Walk In The Rain With Me: minimalism

Top 5 Most Important Lessons I Learned from Minimalism

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

I have an announcement to make. I'm sure everyone knew it was coming. I've hinted at this for a while now, and I think it's time I finally just come out and say it...

I am a minimalist.

Over the past few months, I've been making myself more and more familiar with the term "minimalism." I've been intrigued by the concept ever since I first heard of it, and the more I looked at it, the more sense it made.

I know that some people don't get it. Some people don't understand what minimalism really means, the reason I'm so passionate about it, how it applies to "real life," or why it's important at all.

So today, I want to share with you just a few of the things I've learned about and because of minimalism.

Top 5 Most Important Lessons I Learned from Minimalism

1. Less stuff means less stress. I quickly figured out that the less clutter there was taking up space in my room, the less clutter I had taking up space in my head. The less clutter there is, the less brain-power that's preoccupied by dealing with it. Owning fewer clothes means less pressure when getting dressed. Owning fewer things means less to keep clean.

2. More of a good thing isn't always better. Our society seems to have fallen prey to the idea that if one thing is good, two of them is twice as good. I would say that, in most cases, one is probably quite enough. Think of it this way: taking an iron supplement can be good for you, so one might suspect that getting twice as much is twice as good. Except most of us have heard of iron-overdose... Probably everyone has eaten too much cake at one point, too.

3. Minimalism doesn't mean we have to get rid of everything. Minimalism isn't about just chucking everything out the door. It's about populating our lives with things and people who add value instead of with meaningless junk that's just taking up space. "Minimalism is living with what you NEED and what you LOVE. That's it." [Unknown]

4. A gift is only a gift until it becomes a burden. Gift-giving is thoroughly embedded in our culture as one of the "proper" ways to show affection and/or admiration, but there is a certain amount of pressure that comes with being on the receiving end of a gift: what happens if I don't want it? Many of us simply decide to hold onto whatever the gift was because, "They were thinking of me!" But a gift is only a gift until it becomes a burden... If we're holding onto something we neither want nor need simply because it was a gift, it's probably time to let it go.

5. The less you believe you need, the richer you become. If you could only take away one thing from this blog post, this is what it should be. One of the most important lessons I've learned through minimalism is the art of being content. Wealth is inherently defined by what we think we need. When we choose to "need" less, we open ourselves up to recognizing how much we already have.

I guess this is all to say that I do believe minimalism can be for everyone. It's not a one-size-fits-all regime that dictates the way one lives their life. It's simply a lens through which we can choose to view everything else...

If you're interested in reading more about minimalism, I have written several posts about it, and you can browse through those over here. I also recommend checking out Becoming Minimalist, The Minimalists, and Be More With Less.

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What is one misconception you've had or heard about minimalism? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below, over at my Facebook page, or you can email it to me at anastasiarosewrites[@]gmail[.]com!

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101 Things: Counting Down

Well, I still haven't bought the paper for my cranes. Am I starting to panic about making 1,000 paper cranes in a year? Maybe just a little bit... But at least I've gotten the ball rolling for #7- Shoot a gun.

minimalism

The Unrealized Burden

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Christmas

The Complete Guide to Christmas: From a Minimalist

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Christmas is an awkward time of year to be a minimalist. With so much emphasis being put on gift-giving, it's definitely a quandary for those of us who genuinely do not want to get more stuff...

This will actually be my first year celebrating Christmas as a minimalist. As a result, I was a bit unsure how to approach the whole gift-giving thing. How do I avoid getting a lot of stuff I will never use? Do I actually feel right asking for gifts at all, right now?

Through careful consideration and deep contemplation, I have compiled a list of five ways to maintain good habits through the Christmas season.

Five Tips for a Minimalist Christmas

1. Make a highly-specific Wish List. Keep it short, and include items you genuinely need (a new slow-cooker since your old one broke, replacement bike tires, etc) or actually want (a specific pair of shoes, a video camera, etc).

2. Ask for a highly-specific Wish List. If you don't want to contribute to the world-wide clutter, ask exactly what the person in question actually wants. If you want to be sneaky about it, ask their friends or family.

3. Give experience gifts. If you'd rather not give things at all, experience gifts are an excellent idea. Give them a gift-card to their favorite restaurant, and set up a date for you to go together. Give them a "coupon" for one trip to the movies. Your time is possibly the most valuable thing you have to give.

4. Charity gift catalogs and other ways to give. Take this time to support a local charity, sponsor a child, or "purchase" something out of a gift-catalog in lieu of traditional presents. Some great examples are Gospel for Asia's Christmas Catalog, A21's Christmas Gifts, and your local Salvation Army Angel Tree.

5. Focus on and emphasize other aspects of Christmas. Make a point to tell the Nativity story, or read an Advent devotional in the days before. Go caroling, or host a charity drive. Create new traditions for your family that don't revolve around physical things.

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Let's not forget the friends and family, in this situation. If you have a minimalist loved-one, than these next five tips are for you!

Five Tips for Loving Your Minimalist on Christmas

1. Pay attention to their Wish List. If they have taken the time to give you a specific list of what they'd like, it's probably genuine.

2. Something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read. This is a guide that a lot of families use for Christmas, but it can be adapted to almost any relationship. You could replace "wear" with "eat" if they don't want clothes. Maybe you could collaborate with a few friends so your minimalist gets an item from each category.

3. Give experience gifts. Minimalists tend to value time even more than the majority, so giving us a little bit of yours will mean a lot. A few examples of an experience gift would be a gift-card to their favorite restaurant, a punch card (or similar thing) for a favorite activity or class, and "date night" coupons.

4. Be intentional. Much like they value time, minimalists value intention and sincerity. If they can tell you've put thought into their gift, they will probably like it all the more.

5. Respect their wishes. Whether or not you really "get it," please try to respect what they've requested. If that means no physical gifts, than the best thing to do is honor that.

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What's on your Christmas list this year? Share it with us in the comment section below, over at my Facebook page, or email it to us at anastasiarosewrites@gmail.com!

minimalism

Work Resumes!

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Last month, I began a project... This month, I'm going to finish it.

For the past several weeks, I've been working on unpacking and clearing out the things I don't want. The plan had been to get it done as quickly as possible so it would be finished.

But... that's not really what happened. Instead, the work went really well for the first week...

And then just stopped.

Which was really not what I had planned. At all.

Part of the reason work in my room had been paused for a while was that I was actually really really busy.

I was in a play last week, which meant dress-rehearsals, longer practices, and (obviously) the shows! Then the next two days (Saturday and Sunday) consisted almost entirely of me being at a dance convention, or me being exhausted.

But last night... work began again!

There weren't too many boxes left anyways, but we emptied out several more last night. We got our hats sorted out, our dolls are back on their shelves, and the few knickknacks we're actually keeping now have a place.

We are getting so very close to being done with the Packing Party, and I am determined to be finished by the end of this month. Which is why I am officially announcing to you that I will have our room clean and every box unpacked by January 1st, 2015!

This is going to require a certain amount of work on my part- not only to get the job done, but also to stay motivated.

Staying motivated is probably one of the hardest things for me about this whole minimalism thing. I'm here in the last leg of the race, and that initial burst of energy has worn off. So what's keeping me going at all?

One of the biggest things that keeps me going is definitely the promise of a clean, happy, stress-free bedroom. Another motivator is simply being able to say that I did it.

And sometimes... those two aren't really enough. Sometimes, I just don't feel motivated. Sometimes, nothing I tell myself actually makes a difference. We're at the end of the race, and the big burst of energy at the start has officially worn off.

In times likes those, I have two options- I can either not clean, or I can clean in spite of not feeling motivated.

This month will probably involve a lot of the latter...

(And to finish- some photos. Because what home-improvement blog post would be complete without photos?!)

This is a full view of our room. It's still got work to be done, but we are making progress!

This is our large stack of stuff to get rid of. Isn't that awesome?!?!

This is probably one of the spots I'm most proud of. Look how organized it is!

And this is our mostly-empty-extremely-tidy bookshelf. It makes me very happy. (I must add that this is not the bookshelf that actually hold our books! That's a different one.)

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And now my question for you is what projects are you working on, and what motivates you? Be sure to leave your response in the comment section below, over at my Facebook page, or email it to me at anastasiarosewrites@gmail.com.

minimalism

Unpacking the Boxes

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

A few weeks ago, I wrote about packing all of my things as the beginning of my journey towards minimalism. Now, you might be wondering how all of that went, since I haven't really mentioned anything about it since.

So today, I'm going to tell you.

Sooo... On Monday, November 3rd, my older sister and I packed all of our belongings into boxes. The idea was to only unpack things as we needed them, which would show us exactly what we were using versus what we thought we were using and as such, don't need.

Originally, I had planned to unpack after about a week. However, as I started to think about it more, I realized that it might make more sense to wait a bit longer so we would have a wider time-frame to work with.

So we voluntarily lived out of boxes for two weeks.

One might think that would be the worst thing in the world. To be perfectly honest, I didn't take much notice of it. Getting dressed was a little annoying, but it kind of dawned on me that maybe, if the shirt wasn't worth the effort of digging it out, than it wasn't worth keeping.

It's definitely been an eye-opening experience, and the end result (although we're still not done unpacking) has been quite a big pile of things to be gotten rid of.

Another result of this experiment has been that we actually rearranged some stuff that needed to be rearranged! Pretty cool, huh? For instance- the bookshelf. I've been meaning to figure out a better set up for our books... probably since we moved into the room. And now I really have!

So, here are some pictures of the progress that's happening in our room!

Before...

...After!

Before...

...After!

And here's that bookshelf I'm so happy with!

Isn't it so pretty? I know we still have quite a bit of work to do, and it might not look like we've made much progress, but we have. We're taking it a little bit at a time, and eventually we'll get there.

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What do you think about minimalism and The Packing Project? Would you consider it? I'd love to hear what you have to say! Leave your comment below, over at my Facebook page, or by emailing me at anastasiarosewrites@gmail.com!

minimalism

How I Packed All of My Stuff (And Why!)

Thursday, November 06, 2014

Because I've gotten a lot of questions about it this week, today I want to tell you how I packed up all of my stuff... (And why!)

In a my last blog post, I shared with you the idea of a Packing Party, which was first introduced to me by The Minimalists.

Basically, you spend a day (or two, if necessary) packing up all of your stuff as though you had to move. Over the next week, you unpack your belongs only as you need them. At the end of your set time, you see exactly what you use over the course of a week, and you go through the unopened boxes using them as a starting point for getting rid of stuff you don't really need.

Before my sister and I packed, this is what our shared room looked like...

The view from the doorway.

This is the view from the doorway pre-packing. In the bottom right corner, you can see our stack of empty boxes waiting to be filled. It took about ten minutes to find enough boxes for us to start. I was worried we wouldn't have enough, but we ended up finding quite a few more than I expected!

Every shelf in our room has something on it.

Storage has always seemed like a big issue in our room because every shelf has something on it. That was one of the biggest deciding factors when contemplating the shift to minimalism- we simply have too much stuff for our space.

The closet was especially full.

The closet was one of the best (or worst) examples of the storage crisis, and the space that bugged me the most. In fact, it was while I was looking at our very sad closet that I decided everything must go! (Well, not everything, but you get my reference, don't you?)

Monday was our big packing day. We started around noon and worked until "lunch break" at 3:30. I worked by myself for the next three hours, then my sister took a shift after that. We decided to stop for the night just after 9, and had gotten nearly all of our stuff packed.

The next day- which also happened to be yesterday- we finished up what we hadn't been able to get done already. There were just a few shelves that still hadn't been packed up Today, I have declared that we are

Officially done packing!

Now, I realize that we aren't actually moving, and I know that none of this was mandatory... But I'm still excited and relieved to have everything done! It's been a really long and busy two days, and I'm so glad we're able to move on to the next stage of the proceedings.

Unpacking.

Thankfully, this isn't nearly as intense as the packing was. Actually, the point is to not be intense. The point is that we really aren't focusing on getting things out of the boxes- we just get them out when we need them.

Until then, this is how our room looks...

The new view from the doorway.

Here is the view from our doorway! You can see that the floor is completely clear except for the area holding our boxes. The bed- which was a temporary landing place for the boxes- is also nice and clean, now.

Most of our boxes are piled in one corner of the room.

For the moment- to get them out of the way- we have all of the boxes piled on one side of the room. In the original Packing Party by The Minimalists, a whole house was packed up and they were able to devote a full room to holding the boxes. Because we only have one room and so much space, we're making do with what we've got.

This is the rest of our boxes, as well as our dressers which are packed under sheets.

We had more boxes than would fit in the one corner of the room, we put the rest of our boxes on top of the dressers. Since the dressers obviously wouldn't fit in any box we've got, we covered them both up with sheets and did the same thing for our beds.

There's something very humbling about looking at pretty much everything you own packed away in boxes and stacked in the corner of your room. Nothing's hidden away behind doors or in cabinets- it's all out in the open.

I'm definitely gaining a new sense of perspective about how privileged I really am, which was just one of the many reasons I decided to pack my stuff away.

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Did this answer any questions you may have had about The Project? Were there any misconceptions you had about minimalism that have been cleared up now? If you have anything you'd like to ask about The Packing Party or minimalism, just leave me a comment below or over at my Facebook page! I always love to hear from my readers.

There will be more pictures to come next week when we go through the boxes again, so be sure to subscribe over --> you'll never miss another post!

life

Making a Mark- But Not Too Big

Monday, November 03, 2014

I don't know about you, but I think a lot about the mark I'm leaving on the world. I mean, I want to be remembered and make a difference. I want to make an impact on the people (and the world in general!) around me.

But not too big.

I think I'm also starting to see that simply making a mark on the world isn't good enough. Because there's more than one kind of mark you can leave, and they're certainly not all what I want...

What mark is this? You may have guessed already. I'm talking, of course about my footprint. I'm talking about all of the things I would leave behind. And I'm now realizing that if I were to die tomorrow I would be leaving behind a lot of stuff.

source

And I've decided that this is a problem.

I talked about this self-safe issue in a recent blog post (which you can read here!), and it encouraged me to look seriously at how I was going to weed out the things I don't really need.

This led me to doing some serious online research, where I found The Packing Party.

I first heard about The Packing Party through a very interesting blog called The Minimalists, and I was immediately drawn in by how drastic it was.

Basically, you take a day (or two) to pack up all of your belongs as though you had to move. Over the next week or so, you unpack things only as you use them. After your set time, you are then faced with the reality of exactly how much of your stuff you actually us e.You go through the unpacked (aka unused!) boxes and get rid of most of it.

Yes, it's crazy. Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, it's drastic.

But that's what I liked about it.

So that's what I've been doing, today- packing. We started at about noon, and as of 6 pm this evening, we're still not done. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm actually going to get everything packed today. When we do finish, possibly tomorrow or the day after, I'll be sharing some "before & after" photos to give you a good idea of what's happened.

Seeing everything out of the cabinets and in boxes around the room is really hitting home the fact of just how much stuff I have. Until recently, I had never thought of myself as having a lot of stuff at all. Now I can definitely see that my idea of "too much" was a bit skewed, and I could benefit from a good kick in the pants.

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So... what do you think? Is this crazy? Would you consider doing this or something like it? I always love to hear what you have to say, so be sure to leave your thoughts below in the comment section or over at my Facebook page!

Top 10 Minimalist Blog Posts

Top 5 Most Important Lessons I Learned from Minimalism

The Unrealized Burden

The Complete Guide to Christmas: From a Minimalist

Work Resumes!

Unpacking the Boxes

How I Packed All of My Stuff (And Why!)

Making a Mark- But Not Too Big

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