Family-Sized Minimalism by Faith Janes

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ABOUT the AUTHOR

Faith Janes is the writer behind Minimalist at Home, where she talks about pursuing less mess and more life through minimalism. Faith is a wife and homeschooling mother of three children. She is a web designer, avid coffee drinker, and child referee around the house. She and her family live in a combined household of 10 with her parents, siblings, grandmother, and handful of household pets. They all live in a log home on 30 acres just south of Atlanta, Georgia. Family-Sized Minimalism by Faith Janes ÂŠ 2011 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Let’s Get Started - 7 What is Family Sized Minimalism? - 10 My Story - 11 Counting is Not the Point - 14 Redefining Your Life Priorities - 16 Benefits of Minimalism - 18 Can Family Minimalism Really Work? - 21 Beginning the Journey - 23 The Mental Shift - 24 Backtracking to Simplicity - 25 Get Your Balance Back - 27 Make Time for Living - 30 A Wake Up Call - 31 Living on Island Time - 33 Applying Minimalism to Your Family Schedule - 34 Time for Change - 36 Your Digital Life is Not Your Life - 37

The Practical Side of Family Minimalism - 39 Advice for Organizing Around the House - 40 Jump Right In - 41 Minimalists Going Commando - 42 Clearing Kitchen Clutter - 44 Clean Slate Declutter - 47 Ways to Save Money as a Minimalist Family - 49 Keeping Craft & Hobby Clutter in Check - 54 A Bathroom a Minimalist Can Love - 57 A Minimalist Home Office - 61 Minimalist Gift Ideas - 64 Overcoming Sentimental Sabotage - 66 Kids & Their Clutter - 69 Growing Tiny Consumers - 70 Translating What Minimalism Means for a Child - 72 Walking Our Kids on a Journey to Minimalism - 74 How to Minimize Your Child’s Wardrobe - 76

Roadblocks to Minimalism - 78 The Busy Epidemic - 79 When Your Loved Ones Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Understand - 83 The Reclutter Monster - 85 Discouragement on the Road to Minimalism - 87 Advice from Other Minimalist Families - 89 Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist - 91 Courtney Carver from Be More With Less - 95 Eric LaForest from Elevated Simplicity - 97 Tanja Hoagland from Minimalist Packrat - 100 Rachel Jonat from The Minimalist Mom - 106 Jurino Ignacio from Jurino.com - 109 Kathy Austin from Kathy Austin Show Photos - 114 Dr. Laura Aridgides from Who Is Laura - 117 Clara Ohannes from The Educated Life - 120 Karen van Zon - 122 H. Wayne Hastrup - 124 A Practicing Minimalist Mom of Four - 126 Wrapping It Up - 129 Resources - 131 Contributors - 132

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INTRO

LET’S GET STARTED

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you realize your life is too messy and you’re simply too busy. Clutter has taken over your life! If you’re living with anyone else, their clutter and hectic schedules affect your life as well. When you reach that point of exasperation, you have a few choices.You can store it, stack it, stash it, schedule it, organize it, color code it, or you can actually get rid of it. I found myself tired and exasperated in a house full of mess and more things to do on my to-do list than I had day to do them in. I knew something had to change because I was through living like that. When I discovered minimalism I knew it needed to be in a way that would work for my family. I do not consider myself a “radical minimalist” in the traditional sense of the word. However, the change that is happening in my family IS very radical for us. Even stopping to ask the questions about what we’re buying, how we’re spending our time, and what our priorities need to be is a radical shift from how life used to be.

This is the book I wish had been written when I was younger. This is the message I wish I had heard--telling me there was a different way to live beyond the pursuit of possessions. The following pages of this book will share both my story and the stories of several other minimalist families. Whether you’ve been living a minimalist lifestyle for awhile now, or you’re just curious what it really means and if it could really work within a family, I’m glad to have you here. I think you’ll find there’s something in here for everyone.There’s some hand holding for the beginners, a refresher course for those already on the journey, encouragement for life’s setbacks, and advice from a dozen minimalist families that are just like you. Let’s jump right in.

WHAT IS FAMILY SIZED MINIMALISM?

My Story “Mom, what I want for my birthday is to move in with Grandma and Grandpa.” We didn’t know it at the time, but my seven-year-old son’s birthday wish would completely change our lives. After his initial request, we just laughed it off as, “Aww, isn’t that sweet?” But it grew into a nagging thought that we just couldn’t shake. Could we really make the choice to move back home? We began to ask questions like: What would life be like if we were a family of ten? Would we have enough room if we lived together? Could we handle living under one roof long term? I’ve always been close with my family and thankfully my husband gets along with my parents. We are very blessed to have such a good relationship with them, but giving up our independence and our own space was a lot to consider. This wouldn’t be the first time we would live with my parents. A few years earlier, we sold our house and had to be out in three weeks. Since we were considering building a house at the time, we decided to move in with my family until we knew what our next step was. For seven months we lived in limbo with makeshift sleeping arrangements and the bulk of our belongings in storage.

This new move we were considering would be forever.That would mean selling our home and most of our stuff in order to meld our home into theirs. A change of that magnitude was a bigger move to consider. In the end, we moved in the weekend before my son’s eighth birthday and he was one happy birthday boy!

Why Would You Move in With Your Parents? When we tell people we gave up our home to move in with my parents, most folks assume it was because of money. However, that’s not the case at all. In reality, we were making more money than ever and wasting a ton of it along the way. Our food bill is still higher than we want it to be, but overall, things are still cheaper than what we were spending on our own. So, if it wasn’t because of money, why did we move back home by choice? It came down to a simple question: What is the most important thing in life? For us, the answer was our family. It is our family relationships that we want to invest in, not a house. It is the connection between our children and their grandparents that we want to grow, not the bushes we planted in our backyard. Even though we already saw my family once a week or more, we wanted to plant our roots deep and give our kids a future that was saturated with family time. Family-Sized Minimalism by Faith Janes © 2011 12

Accidental Minimalists So, we put our house on the market and packed our boxes. It’s almost as if we took a minimalist approach to life before we knew what minimalism was. We were paring down our physical possessions so we could focus on what truly mattered to us. My parents’ house was larger than ours, but in a way we downsized from a 3,000 square foot home down to three bedrooms. Some of our belongings have been combined into the rest of the house like kitchen stuff, adding our books into a joint library, along with sharing an office/den area in the house.

The Benefits Outweigh the Bothers Living in a household of ten isn’t perfect . . . but what household can claim perfection? Even on the most challenging days the benefits far outweigh the bothers: • The grocery shopping can be exhausting, but we have four cooks to share the workload of preparing meals. • Opinions are never in short supply, but the built-in support system is incredible. • It can get crazy and it’s often noisy, but it’s never lonely and there’s always someone to share a cup of coffee with. • Finding a spot for time by yourself can be challenging, but grandparents, aunts, and uncles make excellent babysitters. Family-Sized Minimalism by Faith Janes © 2011 13

It’s not a decision that works for everyone. It is a decision that has brought us all closer, reminds us of what’s really important in life, and we see new benefits that we never planned on. I continue to be grateful that I discovered minimalism because it has helped our transition to living with less. I firmly believe it will help yours as well.

Counting is Not the Point You have probably heard of many minimalists counting their possessions. For awhile it became popular for minimalists to announce the number of things they owned as if they were wearing the number as a badge of honor. For many, this concept does not sound appealing and it might even be discouraging trying to live up to an impossible standard. I actually love The 100 Thing Challenge, written by Dave Bruno. He was the first one to come up with the concept of counting what you own. Reading his take on the topic reveals a much more rational reasoning behind the practice of counting your personal things. Taking the time to count everything you own will definitely open your eyes to the influence of consumerism in your life. Doing a “100 Thing Challenge” (or whatever number challenge) can be a catalyst for change and open a new world for you. Maybe you won’t realize your wardrobe is out of control until you start counting and see all the duplicates and unused items you own. Family-Sized Minimalism by Faith Janes © 2011 14

It usually takes some moment in time that snaps you into “minimalist mode.” For me, it was moving in with my parents and realizing there wasn’t nearly enough room for all the junk we all had. I was forced to do something drastic about it. For you, taking on a “100 Thing Challenge” may be what jumpstarts your journey to living with less. In the closing of Dave’s book he warns the reader, “Be careful doing the 100 Thing Challenge. It’s quite possible that once you’re done, you will find yourself content without much stuff. You’ll no longer have a compulsion to get more and more. Then you’ll have to figure out something other than shopping to do with your time, money, and talents.”

Radical Minimalism is Relative I read a lot about “radical minimalists” these days. These are people who exist with next to nothing in terms of personal possessions. In my opinion, if you didn’t have much to begin with and you chose to continue living with next to nothing, then you are indeed a minimalist. But is that being radical if not much change is involved? Granted it’s a counter-culture way of life but the term is thrown around so much lately, it’s as if anything less than “radical minimalism” isn’t really minimalism at all.

On the other hand, stepping away from life as you know it and questioning everything you have is a radical change of life. It was coming face to face with how much stuff we had accumulated that brought me to the discovery of minimalism when I was looking for a solution to the mess. I’ve learned the hard way, when you have a mortgage and a house full of junk that goes along with it, that the journey to minimalism is not a quick one. It takes a long time to undo years of clutter and the debt that paid for it all.

Redefining Your Life Priorities It’s time to prioritize your life! Once you sit down and decide what your priorities are, it makes it so much easier to decide what needs to be taken away. Ask yourself what’s really important to you.The principle of prioritizing first can be applied to everything--from your clutter to your time. Take the time to ask yourself why you’re spending your days doing what you do. Examine your priorities through your eyes and the eyes of others. Would your family and friends know what your priorities are based on your actions rather than your intentions? Determine your goals and values and ask yourself if you need to change something in your life. Redefining your priorities is necessary for your happiness.

It’s simply not possible for everything to have the same level of importance. If everything were considered a priority, then nothing would be a true priority. So how do you evaluate what matters and what doesn’t? Here are some questions to help you answer that. WHY is it important? It’s easy to stake a claim that an item or an activity is important. Ask yourself the harder question of why it’s significant. If you can’t quickly and thoroughly defend your choice, then that should be a signal that it may not be as important as you originally thought. Is it BENEFICIAL? Does it benefit you (or anyone else for that matter) in the short term or in the long term? Is it adding to the quality of your life? Is it CONSISTENT with who you want to be? Does it fit in with your personal values? Are you doing something just because everyone else is? Is it helping you reach your goals? No one else can decide what’s important to you and what’s not. Determining your priorities is deeply personal. Bringing awareness to your life choices is the first step in prioritizing your life.

Benefits of Minimalism In Joshua Beckerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book Simplify, he lists 10 benefits of Minimalism. For me, I can sum up the benefits of minimalism in four little words: Less Mess. More Life. Minimalism gives me less of what I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want and more of what I crave in life.

Less Mess Less Financial Mess. Conquering debt and creating a positive financial future is a huge benefit of minimalism. First, you have to successfully break the buying habit. You must be careful not to fall into the habit of spending your money on different pursuits or buying higher priced replacements of what you threw out. If you can break the consumerism mindset and enjoy what you have, you will feel the peace of spending less.This leads us right into the next benefit. Less Stress. Not only will spending less give you less stress by eliminating debt, but you will eliminate stress in other areas as well. Not being as busy running all around town will make life less stressful. Not wracking your brain for countless gifts to buy will give you less stress. The less clutter we live in, the less stressful we feel because we avoid the nagging thought that we have things left undone.

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