In the last couple of weeks I’ve become obsessed with the idea of minimalism. I’ve watched The Minimalist’s documentaries in the past and thought it was a cool concept, but I wasn’t ready yet to commit to that in my own life. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if it was possible for someone with OCD and extreme difficulty parting with belongings to live that lifestyle. Although, having a lot of “things” and “stuff” really gives me a lot of anxiety. I am obsessed with the notion of everything having a place in our home and not having piles everywhere; even if they are “organized piles”.

I like a clean, organized house and having a lot of extra stuff, makes that feel nearly impossible. I spend so much time and effort trying to “clean stuff up”, especially if people are coming over to visit. I put so much effort into moving/hiding the stuff in another less visible area, like a bedroom, it’s ridiculous. I’m making myself sound like a hoarder, but it’s honestly about the same amount if not less than the average family has in their home. But to me, it feels like too much.

I really want to minimize my belongings to simply my life. I want to be able to get in my closet and know exactly where every item of clothing is located. I recently cleaned out all of my clothes and got rid of a ton of stuff. I had a massive clothing pile on the floor of our bedroom for far to many months, because everything wouldn’t fit in my closet. So whenever I needed a specific piece of clothing, I had to dig through the pile and everything was always wrinkled and dirty looking, even though it was all clean clothes. What a complete waste of time and energy.

I went through every piece of clothing that I own and tried to be extremely realistic about if I was ever going to wear it again or if it even fit me anymore. I was able to get rid of so many items, that I cleaned up the entire pile of clothes off of the floor and hang up or put away what I kept. We recently purchased a platform bed with storage drawers underneath from Wayfair. This was a game changer for organization. I was able to fold all of my clothing that didn’t need to be hung up and organize it in a way where I can see everything I have without digging. Our room looks so clean and I know where all of my stuff is at! This was such a major accomplishment for me. And then I have one tote in the basement for seasonal clothing that I’ll swap out once it’s warm again.

The crazy part is, as I cleaned, I found nice clothes that I forgot I even bought because the amount I had was so ridiculous. I clean my clothes out probably once a year but never purged this many at once. Can you tell I’m proud of myself?! 😂 I feel so accomplished and less anxious about the mess I had to look at every day.

Since I’ve done this, I’ve really thought about the impact that having to much stuff has on your life and how complicated it makes things. Whenever I go to get dressed now, it takes way less time because I know where everything is at and I have less choices. I started thinking about how awesome it would be to just have the few items of clothing that you really love and you know look great on you, instead of having hundreds of choices of items that you know you don’t really love. We all know we have those few items we wear over and over. Right now for me, in the middle of winter with a newborn, it’s baggy t-shirts, sweatshirts and my favorite pair of Champion sweatpants haha.

We have also been working on cleaning out our basement, which contains more than a decade of collected and stored things we don’t need or use. I rewatched The Minimalists: Less is Now yesterday just to keep myself inspired to continue to work toward the goal of having less possessions. I’m realizing that the more “things” you get out of the way, the more room you have to live your life. I’ll spend less time choosing an outfit in the morning, less time cleaning up my house before we have people over, less time looking for missing items. All of this will lead to more quality time spent with my husband and son doing the things that we want to do and making memories.

I am doing this for myself to ease my anxiety and make my time spent more meaningful, but also I’m doing this for my son. I want him to grow up in a world where he values time spent outside in nature and quality time spent with family and friends. I want him to grow up valuing relationships and memories, not consumerism and having a ton of meaningless “stuff”. I want him to play outside and use his imagination, not sit in the house and stare at the latest technology. I want him to learn to love the beauty of the moment.

It’s all a process and something that I have to intentionally work hard at, but every small change is a step toward where I want to be. Thanks for reading my ramblings!

Sarah 🤎