and waking when it comes up, but let's be real, you won't always feel like seeing every single sun-rise.
TRAVEL WITH MINIMAL FOOD
We tend to rely on buying our meal supplies in the local area in which we camp, so we tend to steer away from carry oodles of fresh ingredients. We do however carry dried foods (pasta/rice/noodles) and sauce sachets, in the event of getting to our campsite at night and needing an easy meal to prep.
We don't carry heavy items like olive oil (we often borrow fellow campers) or bulky items like cereal. We carry all of our foods in a re-usable fabric shopping bag (just from the local supermarket) and so we have to be selective about what snacks we carry. We tend to favour snack bars, banana's and packs of multiples like crackers or nuts.
Be prepared to go without your absolute favourite foods each day, and try to buy smaller portions of fruit/veg as these don't fair too great being taken in and out the fridge (plus they are often heavy).
USE COMBINATION LOCKS
You will never regret carrying a couple of these babies around, not only handy for when you are staying in a hostel without personal lockers (or with them) but for when you are leaving your tent unattended all day.
We tend to lock up valuables in one of our big backpacks when we head out, and we also lock the zipper on the tent with a 2nd combi-lock.
It might seem extreme and also utterly pointless as any determined thief will rip through the mesh to get to the goods, but, in many places you feel safe or comfortable enough to leave valuables in your tent around other campers, and so this is merely for piece of mind.
I do have some trust in those around me but I still cover my own back and deter the opportunist or nosey!
UTILIZE CAMP KITCHENS
Many proper camp-sites in Australia will have a camp kitchen for tent campers, often equipped with a fridge, cooker and basic other items like a kettle and toaster, possibly even some utensils.
If you are tempted to carry a camp-stove, several gas refills etc be aware that you may end up just using these kitchens and render those other heavy and bulky items useless.
MAKE USE OF CARABINER CLIPS
This is just a general tip for carrying backpacks and extra gear but we love to use these to help attach our tent and other specific camping bits onto our packs.
Handy for attaching sleeping bags, tarps and even a snorkel kit, these maximize the external surface area of your large backpack.
HAVE A SPARE BLANKET
You probably think this kind of bulk negates the whole minimal camping idea, but, Australia does get chilly from time to time, and even a warm day can turn cold with a swift breeze, so you will benefit from carrying a lightweight blanket in addition to your sleeping bags.
This can surely beat carrying several hoodies/jumpers, thick socks, joggers and other bulky items, or so we have found!
This is useful for multiple purposes, as either a throw over for sitting around the fire, or it can be rolled up as an extra pillow. We found that some nights we were so cold in our tent it was great to have something to wrap up in to make a quick trip to the bathroom, or to pull over the top of our thin sleeping bags.
The reality is that camping can be, shall we say, stressful for a couple whom spend all day, every day in one another's company.
Many miles from home, sharing a tiny space with your other half 24/7, is the struggling part of camping that you cannot minimize.
Nonetheless we try not to get too angry at the little things and not worry over the small stuff, like sand in the tent, or mess, or a less than stellar washing up job.
The beauty of camping is in the relative freedom of being to create your own private little home in a matter of minutes, in a myriad of different and beautiful settings. Plus the budget savvy nomadic minimalist is always looking for ways to get close to nature and in the thick of the travel atmosphere without it costing too much.
We do try to balance out our trip with hostel stays, couch-surfing and air b'n'b's along the way to prevent all out war occurring however!
Camping can be such a bonding and relaxing experience if you focus on enjoying the sunrise waking, the animals sniffing around at 3am, the birdsong and the fresh air moving through your tent that beats any air-con.
Thanks for reading!
Hannah and Taran here. We hail from Southern England, where we met online and are now realizing our mutual passion for travel here at Nomad'erHowFar. We discuss Nomadic Living, Simplifying your Life and Long-term Travel, to empower, motivate and inspire our readers. Get to know us here!
Be social and come follow us across the virtual world!
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8 Ways To Simplify How You Communicate: Creating Intentional Interactions.
Our style of communication can actually hold us back, with an over-abundance of words meaning our purpose and points get lost in a sea of confusion. Yet sometimes we don't say enough in fear of what others will say in response...
8 Ways To Simplify How You Communicate: Creating Intentional Interactions.
The journey to minimalism is not in itself entirely minimal...there are many facets of your life that you choose to simplify, or not.
For me it went:
I entertained the notion of leading a simpler existence, less reliant of money and things, because I wanted to become a nomad.
At first I very much focused on the visible side of minimalism, the noticeable changes obvious to myself and those around me; I halved my wardrobe, discarded trinkets and random furnishings and stopped bringing in more random stuff.
Over the last two years, I have embraced minimalism wholeheartedly whilst travelling, gradually learning to that I can live happily with less things, and love what I do have more.
I cherish what I have, seek quality over quantity and try to maintain a feeling of lightness and freedom.
An entirely different area of simplifying has only recently come into my mindset.
So, I have always been a rambler. I love words, it’s as simple as that. I love that our vocabulary and language can be ever-changing and growing, something we expand with age and exploration.
But I have come to realize the benefit of stopping, thinking, speaking a little less, and choosing my words better.
In terms of written and spoken communication, the value of less can still very much apply.
Our style of communication can actually hold us back, with an over-abundance of words meaning our purpose and points get lost in a sea of confusion. Sometimes we don't say enough in fear of what others will say.
For example, I sometimes lack assertiveness and directness in how I interact with others and I have been known in the past as the person who might mutter or say a little too much when less would have sufficed fine.
I have tried to overcome this, not by suddenly pulling inner confidence from thin air, but by thinking about how I speak before I do so.
I try to be clearer, more concise and leave no doubt in the mind of the person I am communicating with in what I mean, want or need.
I don’t desire to create drama any more, directly or indirectly, by either letting my words run away from me or by not speaking up enough.
I don’t want to be a mutterer or a mumbler any longer. I don’t want to make others feel like I don’t know who I am or what I mean.
Maybe years of letting others make me feel inferior or insecure in myself has brought me up to this point.
I have come to a place where I want to live intentionally across the board so why wouldn’t I also deal with the issues that prevent me asking the universe for what I want and deserve via purposeful and intentional interactions?
It got me wondering about how can I de-clutter the intangible e.g. from my thoughts to my speech.
How can I realistically still be the fun, chatty and interested person I try to be in a conversation whilst also being less wordy and more to the point? Do I not risk coming across as a boring person void of personality?
I really want to pour my energy into my written words and generally feel a little less overwhelmed in the creative process. I therefore believe its important to conserve emotional energy where possible, and help others understand me even better, to ultimately reach my broader goals in life a little quicker.
That is part of the reason for me simplifying my communication style, but it's also because I want to quell my tendency toward irrational and anxious thinking. I often go from 0-10 on a scale of worry and trepidation and it shows itself in scattered, fast, emotional and unthinking speech.
I no longer ignore how my mind makes me behave and defeatedly believe that my anxiety is a natural thing; I have taken the time to regain some control and assess ways that I can minimize its impact on my daily life, most prominently by fostering more intentional interactions.
I believe that I have developed a clearer mind and an even calmer life by simplifying my communication style; from shorter emails and quicker responses, to facing head on the conversations which make me uncomfortable.
If you feel it's time to find simplify your life even further, for whatever reason, then keep reading:
8 Ways To Simplify How You Communicate:
Think Whilst You Speak
Apply the age-old idea of ‘Think before you speak’ but put a twist on it, and make it ‘Think before and as you speak’.
You can do this by talking slower, choosing your words carefully, not feeling as if you can’t take a moment to craft exactly what you truly wish to say.
People are often rushing, from one place to the next, from one idea to the next, and never stop to see what fresh inspiration can come from the pauses in breath we take between speaking.
Embrace being able to think through your ideas before and whilst you discuss them because in a conversation, new ideas emerge and your point might clarify even more in your own mind.
Write It Down
If you are struggling with a particular thing you wish to communicate with someone, write down some bullet points with a few keywords on the topic.
Do this prior to a conversation, be it via phone or email, and help yourself be efficient and clear in what you want to say and need to achieve.
Try to avoid mentally forming a long monologue in your own mind and building a sense of anxiety before you talk.
You needn't pour out a raft of information and stumble over yourself, resulting in your original message getting lost in a sea of language.
Appreciate Being Quiet
Celebrate the ability to be quiet and selective with how much you talk each day. We can expend a lot of mental energy if we try to be talkative or engaging every moment the opportunity arises.
Sometimes I prefer to sit and think more instead of externalize my every idea and whim.
Or, I write my ideas down in a brief form and I find I can return to them far easier later on, having not verbally put ideas out into the world that I then forget about.
I embrace how nice it is to just be still and peaceful, even in a world where it’s pressed upon us that we must speak up loudly and proudly.
Don't Paint The Silence
I am especially guilty of talking too much when someone asks me a question, in that as soon as the silence after the answer happens, I try to fill it with even more detail.
I think I'm just trying to stave off awkwardness or believe that the silence is indicative of my failure to get my point across.
I have learned recently that I do not need to fill those quieter moments, and instead realize that a conversation is a two-way thing; if the other person chooses not to immediately respond, let them.
Don't pounce on the quiet moment and recognize it as a natural and important part of allowing others to process their thoughts.
Keep Calm
During any heated or difficult conversation, listen closer, remain calm, and keep eye contact with the person you are speaking to.
We are all human, all afflicted with the same inner crisis and neurosis, it's just that some of us hide it better beneath a veneer of intimidation. But we are all just trying to appear strong to in-turn, feel strong.
The best way to ensure you don’t leave behind a conversation with words unspoken or ideas poorly gotten across, is to overlook the individual you are talking to.
Overlook how they make you feel or how you appear to make them feel. Focus only on why and what you are trying to achieve from the conversation.
What is your desired outcome and can remaining calm and patient help you achieve it more easily?
Don't Neglect Others
Don’t put off replying to those lingering conversations or messages and instead view it as if you having a real life talk, and you simply stop talking, for days on end.
Surely it can be pretty confusing for others, leaving that time for them to build up negative ideas in their mind about you e.g. so and so doesn’t care enough to reply, there not a true friend.
Sometimes we see a message, we put our phone down and it lives our mind completely. Then days pass and the message remains ignored. Often this is accidental, the symptom of a busy life, but other times we simply put off talking to people when we can’t predict how or when they will respond back.
But it’s time to take charge of this and endeavour to provide some kind of quick reply to each message we receive even if it's simply to say ‘I will get back to you later when we can properly talk’. The difference between a simply reply and no reply at all is hurting someone’s feelings or not hurting them.
Our fundamental human need for the interaction, companionship and the attention of others needn’t always be superseded by our supposed busy-ness.
Accept People's Differences
Recognize that no matter how clear and confident you speak others will not always deliver an equally measured response. But you can still retain your calm and concise approach, and you don’t have to lose your control to feelings of anger.
Sometimes a blow up will happen, and it will often come from you, but if we practice ‘Keep calm and carry on’ , on our side at least, we can stop things escalating beyond what we need to be dealing with. Arguments are often fuelled by passion but they can equally be fuelled by using thoughtless, unkind or defensive words.
When you shout, they shout back even louder and when you go silent, they press you harder. By no means should you back down but you should try to argue differently. Argue but argue in a way that is more likely to deliver a better mutual outcome than if you rally someone into agreement.
Life is too short to spend it trying to constantly fight with our loved ones and the change the mind of another when all we should be doing is living by the example of our own values.
Postpone Irrelevant Thoughts
As a chronic over-thinker, an anxiety-sufferer and a generally argumentative personality, I find it incredibly hard to shut my mind off. I find it near impossible to not play out entire conversations in my own head way before they are due to happen.
Newsflash, to myself, I am neither psychic nor do I need to take every thought that enters my mind and give it hours of my life. Neither do you!
I have gotten into the life-changing habit of mentally pigeon-holing a thought or idea. I acknowledge the thought, file it under 'Emergency' or 'Completely non-emergent and just plain silly', and act accordingly.
I don't need to map out conversations I might not even have or don't need to have until some future point. I certainly do not need to act immediately on my every thought because time changes your mind and so much of what we go to say or do is driven by a passing mood or emotion.
Practise acknowledging thoughts and then post-pone them; you can ruminate on any idea you wish, but only when its appropriate and healthy to do so.
It's easy to feel powerless to the way our minds work, and its harder to change than to stay the same.
The way we communicate with the outside world is more than just sounds or performance; it can be a vehicle through which we positively change the way our brains work.
We can create the space and the peace needed to figure ourselves out and attract the things which make us happy.
It is possible to create a minimal way of life, one that builds deeper connections and more fulfilling interactions; we just have to balance the silence with the noise and equalize the thinking mind, with the quiet one.
Thanks for reading!
Hannah here, one half of NomaderHowFar. I love reading, the beach, proper fish and chips, and a good cup of tea. But I mostly like to chat about minimalism, simplifying your life, the beauty of travel and sometimes I get a bit deep. Get to know us here!
Be social and come follow us across the virtual world!
Life After De-Cluttering: What Comes Next?
We all have different reasons for embracing minimalism, and not everybody will have a long-term goal that is deeply interlinked with their minimalist changes
Life After De-Cluttering: What Comes Next?
As nomadic minimalists, we talk about minimalism in a lot of detail; from why you should embrace minimalism, to minimalism for beginners and the basics of de-cluttering:
- Minimalism Will Make You A Calmer Person.
- 12 Struggles of Minimalist Beginners: How To Overcome Them.
- The Minimalist Life Cleanse: Stage 1, De-Cluttering Your Home.
I even wrote an eBook, Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person, a practical guide to simplifying your home, your wallet and your online space.
We all have different reasons for de-cluttering, and not everybody will want to become fully-fledged minimalists. For some, de-cluttering might have just been a short-term process designed to simplify on a basic level, creating a tidier and more organized home space.
But some newly established minimalists may want to continue to build solid minimalist foundations from which to follow their life goals, and that’s how it was for me.
So it's all good and well, knowing the Why and the How-To for adopting minimalism...
But what about the When? When you are supposedly 'finished'; you’ve de-cluttered, you’ve implemented new routines to make life simpler, and created an environment which will help you work towards your goals.
For me, when I was done with dealing with much of my clutter, I kept on going...I kept on reducing my material footprint and I kept with my mantra of not bringing in more low-quality stuff. I kept clearing my debts, adding to my savings and began to see my dreams take shape; I maintained a lifestyle that was aligned with my long-term goal of travel.
I didn’t enact minimalist principles on a whim; I fully embraced the minimalist mindset and resolved to never let it slide.
Okay, that’s also, all good and well, but what can you practically do to maintain a minimalist and simpler life?
Below are some key ideas relating to maintaining minimalism, for not merely keeping clutter at bay, but to ensure we can better reach our personal, professional and financial goals.
The 4 area's of importance for life after de-cluttering relate to being accountable for our daily choices to remain clutter-free, creating more fruitful and balanced schedules, building healthier passions and interests, and developing routines which help change our bad habits.
ACCOUNTABILITY:
List your goals in a mindfulness diary.
Through my minimalism journey, I went from being financially fraught and lost, to taking back control and devising a solid repayment plan to clear my debts. To remain mindful during this process and to know exactly what I was spending, acquiring and saving, I began keeping note of all my spending.
You might already do this, and you might already live on a specific budget, but having a mindful diary isn't just about keeping note of the numbers...
I began my blog, which became the place I could stay motivated by sharing my minimalist transition. But you might not wanna do that... which is cool.
Instead, begin writing in a journal.
In the front of your journal, write your 3 key goals, the ideas that are on your mind right now, which could range from the small and daily, to the long-term and life-changing.
Consider these ideas:
- Which hope, aspiration or dream is motivating the decisions you make each day? Do you make choices that work toward these goals positively?
- Do you feel as if you are on the cusp of some major life changes? Do you want to feel more ready and able to cope with the up's and down's of daily living?
- Are you trying to accomplish a financial goal, or move up in your career? Do you have some time limits by which you want to achieve these goals?
- Are you hoping to confront some things about your life that you have been avoiding? Do you want to continue on a therapeutic journey where you can focus on the now and the future, letting go of negative moments from your past?
Without an outlet to explore my own thoughts and establish some focus, I was out-of-touch with what I was doing, why I was doing it and what I actually needed to do to be more fulfilled.
I was the most prone to impulse spending and over indulging myself, financially or otherwise, when I lacked a broader focus, or the means to hold myself accountable for my daily choices. I could walk into a shop and leave with 5 t-shirts and it wouldn't negatively impact my goals, because I didn’t have any!
Stumbling through my life, ignoring my stressors and relying on materialist escapism was certainly harming my health, but I didn’t yet know better.
Minimalism (and a lot of other positive changes) happened because I let new positive influences come into my life, entertaining new ideas and goals for what I could do to change things. I kept a solid note of my goals and these began to shape the way I lived my life each day instead of resorting to habitual and detrimental behaviours which worked against my quest for fulfilment.
Commit to spending a few quiet moments a day with your journal to keep in touch with your goals and quieten the thoughts that threaten to undo your new minimalist lifestyle; each passing day or week, note the various ways your simpler lifestyle and minimalist habits are helping you reach your goals.
PRODUCTIVITY:
Create days based on balance.
I read plenty of blog posts about organization, simplifying and goal-setting, which talk about designing the perfect daily schedule. These posts outline how you should best use each and every hour of your day.
But often a lot of these posts suggest practises that I feel actually complicate your day a further...
Some of the ideas put forward can be a little unrealistic; setting rigid rules for how to plan and use each day doesn't account for those times where we feel tired, distracted, de-motivated, or uninspired, or those days where we just can't shake our mood.
We then feel bad for not actually wanting to be a productive boss right that moment...
Maybe some people find it helpful to plan out each day and believe it staves off these negative, albeit totally normal, peaks and troughs in energy.
But I believe it can be detrimental to our ability to succeed in whatever our goals are, without burning out, if we ignore the natural ebb and flow of our moods. This mindset can put us into a damaging cycle of perceiving natural dips in enthusiasm as proof that we are doomed to fail in our goals, or that we don't actually deserve the success we are pursuing.
To counter this, I personally aim to create balanced days; I do write 'To Do' lists, but only short ones. I aim to achieve something small professionally each day whilst also tending to my own self-care needs. If I wake up feeling tired and like I want to avoid all my responsibilities, I either take a brief walk round the block, watch my favourite Youtuber's, or listen to a podcast. I might do my laundry, clean the house or read a book on my kindle. I try to take my mind off feeling like I should be doing something else and just do whatever the hell I want.
I try to re-direct my energy to myself, providing the space for my enthusiasm and focus to return naturally; that familiar stirring of ideas and a need to create eventually comes back and I run with it. I might sit down and spend hours on a blog post, or look at my professional goals and set specific targets for that week. I might connect with people on social media or read some inspirational blog posts. I do whatever feels right, whilst also chipping away at my blogging responsibilities and goals.
The important thing to remember is that most of the time, the dreams we are chasing aren't trains leaving a station; they will still be there, in a few hours or in a couple of days. When we believe that we should be maxing out our 24 hours in the pursuit of our goals we forget that probably only a quarter of what we do in that time will yield actual results, especially if we are neglecting our self-care, our relationships or our health.
A balanced day is one where we don't force ourselves to do the tasks that we would usually willingly choose to do, because we falsely believe that our dreams will desert us; we don't turn our passions into burdens by valuing them above our own basic physical and psychological needs.
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FUN:
Embrace healthy escapism and joyful passions.
If you are trying to make minimalism stick, by avoiding temptation to consume or do things which are detrimental to your goals, the biggest issue can be boredom. One of the many reasons that we come to have homes full of stuff, unfinished projects and numerous distractions is because we haven't yet found our true passion.
When we do find a passion, hobby or vocation, we tend to give a lot of our time and energy to it. If we have a sense of purpose each day, one revolving around something other than consumerism, then the inference is that we are more likely to retain minimalist ideas and enjoy the positive side-effects.
But what happens when your hobby involves oodles of things?
There's nothing wrong with having a cupboard full of art supplies or a shelf full of books, unless we don't actually give time to exploring and enjoying these things. Minimalism isn't about having as little as possible, it's about having as little of the pointless and extraneous, so that you can appreciate what you love at your core.
What if you don't have a hobby or a passion?
This was me a few years back before this blog began. I always loved writing and I often wrote poems and songs, but because of the creative energy needed for it versus the energy I was expending elsewhere on crappy exploits, I didn't write as much as my inner creative would have liked.
The fact I was also surrounded by clutter and visual distraction didn't help.
Ideas to consider to help you get back in touch with what you love:
- What did you always love to do as a child, something that might not have left as you moved into your teenage years? I always used to try and command the attention of a room, spend hours writing poems, and I was known to tidy up a lot... in my adulthood these principles have translated nicely into my blog and my eBook!
- Did people ever remark on a particular talent or ability of yours? People often told me I should consider journalism or teaching, but I always felt afraid of these two particular routes. Thankfully with time and research I found the best outlet for my natural skills and hobbies.
- Do you enjoy experiencing the creations of others? I have always loved film, music and reading, but it was only this year that I discovered the awesomeness of podcasts and audiobooks. There are always more ways to explore the entertainment that appeals to your particular personality.
- Do you seek out escapist and simplistic entertainment when you could be seeking out interesting or useful knowledge? For years I visited the same websites peddling gossipy information that I could do zero with. I began to seek out things which expanded my mind instead of filled it up with random useless information.
For many years I felt like there was no wider purpose for exploring and indulging my passion for writing. What is the purpose of doing something that doesn't elicit interest or appreciation from others?
Surely being a part of the consumerist dynamic, partaking in the same expensive and outward pursuits as my peers was a better use of my time?
I clearly lacked a lot of self-confidence and was always trying to fit in with the world around me, pursuing the same paths as my peers instead of nurturing my inner truth.
But I realized later on that when we let ourselves explore our own mind freely, we learn that we have the tools for fulfilment right here within us.
Eventually my love for creating did become a bigger than just a hobby, and now I blog (and all the side stuff that comes with it) more than I shop or watch television. This blog isn't making me rich, but I find it no less satisfying to do; I enjoy doing it, and if I ever did make a profit, but no longer enjoyed it, I would probably stop.
All the little ways that we like to spend our time, from reading, to writing poetry, to taking photographs; we should accept that there doesn't have to be a grander purpose for why we do them. It's grand purpose enough to fill each day with the things that we love, and which love us back; activities which incur no painful financial or personal cost.
PSYCHOLOGY:
Countering the behaviours which bring in clutter and stress.
This is probably the more difficult and yet most important part of retaining a simpler life; changing the habits which brought in our clutter and problems in the first place.
This article defines a shopaholic in multiple terms, from spending over your budget, to hiding buys from family, to buying more than what is needed, to shopping to eliminate negative emotions. You don't need to have a full-on shopping addiction to exhibit these traits, but even in lesser amounts, these behaviours can be pretty damaging to the simpler living ethos.
You can be mindful, tend to your self-care needs and develop healthier passions, but much of this involves changing your psychology and dominant habits. Habits are very much things we naturally gravitate towards doing without much thought being required.
Alex Lickerman describes the different stages of changing habits and behaviour; if you are reading this post you are most likely hovering between the stages of Contemplation and Maintenance, meaning you are either radically wanting change or you are wanting maintain your newly formed habits.
Hopefully by this stage you have already felt inspired to start some new daily behaviours which might help dissuade your old bad habits.
But our habits are formed and then reinforced, often for years, meaning it's incredibly difficult to unlearn them.
There's plenty of psychological work we can do to change these habits, but it's also important to reinforce new behaviours to form new habits, such as the behaviour of thinking through every purchase we want to make and weighing up our consumer decisions at the point of buying to help us evaluate a need versus a want. This increases our general mindfulness and steers us away from the impulsive habits which take no consideration for the negative results of excess spending.
You could also try to develop better habits around how you use and organize the things in your home to help prevent clutter amassing and items going forgotten and wasted.
We need to create some new go-to thought processes which stifle the negative habits that we want to let go of.
Here are some ideas for overcoming excessive or impulsive consumption that work alongside accountability, productivity and fun:
- Consider carrying your mindful journal with you whenever you are going to the places that usually incur random consumption. Having the physical weight of your goals acts as a reminder will make you think twice before you buy something you do not need or truly want. If we pour our hearts into honest expression and then we literally leave the product of that in a drawer at home, where its message becomes passive, we do a disservice to our inner truth and favour the impulse habits of our pasts and thus hurt our future.
- Anything you do buy each week (excluding food), consider putting in one place, e.g. a basket or box. Make it a habit of putting everything you bring into the home, that isn't a necessity or a perishable, into this box. Place this box in the center of your living space, somewhere that you will walk past it each day. This is a process designed to make you acutely aware of how much you bring into your home. This can be a short-term experiment to gauge the types of things you are prone to over-buy but it will help you confront the reasoning's for why you purchase certain things plus make you accountable for the expenditures you are making. This is an exercise in undoing the irrationality of impulse and over-purchasing; if we are wholly aware of the nature of what tempts us and able to see that we don't need certain things to be truly happy, we can simply stop wanting them, stop seeking them out and stop our bad spending habits.
- Write a list of all the random material desires which pop into your mind day-to-day. If you have been wanting new clothing or some particular gadget, don't sit and look at it online or mull it over, just write it down on a wish-list. This isn't a task that will take a lot of time but it will unload this portion of mind-clutter, allowing you to analyse your relationship to material things. This list might end up representing genuine needs for things that you can't stop thinking about after weeks have passed, your daily life lacking in some way for the absence of it. But it might also make you realize how fleeting your desires for material goods can be, compared to how quickly you usually act on these impulse wants.
By unpacking your thoughts and diverting from the habits your mind will automatically put into action, thus making consumerism wholly mindful, you can change the way you acquire; from buying when you are in a bad mood to wrongly defining a want as a need, you can transform your negative behaviours and leave bad habits behind.
What comes after de-cluttering is a push to create something new in the physical and mental space that you have given yourself.
De-cluttering can be more than just a one-off act and can be enacted as an ongoing process where the way you live each day is fundamentally altered.
It's not merely about having less and spending less, its about finding something rewarding, real and important, more important than resorting to habits which have proven themselves as damaging to your health and happiness.
What do you do to keep clutter at bay and place your goals at the forefront of how you live?
Thanks for reading!
Hannah here, one half of NomaderHowFar. I love reading, the beach, proper fish and chips, and a good cup of tea. But I mostly like to chat about minimalism, simplifying your life, the beauty of travel and sometimes I get a bit deep. Get to know us here!
Be social and come follow us across the virtual world!
12 Struggles Of Minimalist Beginners And How to Overcome Them
You can feel ready to embrace minimalism, and enthused to change, but some things can hold you back...
12 Struggles Of Minimalist Beginners And How to Overcome Them
So, you are hearing the call of minimalism!
You are being drawn toward living a simpler life, and have recognized the stress and mess that years of accumulation has brought you.
You are ready and willing, committed and enthused. But others around you, not so much...
My minimalism book (based on the popular life cleanse blog series and pictured below) comes from the perspective of someone who has come into minimalism fairly easily. By easily I mean, I was able to adopt the principles without opposition, confusion or derision from others.
Nothing was holding me back from dealing with my spending habits, de-cluttering my home, and changing my relationship with material goods, other than myself.
"I was free to embrace change unencumbered by the expectations or opinions of others."
But that isn't the case for many minimalist beginners...
I am part of a Facebook community full of people at differing stages of their minimalist journey. I have learned from this very supportive and honest space, that many people who are embracing minimalism, are facing a myriad of obstacles along the way.
This became even more apparent when I posed a question to my fellow members:
'What for you, has been the hardest part of embracing minimalism?'
It received 25+ responses and inspired a lot of conversation. I realized then that I clearly had to turn this into a blog post that could support these people or others starting out in minimalism and finding it tough.
There are many different paths individuals follow in life which inspire a negative response, and there are some very difficult journeys to acceptance which people face every day.
This is one vein of that, in this modern age where there is a push for tolerance and equality for people of all different lifestyle choices. This isn't one of those lifestyle choices you would immediately associate with inciting resistance and difficulty, but I have to come to see, it certainly is.
On the broader scale, minimalist ideas have big implications for capitalist society, but, on a smaller scale, people who want to change and lead a more fulfilling life, face the challenge of not being supported by those closest to them, alongside the other struggles of letting go of consumerism.
These are the 12 dominant struggles of my fellow aspiring minimalists from the Facebook community. I imagine others are too experiencing the same:
1. Knowing where to begin. Being overwhelmed by the prospect of simplifying your life, feeling too busy to begin or just unsure where to literally start.
2. Convincing a spouse of the benefits of simpler living. A partner that is either not supportive, not really understanding, or who is tightly holding onto their own materialist ideas and clutter.
3. Getting rid of gifts, or expensive items. Feeling guilt at giving away items someone else spent time or money on, as well as feeling regret at having spent a lot of money on things you now never use.
4. Building and maintaining a healthy attitude to consumerism. Being able to be in a shop and not feel the desire to buy things you don't need. Untying your relationship with shopping as a stress relief or emotional escape. Letting go of pretty and yet useless items.
5. Learning that our worth is not tied up in our possessions. Realizing that our things, the image we try to create with them and the ideas we try to represent, are not intrinsic to our true self-worth and value.
6. Thinking that when you let go of a sentimental object, you the lose the associated memory. Believing that our trinkets and life artefacts somehow keep a memory or experience alive better than we can ourselves, so we feel unable to ever part with any.
7. Pressure from those closest to you to consume. Having family or friends that are avid consumers, who not only normalize consumption but deride you for your rejection of materialist principles.
8. Feeling unable to discard consumables because of a low house-hold budget. Feeling that you can't let go of certain things because you feel like you can't afford to replace them when you might need them.
9. Keeping things 'just in case'. Worrying that we will get rid of something and then suddenly need it. Wanting to keep multiples of something believing it will make life easier in the long-run.
10. Struggling to re-home items, for sale or donation. People either don't show up to buy things, or they just don't sell. Or, you struggle to set aside time to physically remove the items from the home.
11. Having less to choose from. Discarding means you will have less options to choose from each day and so you worry that you might feel bored or limited by what you have kept.
12. Teaching your children about having less. We can actively process our own relationship to our stuff but trying to help our kids de-clutter or feel less desire to that stuff, is a bit more difficult...
There are all the usual obstacles we have to overcome when embracing a minimalist life, from consuming less, to letting go of things, but we can also feel limited by those around us, and the dominant ideologies by which they, and our society, abides.
"Stead-fast consumption, regular impulse spending, and the perception that life is too short to not have exactly what we want no matter the cost."
I think this mindset whilst common and natural for many of us, is short-sighted, and not really sustainable, for our own budgets, and for the wider future of our planet. You too, might agree, as an aspiring minimalist.
I want to posit 5 ideas, that you need to always remember on this path, to help you process and cope with the above 12 struggles.
I want you to recognize that your difficult beginning will become a happy ending.
Then, I will suggest some ideas for how you can communicate with those you feel don't support you, and how you can still pursue this journey without causing damage to your relationships.
Here are 5 ideas to remember during your struggles:
You have already fought half the battle.
Even getting to this point, a place where you want to change your life, and are trying to do so, is a huge deal. I partook in a consumerist and cluttered mentality for most of my life, from my teens into my 20's, but it's also routed in my childhood.
That is a long time of forming habits, and perpetuating unhealthy associations between wealth, possessions and self-worth.
It takes guts to look at our lives honestly and then seek a truthful change, and not just continue on the same destructive path.
In terms of where the hell to start, you have to start small. But first, before that, you have to understand your why.
Why did you find yourself here, seeking something to make your life more fulfilling?
Only when you are fully clear in your reasoning's, will it become clear what you have to do first. For me, it was a mixed process. I knew I was in-debt and also knew that I was desperate to travel.
So, I wrote down all my debts, from smallest to biggest, and I began throwing as much money each month at my smallest debt.
It was then that I actually got super into minimalism, and began de-cluttering my home, by first throwing stuff out of my wardrobe, because that was where the most abundance of clutter was confronting me each day.
I slowly removed things from my bedroom, gradually growing my addiction to discarding, that often comes when you witness the calming effect a less cluttered space creates. I then ramped up my efforts, spending whole afternoons removing things. I then helped my boyfriend do the same. He was motivated because we both wanted to travel and he felt like he didn't want to leave behind material commitments.
Even if travel wasn't our goal, I think he would have been influenced by my change in demeanour; I was motivated to clear debt and so I was also motivated to change my relationship with consumerism, and it made me super positive and enthusiastic in general.
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You are living out your truth, and that's always better than living a lie even if it feels easier at the time.
When you stumble upon an epiphany, or you reach a point in your life where you cannot continue to live in the way you have been, you are finding out something very important and special.
You are listening to your inner truth, realizing your fundamental goals and appreciating what you need to do to reach them.
You are opening yourself up to a new way of life and welcoming in positive change thus being authentic to your own intrinsic needs.
If you continue to live how others believe you should, you are lying to yourself, neglecting your purpose, and basing fundamental life choices on the opinions or comments of others and not your own inner voice.
Surely if you are denying your truth to supposedly please them, eventually it will damage your relationships anyway, with your suppressed desires or conformity eventually building resentment.
You will become a living breathing example of the positive ethos of minimalism.
People around you, who advocate consumerist mindsets, or who aren't interested in minimalism, will eventually witness the positive impact of living a simplified life, with less stuff and less push to work, earn and spend. They will get a front-row seat to seeing the cause and effect, and only then, can they truly understand it.
Only then can they too be inspired and maybe consider following the same path. Your peers, children and spouses, are obviously people you love and care about, and whom care about you, but resistance from them, when it involves a change in their own fundamental life choices, is natural.
This isn't something you can preach, but it is something you can live out, and eventually, you will inspire without trying.
You will feel guilt and fear, but not forever.
This is what I love about the simplifying process, and hate at the same time.
You are gonna feel some pains and you are going to want to pull back, delay the process and just, stop. But, once your life has become simpler, and you have committed yourself to reaching particular goals, some emotions, you won't have to encounter again, because you confronted them during this process.
Letting go of sentimental items will feel confusing and upsetting, but once you have taken decisive de-cluttering actions, you won't have to let go of those same things ever again.
Once you have resolved yourself to spend less and accumulate less, you won't have to repeat the letting go process over and over.
"You have to tell yourself, 'I will feel the pain and stress of letting go and discarding now, but I won't have to feel it again, because I won't re-clutter my life again'."
And even if there comes a time where you do in fact need to let go of more stuff, you will have proven that its possible, and you will have survived without those things you originally got rid of.
Discarding items attached to specific memories or special times in your life, takes nothing away from the fact you got to have that experience.
And if by some horrible future scenario, you lose sentimental items, you will move past it and make new memories, as well as have the old ones.
You have to consider that when you strip away the artefact's of precious life moments, the most important things usually still remain e.g. the people and the memories.
Believing that you need to keep things based on some imagined future use, is not a bad thing, when we are trying to lead thrifty lives. We just have to resolve to not bring in more of the same.
We can keep stuff that we truly think will be useful, but we have to specify to ourselves, exactly what that use is:
- Is it a seasonal object?
- Is it one that will replace something else in time?
- Is it something you have multiple versions of, and if so, can you retain just one version?
- Could you better organize these 'just in case' items so that you actually remember you have them when the 'in case' actually happens?
Realistic justifications are not discouraged in minimalist thinking, at all. But sometimes we justify things we know deep down we will not need again or which bring negative vibes into our home, but we are just racked with guilt at our spending, and think that by throwing it out we are being terrible wasteful planet-haters.
But we need to realize that this is it, the point where we make changes that will prevent us being wasteful big-spenders further down the line.
You will
eventually create a fulfilling life that isn't rooted in consumerism
I know this because I was able to do so. I went from in-debt, and addicted to shopping, to being a mindful consumer who was able to make decisions removed from impulse.
I still have moments of weakness but I have accepted that I always will. I have habits and behaviours formed over years, and years, tied to emotional times in my life, so my natural response at times will be to consume, because it is what I have always known. But I don't believe it's ever too late to form new habits.
I brought in a few ideas which I have stuck to for the last 3 years, which keep me debt-free and living within my means (whilst also doing what I love, travelling and writing) unbound by material possession's, which I talk about more in-depth in my book.
Appreciate what is most important at your core. If it is your relationships, and building a life based on special moments with others, having ten million things to tidy each weekend, and a bucket-load of consumerist debt, is going to prevent that happening.
You might literally be stumbling over the results of your consumer choices daily, but you are so used to being surrounded by them, you don't see what is in plain sight. You sometimes need to clear the decks to actually understand why you are dissatisfied or unfulfilled.
Yes, you are used to having multiple options for everything, from your breakfast, to your clothing, but when we reduce the field of choice, to a few quality items, we can actually extract more value and enjoyment from our options. If I have a cupboard full of cereals, or a wardrobe full of clothing of similar styles, and yet I still feel dissatisfied, I probably don't have the right options at my disposal.
I love the concepts of meal planning and having a capsule wardrobe as solutions to these respective issues. I think this allows us to still have options and choices, whilst being thrifty and creative.
Your usual short-cuts to escapism, might not really be feeding your core desires. You may be living a life based in habits you know do not serve you but you feel scared to confront them. When you do confront them however, you soon realize that the only obstacle to your true fulfilment, is you.
You can change certain unhealthy spending habits with some honest appraisal of why you formed them to begin with. When we understand the deeper-seated reason for a behaviour, we can endeavour to change the habit, not just introduce new habits doomed to fail because we aren't accounting for the deeper reasons behind our choices.
You can bring in healthier routines based on mindfulness. Mindful money management is when we know, off the top of our head, our general money situation, be it day-to-day, week-to-week or month-to-month. Mindful spending is when we really question each and every purchase we make, understand the purpose, quality and life-time of the item. You might not be able to increase your income to reach certain financial goals but over time, mindful consuming will make your money work better for you, and of course, prevent future clutter and waste.
More on how I stick to mindful consumption:
Okay, so you have bolstered your self-belief, appreciated what you have already achieved, and placed some faith in the future results of your efforts.
But, ah, you still have to deal with the expectations and opinions of others.
Well, I hope, that in re-affirming your goals for your life, at the centre of your minimalist journey, you will feel stronger and more resolved to change, despite the beliefs of others. But you still need some practical tips on how to counter all the struggles.
1. Be clear of your 'why' to others and resist the urge to try and convert them right away.
When we talk about something that is either seen as a fad or trend, such as de-cluttering and minimalism, you will find a level of initial scepticism, most of the time. If you try to argue with this, and behave defensively, you are likely going to aggravate the situation and bring the person no closer to empathy or understanding.
Instead of coming at our loved ones hard with the notion of simplifying, we need to bring it in gradually.
I know you probably feel all this energy, and naturally you want to get others on board. But they won't believe in the effectiveness of an idea until they see the proof.
- Live out your changes honestly, share them with others if they are making you feel good, but don't posit this as something everyone around you should adopt. Nobody likes to be told that they are living their life wrong or that they are unhappy, when they believe they are. In fact plenty of people around you will not be minimalists, and never will, and will still find the same fulfilment you do. Minimalism isn't the cure for everybody's woes, so resist the urge to prescribe it as the dream drug.
- Use simple language to explain your motivations, like 'I want to save money for...' or 'I want a tidier home...', instead of, 'I am becoming a minimalist, death to materialists!!'. I certainly have strong opinions for why I advocate minimalism over materialism, but for most of my life, I didn't have these opinions, and I didn't want to. I had my consumerism under relative control for a time, and it wasn't until I didn't, that I considered other ideas.
- When people are told of how your previous lifestyle choices were bringing you stress, they will get why you are making drastic changes. They want you to be happy and find a healthy way to do so. Over time they may get to witness the benefits of your new minimalist choices and come to understand it better that way.
2. Try to understand the place from which your spouse/kids/family are coming from.
To them, you have suddenly upped and changed, and maybe you are fervently spouting all these new overwhelming ideas that they haven't come to yet. They too are a sum of their life's habits and history, so go easy on them.
You might feel frustrated or stalled by them and their views, but they need to be given time. They also need to be heard and understood. A partner or friend who continues to spend and acquire, with no intention of de-cluttering, yes, that is going to be difficult to witness and not interfere in. But it's like any difference we ever encounter with those closest to us, we will never all be on the same page about everything.
- Encourage peaceful, open and honest conversation with your loved ones, by truly explaining your desire to change, and why. When others understand your motivation and maybe learn something about you they didn't already know, they are much more likely to keep their scepticism in check.
- Tell them what it is about your current lifestyle that is making you unhappy, and this might make them feel less dismissive of the idea, if they are assured that they aren't suddenly someone you cannot relate to. They just need to understand your 'Why' and try to accommodate it in small ways and recognize that you don't want them to change anything they aren't content with. If they care about you, they should care about your pursuit of true inner happiness, more than your ability to conform with the norms they themselves are used to.
3. Bring your children, partner and loved ones, into the journey, as a pursuit of a mutually beneficial goal.
You can't exactly achieve the minimalist home environment of your dreams if your kids and partner won't budge. You are going to hit a brick-wall in your overall progress at times, even if you have communicated openly and inspired their loving support. The best way to overcome this is a combination of the above two; re-iterating your 'Why' and communicating it gently and over time, but also, by trying to portray de-cluttering and mindful spending, as not something you need them to do, but something that they might actually want to do.
- Create challenges with your loved ones, based on minimalist values. If you suggest the de-cluttering process as being one which will reward them, it will be positive reinforcement that over time may lead to an intrinsic change inside them too. You need to mix your own goals with the inclusion of your family's goals too.
- An example could be that your husband has wanted a holiday abroad for years, but due to frequent random spending or accumulation, you both haven't been able to save up quite enough to do so.
- By suggesting you look at your finances together, to see how you can reach your mutual goals sooner, you will be bringing him in as an active and important part of your journey. You could suggest selling stuff to make some extra income, whilst also de-cluttering, or consider both going on a spending ban. Brainstorm some ideas together to help you achieve mutual dreams, which have the added benefit of involving minimalism.
- Another example might be that your children have reams of toys, many of which they never play with but refuse to part with. You too need to bring them in on this based on your mutual goals. What do they want or desire most in their life at present? Maybe they want to have a million different toy choices, as simple as that. Or maybe they would be willing to share their good fortune with a child who doesn't have what they have by picking some to personally donate.
- Maybe they actually want to get more value of out family life but are so used to the usual daily activities being based around their things, they simply don't know of other options. Maybe they have always been rewarded for their achievements by being given things, and so you will have to go back on your previous re-reinforcements by creating different reward systems. Maybe this can be a lesson in sharing and in having perspective, as well as a way to prevent them always associating toys and things, with their fun or happiness.
I sincerely hope that the above advice goes some way to help you in your struggles as a minimalist beginner.
And I want to re-iterate my very first point, that you have already fought half the battle.
You have chosen to embrace a path where you can carve out a simpler life for yourself and those closest to you. Your honesty, hard work, and the positive results it will yield, will get you through the bulk of the challenges you will face along the way.
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Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person - Book Release
I did it! I climbed Everest! I ran up the steps from Rocky Balboa (I actually have done that). I gave birth! Orrrr, I just finished writing a book...
Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person - Book Release
I did it! I climbed Everest! I ran up the steps from Rocky Balboa (I actually have done that). I gave birth! Orrrr, I just finished writing a book.
A bloody book. It feels so good to have finished it. I produced something, poured months of my life into it and I can finally step away, put on its uniform, push it out the front door and into the sunshine. Its my brain child.
Amazon UK Store / US Store / AU Store / CA Store
Okay, so it's definitely not an epically long overtly complicated book, its about minimalism, but it did take a lot of time and effort. I wanted to create something that I could be proud of for a long time, but also something of true value to anyone who does me the kindness of spending their money on it.
The previous blog posts I wrote on minimalism told me that people wanted to read about this movement, they were seeking out information on simplifying their life and they landed upon my musings in search of advice. And so I knew that this would be a worthwhile topic to write a whole book about.
So one day, whilst living on a desert island with no internet (I had no distractions or excuses), I opened up a word document and I began.
I focused on my own experience of minimalism, the reasons why I brought it into my life, and began discussing how it has made me happier.
Our friend Tristan designed us the awesome cover! Here's the work in progress, watercolours n' all!
Happy means something different to everyone, but I posit happiness in the book as having an awful lot to do with how we feel at our core. I view fulfilment as being the motivation for giving attention and time to our true desires and needs. I believe that I have become calmer inside, thanks to not simply de-cluttering my surroundings but by actually tackling the areas of my life bringing me stress.
I realized how inter-linked everything is. I discovered that minimalism can be a whole life philosophy, not just the way you keep your home.
The book is fairly in-depth and really contextualizes the negative side of consumerism and how it massively contributes to the mental and physical health of society, in a bad bad way.
But its main purpose is providing the right questions and guidance for anyone who wishes to simplify their life.
It focuses on creating a home which works for you, refining your spending habits, creating more meaningful online activities, and organizing your day-to-day routine.
It is all based in realistic ideas that I myself have adopted so I know that my readers can follow it and achieve the same outcomes. I just want to help people find a way to navigate the hardships of life, and reach their life goals sooner. I hope the words I spent a few good months forming, help at least one person out there simplify their stresses and become calmer, healthier and happier.
So if you fancy a read you can order the book now.
Alternatively, if you are a blogger or a minimalist writer I would love to send you a free copy for review on your blog or social media. Just drop us a line at nomaderhowfar@gmail.com. I poured a lot of finger sweat into this and would appreciate any feedback.
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Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
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Why You Should Give A Shit About Minimalism
Up to now much of my writing on minimalism has been subtle and instructional, but I am about to get a bit more deep and personal...
Why You Should Give A Shit About Minimalism
Today I happened upon this video on YouTube,'The trap of materialism'
Its message comes from an ethical standpoint surrounding why materialism is bad on so many levels; bad for all of us and this planet. From the history of capitalism, and its seemingly unstoppable power, to the hippy retaliation of the 1960's, right to the 9/11 terrorist attack.
It is a scary commentary on the world we live-in but it does offer positive solutions that we can all be part of.
Up to now much of my writing on minimalism has been subtle and instructional, but I am about to get a bit more deep and personal...
We write about our travels here on nomaderhowfar.com, because our lives are about travel right now, but we could not have gotten here, without first changing our mindset away from spending our money. To list the most basic benefits of minimalism, available to everyone, I would say that minimalism saves you money, time, stress and gives you back control over your own fulfilment and happiness. Money takes on new meaning because it isn't for satisfying impulse spending urges but its for saving up to reach some bigger goal. It serves a more healthy purpose, and you are no longer giving your valuable time away in the pursuit of a consumerist buzz. Nor are you contributing to the acres of landfill taking over our planet.
Minimalism has seen a rise in popularity among many people in recent years, with numerous books, blog posts and video series based on how to live a simpler life. Alongside this has been the continued promotion of materialism to the younger generation within the blogging and YouTube sphere, through a new type of celebrity, the 'vlogger' and blogger, who share not just their everyday life, but most prominently, what's in their shopping bags. The minimalist counter-movement really resonates with Taran and I. We have both suffered the same disillusionment with the status quo, a dissatisfaction with being ensnared in the materialism trap. 3 years ago, I worked in a job I hated and my only reward seemed to be shopping; I was really quite unhappy with life, but buying things seemed like the only pass-time that might make me feel better.
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And when on occasion I couldn't buy the things which made me feel that i was fitting in, I felt isolated.
But I didn't realize the linkage between the way things are within modern society, and the way I felt.
I simply put my feelings down to hating my job and feeling a bit alone. This was a time where my life was just not that exciting, put simply. I was working all hours in a terrible job, earning crap money, which I then spent on, well, crap. What do I and many of my peers have to thank for this status quo and the resultant negative impact on our mental health, well, that would be capitalism...
I won't paraphrase the entire film. watch it here.
The general gist of the documentary relates to how capitalism developed into something all-encompassing and endlessly powerful; and now has damaging implications for the future of this very planet. Big business has honed its ability to cultivate a culture of desire and envy, via the rise of advertising agency's and their use of our own human psychology against us, in order to get our money.
Some part in both Taran and I, has always struggled with society and its expectations. I might not have been able to label why but I knew on some level that my life would not be as fulfilling and authentically happy if I didn't step out of the 9-to-5 consumerist ring. Taran, since I've known him, has never been materialistic in any way. He has probably not bought a single item of clothing, even when he might have needed to. He really just does not care about fashion or buying new shiny things. He is so in-tune with just embracing what he has, making the best of his things and loving them in a way that the materialistic world doesn't want to you love your things. It wants you to consume more, all the time, and it does not care what the social, environmental and emotional impact is.
And that is why you should give a shit about minimalism. Because minimalism gives a shit about you in a way that materialism intrinsically cannot and never will.
You aren't a kid in school any-more, where being a fashion-conscious consumer was ingrained further into your psyche through bullying and peer pressure. You have the emotional maturity to change things, not worrying about what others think of your 'hippy' ways. You can dismiss the idea of the jones's and the competitiveness of trying to keep up with them. In minimalist thinking, your home is a sanctuary, not a closet, and your hobbies should bring you peace and deep happiness, not superficial short-lived buzzes.
Your whole life course is altered when you embrace minimalism.
If you have less need for stuff, you have less need for the money to buy it. And if you are someone who despises your career or wants to leave behind the 9-to-5, adopting minimalism can help. Some of us are always wondering what our actual passion is, what we should be doing instead of what we are, and we basically stumble on in a sense of constant disenchantment....well I certainly did and I know many people in the same position. And I also know how much minimalist thinking can help. It is so much more than de-cluttering your house or putting a spending ban on yourself. It is a retraining of your thought processes.
For many years you might have become addicted to the short-lived buzz that shopping gives you and so in a way, you are trying to cure an addiction. You are taking on a challenge that sees you give a big middle-finger to much of the rest of society who will frown at you and misunderstand your approach, in a way that might alienate you. But they soon might follow. People simply need to see that there is another way to be happy, and it is sometimes the only way to find it on a deeper level, separated from the stress of money.
Minimalism is not a religion, nor a rigid set of judgemental rules. There is no minimalist heaven, there is just the present, one that you can change, and a future that you can guide.
#minimalism is the key to reversing the damage of #materialism. https://t.co/Niohj7MTBo pic.twitter.com/wdYORxW84p
— Taran & Hannah (@Nomaderhowfar) February 20, 2016
By the way,before you leave, the original popular series, The Minimalist Life Cleanse has been re-purposed and expanded on, and now comes in the book below, available NOW.
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Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
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The Minimalist Life Cleanse: Revisiting your journey to a simpler life.
The minimalist life cleanse series was a guide to introducing a simpler way of living. At wherever you are on your journey, lets revisit the purpose of the series...
The Minimalist Life Cleanse: Revisiting your journey to a simpler life
Many months ago I shared my interest in minimalism, via a series of 3 posts, giving advice on how to simplify different aspects of your life to achieve a more minimalist life.
What Does Minimalist Mean?
The term has been associated with interior design, and the idea of having simple furnishings, only a few decorative details and a paired-back palette of colour. It was style that was focused on achieving peace, simplicity and functionality within the home.
These days, the word has become synonymous with a movement and a lifestyle choice, not simply a style of decoration.
Legions of people are retraining their thought patterns, steering themselves away from their consumerist nature, and just generally learning to live with less possessions. Some people go as far to apply minimalism to all areas of their life, simplifying everything from their social circle to their career choice.
The minimalism life cleanse focuses on this idea somewhat because you can't really achieve long-lasting minimalism in just one area of your life without giving attention to the others.
The series was launched a fair few months ago so I thought it might be time to encourage anyone who followed it back then, or has only recently found it, to revisit the core message of the series.
So lets take stock of where you're at on your minimalist journey and revisit the steps from Stage 1, 2 and 3.
The Home
How tidy is your personal space? Does it feel a joy to be in?
Consider your wardrobe. How many items of the clothing have you worn more than once in the last 6 months? How many items in there have you not even touched in that time?
When did you last empty out your pantry or fridge? How many items do you have stockpiled which keep getting pushed to the back of the cupboards and never used?
How many shampoo's and conditioners have you amassed, all with just a little bit left at the bottom? When did you last look in your bathroom storage and consider reducing you cosmetic products down to just your absolute favourites?
If you previously discarded a lot of your possessions, consider if your spaces remain cleansed, useful and organized. Have certain corners or surfaces begun acquiring new clutter, or are you still yet to remove all the things you originally intended to?
Are you tidying up more regularly, and if so, is that a sign that you still have a lot of clutter to discard?
Spend an hour moving through your home, and note any areas which need harsher de-cluttering; sort through the belongings slowly, discarding a few items a day in the very least.
Your home can collect clutter amid a busy life, but taking a morning or an afternoon to re-assess your space really can lead to much less stress in the long-run. An ordered space which works well for your needs will not require as much maintenance so will free up some time and energy for other things!
Read about how de-cluttering your home can benefit your mind here!
The Wallet
It's all too easy to see the process of simplifying your life as an opportunity to acquire more, maybe to replace old and thrown away items.
However it somewhat defeats the purpose to replace the things you have successfully gotten rid of and are able to live without. You should only be replacing things when the absolute need arises.
When did you last create a budget, or list your spending? Do you know off the top of your head how much money is in your current account and savings? How far along are you on debt repayments, and are you throwing as much as you can each month, not just making the minimum payment?
Consider the last five items you purchased (bar food). Where are they now, did they serve a purpose, and will they continue to be useful in the future? Are your daily spending decisions focused on instant gratification or delayed?
Are you making bill payments on time, and are you stretching your budget (if you've even made one) to last between pay-day's? Do you dig into your savings to make up unexpected short-falls or to pay for random indulgences?
Do you feel as if you are getting what you want out of your life with the funds you have, or are you still making frivolous spending decisions that leave you wanting?
The way you view money and the ease with which you part with it will determine so much of the clutter in your life. Financial over-stretching, a home rife with objects and the worry of having little financial security, this can all be simplified and eased with more mindful spending decisions.
Read more about overhauling your spending here!
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The Mailbox
- It might be time to hit that unsubscribe button again, because somewhere along the way you may have given out your email address and are now receiving more useless emails destined never to be read.
- Stop ignoring all those unread emails; implement the 'read, delete, reply or move' rule, which is quite simply going to keep your inbox nice and clean. I created folders corresponding to different topics and I move non-urgent or follow-up emails to those folders, or I delete the email.
- Back-up the thousands of photos on your phone to clear the decks and free up some storage space on your devices. The anxiety attached with losing our phones is only heightened when we allow them to hold our precious memories in an intangible and vulnerable form.
Review your social media and consider if you are really getting that much out of following so many people on twitter or seeing every post into that face-bay group on Facebook. Streamline your feed and reduce the amount of different subjects and people vying for your precious time and attention.
Did you stick to the idea of only having the most useful apps on your devices, or have you been pulled in by appealing looking ones which now sit idle and forgotten? Delete any apps you haven't used for a month and move your most used into organized folders.
The nature of our electronic habits can lead to divided attention, split across numerous distractions. If we can reduce the number of outlets vying for our attention across our social media and devices, then we can get back some focus and true relaxation.
Read more on simplifying your online world here!
The minimalist life cleanse isn't really a one-off act; it is a conscious effort and a way of approaching all areas of your life, that just like an exercise regime or a diet, can fall by the wayside.
Its important not to beat yourself up if you feel that maybe the initial thrill of simplifying has died off, and you are going back to old habits.
But it's also important to remember the enthusiasm you felt when you first followed the steps from stage 1, 2 and 3, when you tackled the many facets of your life which weren't bringing anything good to the table.
You can definitely get back to that mindset, one where your life is not paired down or dull, but enriched with quality objects, interests and interactions.
You can create a home and a daily routine that can be purposeful and peaceful at the same time, building a solid foundation for reaching your goals in the rest of your life.
Next to read: Life After De-Cluttering: Finding Fullfillment In Simplicity.
By the way, before you leave, I recently released my book, Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person, available NOW! It's a more in-depth guide to de-cluttering your home, organizing your life, refining your spending habits and simplifying your relationship with your technology:
After more Minimalism Inspiration?
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Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
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The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 3 [Overhauling your Spending]
We overspend to quell a sad mood or do so to reward ourselves for reaching a goal. We determine how free we are with our spending based on...
The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 3: Overhauling your Spending
In stage 1 of this Minimalism Life Cleanse Series, I touched on the basics of de-cluttering your home space, to cultivate a more organized and calming atmosphere.
You looked at our relationship to our possessions, and decided which ones you had held onto for too long, and then discarded those things which had no real place or meaning in your daily life.
You reminded yourself of the things which are precious and worth keeping, items which bring something significant into your life, or remind you of your most cherished memories.
In stage 2, you cleared out your social media accounts and inboxes, to change your connection with, well... being connected.
You tried to create a more fruitful and less overwhelming online space, being that you spend so much of time engaged in online activities.
The purpose of both stage 1 and 2 were to simplify your life. To maximise your time, improve your calmness and your ability to just be content and in the moment, not bogged down by things or status updates.
Now we continue on our quest for a simpler life with stage 3, overhauling your spending habits.
Hmm, I think this stage will be the hardest of them all so far....
Our consumer habits are not simply born out of this capitalist commercial world we are wholly embroiled in; they are partly ingrained in our psyche based on many things, from our family, upbringing and education. Even our self-esteem and general self-image play a role in how we consume.
We all develop bad habits in our lives, from smoking, to eating too many cupcakes, but this one, well, it underpins so much of what we do each and every day.
We overspend to quell a sad mood or to reward ourselves for reaching a goal. We too often determine how free we are with our spending based on our emotions and desires.
Advertising, seeing our peers with shiny new things, the disposable nature of fashion trends; these are all the things that can be blamed for your habits, but they aren't always at the route of your spending.
If you are my generation, a Millennial (born between the 80's and early 90's) we are well aware of financial crisis and don't just spend all our cash without thought.
We grew up in a strong global economy that then spectacularly collapsed.
Our futures are financially fraught because of overspending and overstretching, albeit on a different and more complicated scale. We are well aware of this and most of us have adjusted our spending mindset accordingly.
Some studies and publications disagree, and state that us Generation Y'ers are big bad spenders:
“...Millennials are 52 percent more likely than any other generation to report making impulse purchases simply to pamper themselves.“ “...no matter the recession and a continued shaky economy, and no matter the age group we’re talking about, the impulse purchase is alive and well..." [Brad Tuttle, Time].
Yet others state that we are mindful purchasers, and favour experiences over material things:
“...The Eventbrite survey of over 2,000 adults found that 3 in 4 millennial's said they would rather spend money on an experience than a material object..." [Kimberly Palmer, US NEWS].
You will find contradictory stories about millenial spending habits...but there's little doubt that the manner in which we consume has changed.
Many of us are making more mindful spending choices, not simply (or even at all) because of the economic downturn, but due to the prevalence of new online influencers and their blog's and YouTube channels; us and our peers are able to compare, research and consider our purchase choices more. Sites like Amazon rely on having lots of quality reviews to bolster sales, because our generation want to consider the quality of the items we are bringing into our lives.
But researched and thought-out spending is still spending is it not?
We often don't see our habits under the light of excess, and we feel justified in our expenditures, or we give simply give them little thought. We enact a lot of daily spending automatically, the way we always have done, without really considering what we are doing.
Not everyone spends all their disposable income on clothing or gadgets, some of us just spend heavily in other areas.
But of course there are those whose entire life revolves around acquiring new shiny things.
People will ditch a perfectly good smart-phone for a marginally better one; the very thing they loved (and paid handsomely for) 6 months ago now goes onto Ebay or sits in the bottom drawer.
That's maybe an extreme example of a somewhat wasteful and excessive relationship to consumerism.
And why is this example a bad thing? Why can't we be interested in developing technology you ask? Why must we use our things until they breakdown?
Well, if you replace your smart-phone say twice a year, what is the actual cost of doing so? And what is the true benefit to you? What do you truly gain versus what you give, in time and money?
Bad spending habits add clutter to your life, whilst subtracting time, money and energy.
If you are trying to save money, or want something bigger or more important in your life, like maybe a less stressful job or your own home, the willingness with which you part with your cash is going to be the first thing you need to simplify.
You can't have it all.
And by that I mean you can't have every material thing you lay your eyes on, and advance yourself in all your other dreams.
Taran and I currently are not earning much money whilst travelling, but when we chose to come to Australia we didn't just save up and think, 'Okay this is it for a bit, we'll be back to the 9-to-5 earn and spend grind soon enough'.
We quit our jobs and came travelling because it was the big change that we needed to untangle ourselves from the process of working to live and living to spend.
So, to repeat my earlier statement, spending habits underpin so much of your life, and really do play a role in how content and fulfilling a life it can be.
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BRINGING ATTENTION TO YOUR SPENDING AND MOVING FORWARD POSITIVELY:
1. Check Your Bank Statement
To begin this phase you need to look at the basics; what do you spend each day/week/month on things and experiences as well as the necessities.
- Look at the latest page of your bank statement, online or paper-form however you receive it.
- If you NEVER look at your statement, well, this is going to be a bit of a shock for you, if you are the type who just hands over the plastic and hopes for the best.
- Count up the last 10 things you spent money on excluding essentials and bills.
- What figure do you have? Is it more than you expected or more than you'd care to admit?
- Is it an amount that would help nicely toward your saving goals?
- Write down what the things that you bought, and consider what purpose they have brought with them.
- Did that spending bring in joy and fulfilment beyond the initial thrill of acquiring?
- If you can't even remember what you bought or why, well then, there's part of the problem...
2. Confront Your Debts
You've wizened up about what you spend, where you spend it, and maybe you feel like you want to sort it out... But you have something even bigger on your mind, riding your back and keeping you awake at night...
Credit cards and overdrafts are not the devil. They have numerous benefits and are sometimes a necessity (we use a credit card to make deposits and bookings in Australia).
But debt is something that happens when you get overexcited by seeing your credit limit whilst ignoring the very word, CREDIT. Credit is not free money, it is a shackle and an instant burden, unless you can comfortably make the repayment each month.
It's time to take your head out of the sands of debt, and confront your situation. List your debts from small to large. List the amounts of interest you pay on top of the minimum payments.
Immerse yourself these figures and wrap your head around them even if they shame and scare you. Don't let guilt or regret rule however, use the confronting emotions to motivate you to change things
If you are earning and working, and you know you aren't paying enough off, its time to ramp up your efforts, make larger payments, more often, whenever you have a random injection of cash.
Have your debt total as a figure ever-present in your mind. Write it down on a piece of paper and put it in your wallet. Every time you go to spend money on something you don't need, you will be reminded of your bigger goals.
The sense of freedom that comes with being debt-free is real. I have experienced it. The stress of owing and the feeling of being tied down to my past regrets and difficult life moments was completely lifted the day I became debt-free.
3. Fix Your Mindset
You've looked at the facts and figures. You've been confronted with the reality. You know how easy it is to just hand over your plastic and get the objects of desire you believe you need. But if you are now reconsidering your spending habits, then it is time to refocus your energy on positivity, as opposed to falling into a pit of deprived and harsh frugality.
Consider alternative ways of getting the same buzz that you feel shopping gives you. If you love buying books and have shelves filled with them, then instead of finding joy in the buying, find joy in the reading!
When you have had a need for something in the past have you ever considered heading to a charity shop/looking on gumtree/craigs-list to find a cheap and perfectly usable version of what you want? I feel like we can save so much money but also create a fun challenge for ourselves when we endeavour to recycle, revamp and reuse. Not that I am encouraging you to get more clutter, but there's something humbling about getting the things you do actually need really cheaply but at the same time recycling, helping others and giving new life to someone's old junk.
Look at all the things you have spent money on and find ways to get new value from them. Review your wardrobe and try new outfit combinations. Use your myriad of cooking utensils to try new recipes. Create regular self-care routines that help use up your overflowing collection of beauty products.
Do you have some larger goal for the future, a bigger reason behind pinning beautiful places on Pinterest? Do you want to travel more, see more and learn more? Outlining some exciting goals will motivate you to scrutinize your everyday spending further.
Are you feeding your passions and creativity, finding ways to express yourself and do what matters to you at your core?
Try to find a way back to the essence of what you want out of life, and step out of the confusion and overwhelming feeling that being on a spending downward spiral engulfs you with.
You might be thinking that you won't ever change, that you neither want nor need to. But if you can find a reason to derive more pleasure out of life that isn't related to what you spend, then you might find yourself less stressed and with heavier pockets.
I still want for things, and I still regret certain purchases, but by being mindful and confronting how I spend, I have still managed to clear my debts and go to Australia. I obviously have changed, and have managed to get something amazing out of being more thoughtful with my plastic.
Maybe you desperately want to clear debt but don't know how. Well, the first place to look is to consider the way you waste the money that should be going to clear them. You might think you already scrimp in order to make your credit payments, but so many pay the bare minimum, so as to free up that money up for disposable things.
You are normal to want things, normal to need things, normal to spend that which you work so hard to earn, but you needn't be a slave to the means of acquiring money to then simply acquire stuff. It's up to you.
Before you leave, you can now get the whole minimalist cleanse in book form, as an expanded and deepened process of steps and ideas! Available NOW.
Thanks for reading!
Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
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The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 2 [Simplifying Your Online World]
When you begin to look at your relationship with social media, you will realise the repetitive and dullness of your daily absorption within it.
The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 2 [Simplifying Your Online World]
In stage 1 of this series, we talked about minimalism in the home..
Focusing some energy on stripping our homes of the things which really add no value to our lives, and only bring mess and stress, you may have began to feel lighter and less weighed down by your material junk.
Maybe you discovered beautiful treasures beneath the clutter, re-lived old memories, or found special artefacts to proudly display in your newly cleansed space.
Hopefully you took the steps put forward, and will take forward an attitude of loving the things you have, instead of bringing new distractions and items into your life.
Of course it doesn't take a day to clear years of amassed bits and bobs, but you have made a start and can continue at your own pace, knowing you have done the hardest part, which is to begin!
You might now feel all the more ready to tackle stage 2 of this series...
THEME: Minimalism in your Technology.
Social media and the internet influence every aspect of modern life. We live in a world where in many western countries, the government is investing in high-speed internet; it is that much entrenched in contemporary culture, it's no longer just entertainment, its has become a right and to many, a need.
The world of new-sites and online editorial content, is steadfastly replacing print media, and now most people stay in touch with important news, blog''s of interest and other things which they enjoy exclusively via the internet. It really is at the centre of peoples everyday lives and behaviours.
...so goes the sign-of-times saying “Home is where the WIFI connects automatically”.
Many of us feel anxious when our internet doesn't work, or we go somewhere without wifi.
Temporarily disconnected, literally and mentally, you are sure that you are going to miss out on some vital piece of information, news, meme or dog video.
It's not wrong to feel this way, it just the natural result of our constant repeated use of our devices. I personally hate when the internet fails or I am out of a free wifi zone. I feel adrift and like I am going to be behind on something everybody else is in on.
Why do we feel this way?
Many of us live out our entire lives online, reporting it all in vivid colour and vibrant language, whilst others build a career based on online creativity; the internet is where some peoples whole businesses are founded and maintained.
The net (I feel like I am writing this in the late 90's or something...) has somewhat replaced television for many, with sites such as youtube and Netflix providing an array of entertainment, springing forth a new-breed of celebrities in the form of Vlogger's and Bloggers; the online world covers even more niche's than TV ever has or could.
The internet is there for all manner of weirdness, hobbies, fetishes, obsessions and escapism.
Despite most people agreeing on the usefulness of the online world, due to its potential for creating connections, fostering learning and of course building commerce, many despair at just how much we have been drawn into the inter-web.
And when you begin to look at your relationship with social media, your mobile phone and the whole world of apps and websites, you will observe the complexity of it, and often, the repetitive and dullness of your daily absorption within it.
I realized recently, whilst scrolling Instagram for maybe the 3rd time that day, that I was skipping past a lot of images. I was not really giving anything any real attention, yet I had chosen to follow these accounts at some point when the person or subject must have been vaguely interesting to me.
But this interest was clearly short-lived, and the result is me now mindlessly passing over things instead of taking a brief moment to un-follow these people, and escape from an endless conveyor-belt of thumbing over content.
So now it's time to bring back some more organization, purpose and clarity to your online life!
By the way, before you read on, this phase of the life cleanse is expanded upon, alongside the rest of the series, in a my new book, available NOW.
Amazon UK Store / US Store / AU Store / CA Store
Deleting Apps
Our phones and tablets will soon contain more contain apps than the actual app-store.
Count how many apps you have on your phone/tablet.
Now count how many you actually use.
Delete any apps you haven't used in the last month.
Re-arrange your used apps into folders labeled for their theme. I have 'WRITE''WATCH''READ', so I use short names which are fairly self-explanatory.
Look at your most used apps again and assess if you can now delete even more apps, the ones outside the category you consider most important or worth keeping.
Unfollow
Maybe some of us are too polite (or lazy) to un-follow people, but really, when you look at it realistically, someone's follower count really isn't something you should be giving much worry to...
Is it really that engaging for you or beneficial for the person posting stuff, to have their offerings ignored and scrolled over all the time?
Maybe its time to cut-down on the things you give your time and attention to.
Consider cutting down on who and what you follow....
Twitter: If you still want to follow someone but are bugged by their updates, then just mute them on your feed! That way you can keep in touch with their updates in your own time.
Facebook: The same thing applies here – you can streamline your time-line without causing any offence, by simply un-following peoples status updates. No need to see everything they have to say, but you can still check in on them now and again! And as for un-friending, well, I like your style, you're thinking big.
Instagram: I am so guilty of scrolling repeatedly over the same people, and I never stopped to observe my behaviour. When I finally did I started de-cluttering my account, I un-followed lots of people and made it so I only saw the things most interesting to me!
Myspace: Go on Myspace, re-activate your account, try to remember the now-defunct email address you used for your login, spend hours trying to locate this address to no avail. But once you do get it, login, and scroll through all your college friends, check out your pictures from those house-parties, and decide on whether that friend is displaying good HTML skills. And change your automated song to something more fresh.
Obviously, we're joking on that last part... how to improve your Myspace is in next weeks post.... :P
Clear Your Inbox
This is the virtual room that you need to de-clutter. It has shelves and shelves of things you have never read, or ever will....
Yes, you took the time to set-up which incoming junk-type emails to automatically send to your 'Filtered' folder, which is the same as saying “Go here, you will remain in my inbox but I will not read you and you will remain there until the end of the time”. Tut.
Now it's time to go and actually un-subscribe to those emails never read or which you no longer want to receive. Check the very bottom of the email, you will have an option to receive no further contact. Hurrah!
Clear that spam folder, and your (now quickly filling up) deleted folder.
Look at your other saved folders – are you keeping emailed bills from 5 years ago? It should be easy to find lots of things to send into the abyss of deleted emails!!
If your online activities, or the mass of information stored in your own personal online accounts, aren't adding to your happiness, helping you, or bringing inspiration into your life, then, why are you giving them so much of your time? Time you cannot get back.
Taran has found that deleting the Facebook app off of his phone made perfect sense; he didn't want to keep finding himself on that endless scrolling spree, and so he fixed that quite easily!
You could take that drastic step, or, alternatively, follow the above steps. The more you delete, the more you will want to delete! Editing, refining and creating an online space that meets your own personal wants and needs is such a satisfying process.
You'll realize that nowhere in this post am I explicitly telling anyone to cut down on their online time; being a blogger and a blog-lover I am permanently in the internet matrix, I never leave.... I am simply offering advice to help you enhance your relationship with your online practises, and make them more fruitful and fulfilling.
And if you happen to find yourself online less, or become more inspired by your new de-cluttered inter-web space, then you've taken a positive if unintentional step towards even more minimalism and simplicity.
Thanks for reading!
Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
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The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 1 [De-Cluttering your Home]
Your lifestyle consists of numerous different habits, routines, behaviours, activities and passions. Some of these become stagnated or so repetitive you sometimes fail to notice that they aren't quite satisfying you any-more, or adding any substantial value to your daily life.
The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 1 [De-Cluttering your Home]
The Theme here? Minimalism in the home.
Minimalism is such a broad word for all that it encompasses, the meaning stretching across many different elements of your life and approach to, well, almost everything.
Your lifestyle consists of numerous different habits, routines, behaviours, activities and passions. Some of these become stagnated or so repetitive you sometimes fail to notice that they aren't quite satisfying you any-more, or adding any substantial value to your daily life. That is where stage 1 of the cleanse comes in.
You are going to bring minimalism into your life, beginning with your home.
Why minimalism you ask? Why is everyone so nonsensically obsessed with this movement, what is so appealing about it!
Well, it's kinda like exercise, if you don't ever do it, you can't fully understand how beneficial it is and how good it makes people feel, so naturally you look at it with apathy and scepticism. And minimalism, well you can't understand the sense of clarity and peace that comes with the practice of de-cluttering your life until you yourself try it. And you learn quite quickly once you begin to de-clutter, how you never needed so many types of items, and so many different versions and options!
A good example for myself, is my nail polish collection...since taking off travelling I have had two nail polishes in my collection, a mint one, and a purple one. I am yet to finish either or get bored of them. And then I remember I have about 25 polishes back home, doing nothing, sat in a drawer. And it occurred to me, I definitely have no real need for that amount of choice when I can evidently be more than happy with less! I don't need 25 of anything. I can be happy with 2. And you can apply this same concept to your stuff.
Having lots of things, or lots of options, has a lot to do with our commercial capitalist world.
Of course we end up with numerous things in our homes because shopping is a regular pastime for many people that means we inevitably add things to our collections that we already have, and end up with something in 3 different styles or colours. We pander to fashions and changing likes/dislikes in the culture around us, and yet still keep the old, the things we no longer consider attractive.
That leads to a cluttered mixture of things within the home, some never seeing the light of day. The result can often be a state of indecision within ourselves; what do we even like any more!
We end up seeing our wants, as needs, and this has lead to not simply our cluttered home spaces but a whole host of other issues; overspending and debt, hoarding, being weighed down by too much choice, feeling inadequate in the midst of the commercial world and it's changing fashions vying for our attention and our money.
So, I want to change things. WHERE DO I BEGIN?
TAKE THESE 3 STEPS, AND BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY TO MINIMALISM, SIMPLICITY AND A MORE CONTENT LIFE.
1. Discard
DOWNLOAD OUR DE-CLUTTER CHECKLIST HERE!
- Start wherever you wish in the home. Choose a space to thoroughly declutter top to bottom.
- Put your merciless boots on, you are taking no prisoners.
- A good way to think is, would I want to save this item in a fire? And go from there...
- Throw away, donate, or sell, all the items that you haven't touched or looked at in the last 6 months (maybe excluding Christmas decorations!).
- Apply the need versus want rule: You might want 10 different styles of sunglasses but do you honestly need them?
- When looking at fashion items, ask yourself, if you saw this in a shop now, would you buy it today?
- You don't need duplicates of items, old worn out items, things you simply ignore the existence of in favour of just never having to actually put the effort into cleaning and tidying!
- Be even more merciless than you have ever been before when you might have tidied your home. You might be holding back a little but you must be committed and positive from the beginning of this journey.
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2. Reorganize
Now you have less stuff, it's time to organize what you do have.
- Do you need 3 chests of drawers or a giant wardrobe any more?
- Could you get by with less furniture, meaning you can add space to your home?
- If you want a less cluttered look to the home, a shelving unit with spaces for storage bins might be a neat alternative to storing items.
- If you want to create an eclectic aesthetic, consider a shelving unit which shows off your most treasured items, books, keepsakes and photographs. Seeing the things you find meaningful each day reminds you why you don't need to acquire more.
- Minimalism needn't mean no art on the walls or rugs on the floors, in fact I cant imagine anything more inspiring and simultaneously peaceful than having only a few beloved furnishings making the home individual and comfortable.
- Try to order your things in the way that you can recall where everything of daily need is, quite quickly. A sure sign that you have too much stuff is needing to rifle through all your storage in order to locate something.
- Seek inspiration for storage solutions on PINTEREST. This is my favourite source of clever ideas which not only work in a minimalist environment but generally make life easier!
3. Regard
You've done it! Well done!
- You have created a space that is not only calm and ordered, but you have also detached yourself further from the practice of acquiring material things.
- The less you have the less you need; this is a realization you may be experiencing having completed this process.
- Do you feel lighter? Do you feel like it would be easier now to enjoy your space, be creative, or social within it, and if you want to, pack it all up and go somewhere new?
- Enjoy it. Enjoy knowing you are giving yourself and your treasures, the space and the atmosphere to be happy and content.
- Take interest in all those hobbies or interests that might have fell by the wayside in the past. You have far less distractions to split your attention and efforts in your new streamlined space.
- No need to spend half your life tidying! There's hardly anything left to tidy!
- Find pleasure in your new space. Revel in it. Love the things you have kept and use them well.
By the way, before you leave, I recently released my book, Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person, available NOW! It's a more in-depth guide to de-cluttering your home, organizing your life, refining your spending habits and simplifying your relationship with your technology:
Thanks for reading!
Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
WANT MORE?
Living A Minimalistic Life on the Road
We aren't above material things, or spending money, or ever acquiring ANYTHING. Of course we do. I like clothes, although I have got pretty used to my tiny travel wardrobe. Taran likes gadgets (albeit not the latest mobile phone). We both like stuff, we're only human.
Living A Minimalistic Life on the Road
If you read this, then you will be well aware of how Taran and I have set about creating simpler lives, centred around travelling, living with less possessions and little to no clutter.
We aren't above material things, or spending money, or ever acquiring ANYTHING. Of course we do. I like clothes, although I have got pretty used to my tiny travel wardrobe. Taran likes gadgets (albeit not the latest mobile phone). We both like stuff, we're only human.
But in the past year we decided to eliminate all the extraneous things that weren't bringing anything to our daily life or adding satisfaction. It made sense to do this because we were leaving home for a long time and it felt like a cleansing part of the mental preparation, off-loading years of accumulated bits and bobs.
Taking a hard look at our buying habits or tendency toward hoarding things, and changing our approach to 'stuff', we have saved ourselves money, time and energy. We haven't got the stress attached to having a home full of things, or the emotional linkage towards lots of things we can live without but have turned into items of symbolism; items that are ultimately irrelevant to your overall contentment and fulfilment and simply create clutter.
Now we live in a tent, out of two backpacks. Our most important things e.g. wallet, passport, phone, stay on us almost all the time. Our life has become a whole lot more simplistic and yet travel brings new complications.
We don't have a proper bed, or quilt, or pillows. We have one hoody each, neither very warm. Taran's shoes are falling apart. My cheap sandals are ruined by mud. So we are going to slowly lose even more possessions through sheer over-use. But it's teaching us a valid lesson, a new and fresh take on minimalism.
Yes the dress I'm wearing has approximately 3 holes in, and yes I do view the other girls at the hostel like a constant cat-walk of all the fashionable clothes I would buy if I had the dollar. But most of the time I just get on with it, and remind myself how my money is better spent elsewhere, or at least put toward functional things!
When you need to, you really can get by with a very small selection of belongings, and not feel any less happy whilst doing it.
The proof is in the pudding, the pudding being that we have been backpacking for 8-weeks with just a bag on each our backs and we are no more miserable because of it. Obviously buying new or random stuff would literally not fit into our nomadic life. But also, money spent on stuff would be money not then available for nice food or excursions. It would be wasted money and limiting to our overall travel experience.
So maybe in non-nomadic life, this reality also exists, whereby material gains become overall losses.
I have found that whilst travelling and currently not working (only 6 hours every two days for accommodation) you have plenty of free time, in which you could easily over-spend. But I have found myself developing an interest in things I never did before, back when our work/life balance was geared towards consumerism.
Now we can choose how to use our time more flexibly, and develop hobbies that allow creativity, entertainment and don't cost a whole lot.
The people around us spend their days writing music and practising playing instruments, making jewellery, knitting, writing poetry, doing yoga or meditation, all stuff that seems to keep them busy and satisfied.
I have loved spending time just reading, planning places to visit, people-watching, and enjoying the sunset over the Byron coast. Taran has loved drawing and listening to his music, meeting new people and we both love waking up whenever we want!
Lucky me, lucky us. We are leading a charmed life, one which we chose, one which is sometimes hard, when you miss home or worry over your dwindling bank account, but we are using this experience to gain even more separation from the financial ties that bound us in our previous lives. And that doesn't feel like a bad thing, at all.
We are living our own version of a nomadic lifestyle, where some travellers live out of a van, packed to the rafters with kit, whilst others travel with the tiniest of tents and are never seen out of the same outfit. And both appear quite happy with their choices.
For us, travel has helped us become even bigger devotees to minimalistic living, and we hope to take these newly learnt behaviours with us whatever our future shapes into.
Thanks for reading!
Hannah and Taran here. We hail from Southern England, where we met online and are now realizing our mutual passion for travel here at NomaderHowFar. We discuss Nomadic Living, Simplifying your Life and Long-term Travel, to empower, motivate and inspire our readers. Get to know us here!
Recommended Reads:
Minimalism Will Make You A Calmer Person: Cleaning Out Your Home
Our world is loud; its full to the brim with visual noise and overwhelming excess. Turn it all down by starting from within the home to create a more minimalistic lifestyle.
Minimalism Will Make You A Calmer Person: Cleaning Out Your Home
You have lead a busy, complex and interesting life.
Along the way you have collected many a souvenir. These now gather dust on shelves, which are fit to bust, with all manner of things you've been gifted or bought. Your drawers overflow with every colour of your favourite t-shirt, numerous pairs of jeans, and scarves of various patterns.
You find you never have any space to put the new stuff you acquire.
If this does indeed sound like you, then you're most likely a human. And us humans generally collect, hoard and keep things. We end up with so many options and versions of the same object, yet usually favour only a small selection on a daily basis.
We hold onto things which remind us of a happy memory. We surround ourselves with artefacts of the past, and the future, in the form of DVD's, books, as yet unread, the promise of entertainment held within an object.
Contrasting our beloved nostalgic remnants, sit shiny smart televisions, laptops, tablets and state-of-the-art coffee-makers. In fact some of our most prized possessions our items that bring us instant gratification.
Our homes are saturated with evidence that supports the hopeful belief that yes, we are leading full lives; we are in touch with modern technology, but also cherish our past life moments.
But don't you ever feel smothered by it all?
I must confess, in my bedroom at home, only a select few sentimental objects are sat on the surface of the drawers or window-sill, as most of my things are orderly and neatly tidied away.
I feel calm and relaxed when I am not surrounded by stuff and that's how I kept my room something of a sanctuary. A place in which I can be creative, or relax, unencumbered by any random clutter, itmes representing hobbies which lasted 5 minutes or fashions that never really fit my style.
Our website says it all about our minimalist approach, as we like to keep the design simple and clean, because there are only a few important things that the reader needs to see on a page; the focus should always be the post content, not links or ad's, here there and everywhere.
I keep as much of my life as simple as possible.
I often view mess or clutter as being loud, or as disrupting my attempts to develop inner calm, with the purpose of meditation being that we find peace in the emptiness of a clear-mind. So I aim for a stress-free feeling by living in a minimalistic way.
I don't want to surround myself with literal or object noise, and so, to feel calm, I want my surroundings to reflect only calmness back at me.
4 steps to creating a minimalistic life inside your home:
It's time for a giant clean-out.
You have to begin somewhere and the best place to start is condensing your material possessions down to the categories of Needed, Irreplaceable and Redundant.
- These things will then be sorted between rubbish/trash, charity, and keep.
- Begin with a small room or a section of a room and start getting rid of things.
- Choose a drawer, a side or a cupboard and remove everything from it and then consider each items use.
- Ask yourself, always, does this item have any current relevance in my life and does it hold sentimentality.
More often than not you find yourself throwing away much more than you would of expected.
Say bye-bye to the three different electric whiskers but maybe not to the 35 baby photos; consider repurposing these into wall-art, or storing them for a less cluttered aesthetic.
Get Rid Of Furnishings
You may find less need for the 3 chests of chunky drawers once you've reduced your stuff down and so its time to donate these to charity, a friend, or the recycling plant, for some lucky person to make their own.
- You could sell these things on and use the money to fund your travels or an experience, but not for buying more stuff.
- Donating these things to a charity shop will allow them to take on new life, where people less fortunate than you who want to furnish their home on the cheap can re-use and re-purpose them for their own lives.
- Consider how you use your current furniture. Is it organized, well-positioned and purposeful?
Focus on creating a more tranquil space that is more conducive to chill-time, and whatever it is you do to relax or unwind.
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Organize Your Daily Life
Ted.com Writer and designer Graham Hill asks: Can having less stuff, in less room, lead to more happiness? He makes the case for taking up less space, and lays out three rules for editing your life.
Your giant clean-out doesn't mean you will suddenly have nothing to tidy, so its time to put things in the places that are at ease with your everyday routine.
- I have all the random things which I use daily, neatly arranged in my desk drawer, so that I don't need to look through every drawer I have to find them.
- My paperwork that I need to keep but never look at sits in the boring filing drawer, along with other stuff I don't need daily but still have to keep safe.
- When doing this exercise you often find even more things to discard. Prioritizing organisation in your home or bedroom allows you to consider what things you really need and want.
It's amazing how much momentum you gain each time you de-clutter, you just get more bold and more brutal!
Now Discard Even More Stuff.
I may now live a more minimalist life but I once was the person who hoarded every plastic bag I ever acquired and managed to have three moneybags of batteries, none of which I could be sure had any juice left.
So quite often after I have already reduced down my stuff, I still find small extraneous bits that I can dispose of.
Maybe you weren't harsh enough to begin with and so its time to go full minimalist-mode!!
- Clean out your kitchen cupboards. Donate good crockery and accessories to charity.
- Look at your multiples. Do you have too many shoes that are all alike, too many pairs of socks, half of which have holes in. Leave yourself with less things but more quality options instead.
- Assess your paperwork. Get rid of all the things you thought you should have kept that date back 5 years. Organize what remains into a file, and consider scanning really important doc's in and backing them up.
Its a constantly fun and never-ending release of tension downsizing my personal stuff footprint.
I have less desire for more stuff, thus less of that drive to consume, which allows me to live a financially sustainable and less wasteful life.
Maybe you too could try some of the above ideas, if you want to feel lighter in stuff and quieter on the inside, but heavier in the bank account, and more fulfilled in general. Having less can bring you so much more in quality interactions, relaxation time and unlock new interests and passions you previously hadn't considered.
You have lead a busy, complex and interesting life... https://t.co/Arx2obdZb7 #minimalism #minimalist #calm pic.twitter.com/bNlMYYcBUa
— Taran & Hannah (@Nomaderhowfar) May 19, 2016
Before you go, just to let you know, you can now buy my Minimalism book! It's a more in-depth guide to de-cluttering your home, organizing your life, refining your spending habits and simplifying your relationship with your technology.
Thanks for reading!
Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.
Recommended reads:
4 Steps To A Minimalist Life: Nomadifying Your World
Life is somewhat defined by accumulation; gathering memories of special experiences, meeting people and forming loving relationships. We accumulate these connections when we are living our lives to the fullest and they are part of what constitutes 'Happiness', in my opinion.
4 Steps to A Minimalist Life: Nomadifying Your World
*This is one of our first post's about Minimalism from way back in 2014. We have come a lot further down the road of simplifying, and we did indeed follow our nomadic dreams, and currently live in Australia. For more recent and expansive reading on this topic, check out the minimalism section*
Life is somewhat defined by accumulation; gathering memories of special experiences, meeting people and forming loving relationships.
We accumulate these connections when we are living our lives to the fullest and they are part of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment for most people.
The flip-side to this, is the accumulation of things, material goods and random accoutrements; many people also associate being wealthy and acquiring 'things', with happiness.
I disagree on that point, and so do followers of the minimalist movement. Many steadfast simplifiers come from big money backgrounds, who traded in the corporate lifestyle when they realized it wasn't the key to deep and lasting fulfillment.
An article written by Rebecca J. Rosen of The Atlantic interviews people who changed their lives radically and improved their all-round happiness and stress levels tenfold...
How did they do this? By adopting a minimalist style of living.
I had been thinking about making a blog post about de-cluttering your surroundings and your life, for quite a while, and happened upon this article which perfectly highlights the ideas behind my own changing relationship with consumerism.
The interviewees are consciously selective about what they do acquire, and seek to add only things with meaning and true usefulness.
That's only further spurred on my desire to Nomad-Ify my own life.
Nomad-ify?
Apart from seemingly inventing a word, I really mean, simplifying your surroundings and belongings, so that you are truly prepared for a nomadic travel lifestyle.
And if you aren't planning to travel any time soon, you can still follow these ideas, and achieve the same positive effects for your own life.
Wouldn't it be nice if every time you moved home, it wasn't such a stressful process, because you simply had less stuff to move?
How pleasant might it feel if your cleaning routine took half the time and you suddenly created a more productive day with time to spare?
Step 1: Time To Off-Load
- Pick a drawer. Pick a cupboard. Pick a whole room in your house if you like. Just begin somewhere. Choose the space which is stressing you out the most, or, select the smallest space.
- Question your possessions. For example, go to the kitchen cupboard and question, why do I have 40 mugs, when I only have one mouth? Now go up to the bathroom. Why do I have 8 varieties of shower gel on the go, when all I do is wash it down the drain?
- Before you try and fix everywhere in your home, really focus on the space you either spend the most time, or the place you go to feel relaxed. For me, that is the bedroom... I love having a minimalist and tidy feel to mine, it creates a really relaxed feeling in there. I have cultivated that by spending months slowly getting rid of stuff. Go over to the wardrobe or drawers....it's time to tackle the clothes. Get some plastic bins or baskets, and label them Charity, Donation and Bin. Charity for the charity shop, donation for those huge bins they have in supermarket car parks where you can donate clothes that are not quite good enough for resale, and then the bin, well, that's for the stained pair of comfy jogging bottoms you can't bear to part with. Of course the clothes you want to keep, put to one side. Also, if you wish to sell some things, create a separate pile for this. Bear in mind that we often set aside clothing we believe will make us some money back and we just never set aside time to actually list them for sale!
We're not just discarding stuff without thought here, we are reassessing it's value in OUR lives and whether these items are useful to US. When the answer is no, then this stuff becomes useful to others, or is just junk, and it's time to say goodbye to it.
RULES: HAVE I USED THIS ITEM WITHIN THE LAST 6 MONTHS? WOULD I BUY THIS IF I SAW IT IN A SHOP TODAY?
If you answer No, then put it in the chosen pile.
Pheww! you are already nearer to the minimalist life.
Step 2: A Shopping Detox
Is it a big hobby of yours to peruse local supermarkets or head into town to the shopping centre, just to mull around, even though you always end up buying SOMETHING. Well, you are now on a shopping ban. Don't worry, you can still buy food, we aren't talking about de-cluttering our bodies here (food is my one spending vice, it keeps me sane).
- If you are shopping to quell boredom, find escapism or seek that momentary buzz associated with acquiring something new and shiny, could you be using that time and money more healthily?
- Do you struggle to pay bills or are you unable to repay your debts because of what you spending on random things?
- Confront yourself. Are you guilty of needless and impulse spending? Are you one of those people who comes home with several shopping bags a few times a month? STOPPPP ITTT. For a while at least. It's more of a bad habit, not a fun hobby; you need to see it that way in order to realize you can stop doing it so much.
RULES: DO I REALLY NEED THIS DRESS? IS IT OF SUPERIOR QUALITY TO ANYTHING I ALREADY OWN? DO I NEED THIS PAIR OF HEELS WHEN I LIVE IN FLATS? DO I NEED ANOTHER THROW CUSHION WHEN ALL I DO IS LITERALLY THROW THEM OFF THE BED EACH NIGHT?
Be honest with yourself, nobody needs eight cushions.
Step 3: Make Money, Make Room
So you've tidied up, and thrown lots away. Now it's time to tackle the stuff you could make some money out of.
- List items of quality on Ebay or gumtree (craiglist if you are American) and set yourself a target of how much extra money you want to make selling your things. If you a figure in mind you will feel more motivated to follow through on listing, advertising and selling.
- Go to a car boot sale (or have a garage sale), and let your things find a new home. Just because you no longer need this item, doesn't render it useless or unappealing to someone else.
- Consider if some of your things could be repurposed, like old furniture or decorative items, that you could then re-sell at a decent value.
RULE: WILL I BE USING THIS AGAIN ANY TIME SOON? WILL I BE ABLE TO REPURCHASE IT IF I EVER DO NEED IT AGAIN? DO I SOURCE ANY DAILY ENJOYMENT OUT OF THIS OBJECT?
Step 4: Envision A Simpler Life
When I clean or tidy, or throw stuff away, I feel physically and mentally lighter.
Whether it's all in my head or whether its my energy responding to something different in my surroundings, it brings a sense of calm and peace. I feel so much more prepared for my nomadic dreams knowing my clutter footprint is reduced.
The idea of travelling becomes even more exciting to me and the thought of leaving behind what belongings remain, incredibly easy.
As I witness myself saving money and not buying more random stuff, I imagine enjoying a day on the beach in Australia, where my last concern will be for the stuff I threw away; it will just be Taran, me, a towel and the sea.
What do you see when you imagine a simpler life?
What steps do you need to take to reach that? Maybe begin with the above 3.
Possibly it's about changing your attitude towards consumerism.
Maybe you need to take up some hobbies which don't rely on accumulating stuff or spending much money. If we can develop passions that are independent of our financial state, that can withstand times of difficulty, we will learn to be happy with less; less stress, less push for money and less financial commitment, but, more joy.
It's not just about throwing things away, it's a re-imagining of your relationship to material things; your happiness can come from so much more than what's in a shop window. When I felt lost and passionless, I also had massive debts and a huge shopping addiction. I was miserable and misguided in how I used my money. When I fully embraced the multiple benefits of a minimalist life, I did indeed find my dreams, follow them and start afresh.
Your bank balance does not define how full your life can be. It's how you use your money, your time and your energy that will lead to long-lasting fulfilment.
So take control, de-clutter, and Nomad-ify yourself.
Why? Because it feels really, really, good.
Hey, before you go...
In 2016 I released my Book: Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person
If you're into minimalism or reducing stress, its really worth a read!
Thanks for reading!
Hannah and Taran here. We hail from Southern England, where we met online and are now realizing our mutual passion for travel here at NomaderHowFar. We discuss Nomadic Living, Simplifying your Life and Long-term Travel, to empower, motivate and inspire our readers. Get to know us here!
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