Intentional Living: How to Curate a Minimalist Home

Growing up, I was always impressed by still-lifes and images of homes. Museum-like staging of historical dwellings on field trips and home-decor magazines alike had me imagining what my ideal house would look like. As an early twenty-something, I would peruse magazines and circle with a pen the items that I would love to own one day. Along the way, I collected trinkets here and there every time I visited Ikea, Crate and Barrel, and Target … until one day, I woke up to having too much stuff. I realized that instead of the clean, well-manicured homes that I looked up to as a teen, what I had was a very dirty rented room that held a hodge-podge of mismatched items and styles. I didn’t know who I was, which style was “me”, and I suffered many hours keeping things tidy.

These, of course, weren’t my biggest life problems – only a reflection of other aspects that bothered me about myself. After spending months (then, years after the first phase) of de-cluttering, I decided that I was not going to put in all that effort just so I can fill my space back to an over-whelming state, where I had to spend most of my free time organizing stuff, tidying up after trinkets that find their way out of their proper places like the toys from Toy Story.

Like with everything else, I decided to slow. it. down. Limit what I purchased and bought for my home, so that I could discover the whos, whats, whens, and whys of things. I wanted to be the curator of my own museum, and while homes aren’t meant to be museums themselves – they’re meant to be lived in and touched and loved and messed up, even – neither are they meant to be storage units holding symbols of our financial status. But as curator, I wanted to make sure that what I had was worth keeping.

The skill of curating doesn’t magically come from a bout of de-cluttering. In fact, I would go so far as to call it a completely separate ability that places more importance on our stewardship of what we allow in, rather than our selection of what we get rid of. You could be very good at de-cluttering without being good at maintaining your clutter. You need both skills to be able to create a minimalist space that allows for maximalist function.

With books up the wazoo about how to properly de-clutter a space, and movements that have people Marie-Kondoing their homes, I think what people still struggle with the most when creating a minimalist home is the inundation of stuffs through our doors – aka: the curation itself.

A curator for a museum needs to have a passion for the job, a knowledge about history and the arts, an eye for detail, patience and superior organizational skills. They research different pieces before deciding on one and manage the finances and lending needed to get the best piece for their space.

A curator of the home requires similar things, requiring knowledge of the self, patience, and the willingness to research options before a purchase.

Personally, I simplify the process down to three questions – which I ask of myself before I make a purchase. I ask them in the following order of importance:

Is it beautiful?

Beauty is my first question because I find that without beauty, I can easily fall out of love with something and lust after a nicer alternative. And while there are always nicer options, when you fall in love with the beauty within an everyday thing rather than the thing itself, no matter what happens to that thing or to you, you will have a sentimental connection with the piece that makes it hard to even look at another. Metaphors aside, I find that beautiful things hardly feel like clutter. A hand-made ceramic mug left sitting on the table with coffee drips dried from the lip is an artful piece on its own. A beautiful cardigan thrown over a chair looks almost staged when in reality, it was flung there forgotten after a more pressing life-matter beckoned. We are attracted to beautiful things, and of the three, sentiment is the strongest decision factor as to whether an item earns its keep. Because when something no longer becomes necessary or breaks and become dysfunctional, when it has lost its purpose and meaning, a person may still choose to keep it simply because it is beautiful.

Is it functional?

I like to think that what I own earn their keep. They do the hard work for me. They help me to not only live, but also to thrive. My things deserve my deepest gratitude for the sole reason that without them, my life would be a little less than. So it goes that my second question is to the functionality of a piece. Will it do it’s work? Is it practical? Will it hold against the tests of time? Things considered include the brand (is it reputable?), the material (I prefer iron, wood, ceramics, and linen), the maintenance (I don’t like delicate thinks that require looking after) and whether it does the job well (it must be efficient as well as easy).

Is it necessary?

This is the last question that I ask of myself, because sometimes, after you’ve determined that something is both beautiful and functional, you may also realize that you already own something else that does the same. And if two things fill the same void, then one of them will, eventually, have to go. An example that I have is tupperware. We love to cook. And we always run out of tupperware. But our tiny tupperware cabinet is 80% full with containers when all are available. I could choose to buy more containers so that we never run out, but I would hate to have a weekend where all are empty and spilling out of the tupperware cabinet. That is the exact definition of clutter! Not to mention the stress and waste of time spent on said weekend organizing tupperware into kitchen cabinets. So I refuse to buy more. Instead, I look for alternatives. I grab a casserole dish and put a lid on it. I store things in glass jars that we’ve kept instead of recycled. Currently, on our kitchen island is a dutch oven holding everything bagels with the pot lid on to keep them from going stale. These and more, just so the home doesn’t accumulate things for the sake of having them. It’s a fun game I play. The less stuff you have, the more creative you can get. What I’ve learned from this experiment is that in the moment, we may feel the need for something, but the moments often pass, the need – temporary. Most times, it is this final question that stops items from entering our home.

Surely, there is a long list of people who have Marie-Kondoed the ish out of their homes during quarantine. To you, I say congratulations. Before we all re-enter back into what once was, I wanted to share this tip on curating. Good judgement about what to consume can easily be clouded when we are stressed, which tends to happen at our usual pace of go-go-go. So before we return to “normal”, do recall that normal wasn’t working, and de-cluttering was more than a trend. This period has shed light on what was uncomfortable and what you felt was most important, so let’s hang on to that just a bit longer. And continue to take it slow.

De-cluttering Photos

The past few weeks have been spent revisiting the act of de-cluttering. I came to the realization that while I followed Marie Kondo’s rules about the severity with which to get rid of stuff and the order in which to let go of items, I never did really finish the work. Sure, I de-cluttered my stuff. It was easy to “touch up” on the physical things, since I no longer own many clothes or books. Our furniture and rooms are sparse. The kitchen items increased in volume after the wedding with gifts that I now regret adding to the registry but those were quite easy to acknowledge and forgive. It took less than half an hour to reaffirm the bathroom has only what we need. In the physical realm, it was easy to make everything right.

However, there are two categories that still remained untouched – digital clutter and sentimental items. Marry the two together, and I am now faced with the sorting of digital photos with a sudden realization that I am a photograph hoarder. I have always had a careless way with the camera, snapping picture after picture desperate to freeze moments in time. Likewise, I struggle with letting these so-called memories go. Many excuses come to mind, such as, “What if I write a blog post about that sometime?”, or “How will I keep track of every place we’ve ever traveled to?”. “What if I need more photos to showcase my bread?”, or “What if I get forgetful one day and want to remember even the smallest span of time?” I didn’t know until now how much attachment I felt towards pixels on a screen.

Which goes to show, I suppose, that it comes as both a blessing and a curse that the work is never quite done. You think you’ve reached a level of understanding about the world and yourself, and then you find some little part of your life you haven’t quite looked at before and discover still more improvements to be made. It’s a curse that personal growth never reaches an end because we spend our whole lives trying to figure ourselves out. But on the flip side, it’s a blessing because … what else would we do if we already knew everything?

Besides, we cannot maintain a level of understanding if we stop trying to understand. The world will change and us along with it, and the worst one can do is assume they’ve got everything figured out and stand still. How can WE figure it out when a lineage of ancestors could not? Surely, the beauty lies in the process.

Speaking of process, there I was the past few days, making grueling work out of organizing photos and getting rid of 80% of them (which was hardly enough as evidenced by five different storage drives) when yesterday, on my day off when I thought I would get the most work done, my memory card became corrupt and was reformatted. Which in layman’s terms meant that all data was lost. I couldn’t believe it. It was like some wind had come and swept everything I worked hard for away from me. Oh the lessons life had yet to teach.

When I finally overcame the grief thirty seconds later, I realized with shock the relief that overcame me. The heartache of the last few days’ work turned into excitement, when I realized there were less days ahead being wasted sorting that stuff out. I realized quite quickly how disengaged I was from those photos, how little of my heart they truly held. I had organized snapshots to keep, ones filled with smiling faces and beautiful scenery, but when they were gone I found that it didn’t take away from the fact that they’ve touched me somehow. I think losing all of that proved to me that our memories are not tied to paper or lit up screens. And if one day, I do become completely incapable of memory, well, then maybe I will finally learn to live in the present moment without anything to hold me back.

There are still 4 more hard drives to address. But after losing one fifth of my work, I continue the task with a lighter heart and an easier mind as I press the delete button with more frequency and delight. I will still enjoy taking photos, but the joy will remain in the act of taking photos themselves. By the time the images become registered, it would have already served its purpose. I finally understand what Marie Kondo was trying to say when it comes to de-cluttering photos.

“With this method you will only keep about five per day of a special trip, but these will be so representative of that time that they will bring the rest back vividly. Really important things are not that great in number. “

I’d like to keep that last part on repeat.

Recent Reads: Marie Kondo Interviews Elizabeth Gilbert on Tidying the Mind

May I start by saying that Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear” was one of the first catalysts that pushed me to embark on a creative lifestyle. I read the book on our flight home from our honeymoon in New Zealand January 2016, and I remember how powerfully I was impacted by her words. Needless to say, I am a huge fan and attribute this writer-baker-dentist-dog-walking lifestyle to her work. As many of you who have already been in this space for a while know, Marie Kondo’s book, “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” was the starting point of my decluttering journey. Since then, I have found that cleaning my home was a reflection of cleaning out all the parts of myself that felt unaligned with who I am and who I wish to be. Alas, it comes as no surprise that this interview between the two is brimming with “all-the-feels”, and stands as my top read for this week. If anything I write on this blog jives with you, perhaps it would be relevant to take a gander at this quick interchange of thought between two modern influential women at this time. If you have more than a few moments, perhaps immersing into either of their books would better suit your taste? Below, I highlight a part of the interview that speaks the most to me at this time, as well as my thoughts on the matter.

Marie Kondo:

In the KonMari Method™, we encourage people to ask the question, “Does it spark joy?” to all areas of their lives. Is there a question or concept that you apply in making important decisions?

Elizabeth Gilbert:

I always say this to women: “Start knowing.”
I say it to myself, too.
Enough of “Should I do this?”
Go deep and say, “It’s time to know.”
You have to believe that the force of knowing is in you. We’ve inherited it from our ancestors; they’ve passed on everything they went through. There’s an old version of you that lives in yourself.
Ask her.

Often times I feel like the big changes in my life have come when the one in me who knows is appalled by the way that I’m living.
She’s so ANGRY.
She just looks at the way I’m living and says,
“No! This isn’t it! This isn’t good enough! This isn’t what we came here to do. We came here for better things than this.”
I don’t mean not rich enough, not famous enough.
I mean not accurate, not honorable enough for who you are.

THIS!! ALL OF THIS.

They say that, sometimes, when something in you is unsettled, you get a feeling. Like when Will in Stranger Things gets that eerie tingling at the back of his neck as the Mind Flayer draws near, I think we all have that little inkling towards auras that are dangerous to our well-being. It CAN’T only be me (and Will).

It’s like your inner-self “that knows” is screaming at your oblivious outer-self to listen. We get these uncertainties, but they’re stronger than our anxieties. I’m not talking about a quiet voice that whispers in your head. What I’m referring to is something waaaay more visceral. Something that comes from your gut … but deeper. The gut of your soul, if you believe in that sort of thing. A learned lesson from your past life, if you believe in THAT sort of thing.

I believe that Gilbert’s addressing of women, in particular, is important. Unfortunately, centuries of societal norms have failed in teaching women how to listen to their inner selves. We’ve historically been taught to listen to someone else (ahem). BUT! Times are changing, and it’s time we listen to us. I hang out with a lot of guys. They point out, in particular, my habit of answering simple questions with, “I don’t know.” Easy decision-making that revolves around where to eat, what to do, how I feel… the easy way out is to say, “I don’t know”. They hate it because I revert most decision-making about what we do and where we eat to them. UGH. I know. Thankfully, I have very progressive guy friends who force me to decide by saying, “No. This is an equal relationship, and you have to decide sometimes.” Thank goodness!

But I do see it in myself and in female friends a lot. This unknowingness. This repulsive impulsive reaction to just let men decide what to do with the simplest of things. It’s a habit that needs to change. It’s a matter of believing in our ability to know. “Ask her,” she says. Sage advice, if ever I heard one.

So in asking her, a topic that has been unsettling for quite some time.

Instagram.

I’ve alluded to my addiction once before, here. I know my triggers (seeing my cell-phone) and my reward (public affirmation). I know my excuses (the need to have Instagram to grow my blog, the need to maintain my relationships however virtual, the need to have a creative output, whatever). I know the consequences (hours spent editing photos, writing up paragraphs, scrolling through feeds… mostly the latter). I know what it was like to quit for one month (more time, more calm, more REAL relationships, more energy, more creativity). From this, you gather that I know a LOT. So why is it that I always say, “I don’t know what to do about Instagram.”

Upon reading EG’s answer to MK’s question, something in me sparked. It wasn’t joy. It was a knowing. It was like that inner me was finally yelling loud enough out of absolute R.A.G.E. at my insensitivity towards the unhealthiness of the app. And it’s like EG spoke the exact words that my inner self was trying to get me to hear.

“No! This isn’t it! This isn’t good enough! This isn’t what we came here to do. We came here for better things than this.”

“I don’t mean not rich enough, not famous enough.” Everything I say Instagram promises for the blog.
“I mean not accurate, not honorable enough for who you are.” Everything that goes against what the blog represents. I always write about being good enough. About fighting societal pressures. About doing what’s aligned. All this and more clashes with everything Instagram sells.

The truth is this:

There are systems in place that sell us the things that are not good for us.

Added salts, sugars and fats that keep us returning to restaurant tables.
Advertisements that keep us spending hard-earned dollars on consuming goods.
Celebrities trying to sell us a glamorous lifestyle.
Wall Street analysts telling us that we can outsmart the market.
Instagram selling us a platform in order to stay connected and relevant.

You see what I mean? They all have their vested interest, while we are being stripped of things that matter most. Health, time, simplicity, financial stability, real relationships, all in that order.

Deep down, I know, just as well as you know. But do we listen?

It’s time to know.

It’s time to set boundaries and separate from Instagram.

It’s time to break the habit loop.

So here are the new rules.

I agree that platforms such as Instagram has its perks. But I also truly know that it has its consequences as well. So I will be deleting TheDebtist Instagram account from my phone. I will allow myself one day a month for ONE HOUR to log back on and post all my updates (new courses, new interviews, new happenings, all the pictures worth sharing – already curated) and check any missed messages, and then I will delete it again. This will allow me to break the habit loop and scrolling through feeds and forever editing in search of perfection. This will rid me of unhealthy dependence. This should free me to have more time to be HERE. I know this because it’s happened before. And it works. I started to wonder, “Why am I taking a picture of my avocado toast?”, and “Why am I carrying my camera on this run on the beach?” It brought awareness to all the little habits that were developed solely for the purpose of sharing on Instagram. Yikes.

Secondly, as I want to focus on growing the bakery, I will keep the AeroBakery account live, and limit my Instagram usage to 15 minutes per day. If I fail to hold myself accountable, I will also delete this account and limit it to once a month. If I had a true vested interest in growing my AeroBakery following, I will follow these simple rules. I know that I have the ability to enforce these parameters so I am not worried. If I am struggling, I have my husband. If I am still struggling, I have hundreds of you.

Instagram is a real addiction. Like alcohol, or over-eating, or gambling, debt, sex, drugs, hoarding, smoking, video-game addictions, emotional dependency and more, Instagram is a habit and the loop is difficult to break. It feeds on many things. The feeling of social acceptance and inclusion, the craving for public affirmation or approval, the creative outlet and the visually artistic appeal, the boasting of one’s life or accomplishments, the list goes on and on.

Worded like that, imagine how giving up Instagram could change a life.

Talk about catharsis.

Talk about Tidying the Mind.

The Decision That Will Change Everything

About a year and a half ago, I stumbled upon “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. What began as a simple process of de-cluttering my life of material goods that served me no purpose turned into a shift in my entire way of thinking about STUFF. I was brought up to believe in the compulsive consumption that defines a majority of the western world today. I was stuck in a state of mind where I felt as if I “NEEDED” everything. I was fooled by the fashion industry to believe in the “it” thing of the nanosecond, constantly changing from one “it” thing to the next.

The journey began with getting rid of my clothes. I used to stand in front of my closet each morning, and take thirty minutes just to choose what to wear. There was an overwhelming amount of options to choose from, and more often than not, I went back to the same set of clothes I wear every week. I started to realize that I had spent hard-earned money (or worse, money I didn’t even have if not for the massive amount of student loans I took out), on articles of clothing that I didn’t need, or want, or even like for that matter. This realization pushed me to start researching about the fashion industry and I began wondering how I could have ever thought I needed that much clothing. And as I delved deeper, I started asking more and more questions. How could they get away with making our clothes so cheaply? Where were the products coming from? Who made them? And I started turning towards more ethical lines of clothing when purchasing my clothes. Additionally, over time, I began purchasing less and less stuff. After going through so much work purging my closets (it took weeks and weeks!), I did not want to go back to that state of being in excess. I started realizing that I needed less, or that I didn’t need anything at all. I became overly selective, scrutinizing every piece and grilling myself with the question, “Why?” Why do I feel the need to have it? Why do I think it will improve the value of my life?

I then started to extend this de-cluttering to my books, arguably my second largest collection of items at the time. I hoarded books. It was awful. When I was done sorting them, I had filled 6 medium-sized Home Depot boxes with books I had already read. Another 4 boxes with books I will never read, 4 boxes with textbooks, and then I kept another bookshelf of books I wanted to read in the future or wanted to keep. Over time, I realized that half of the books I kept were books I didn’t want to read anyway! I used to think that starting a book meant I had to finish it. I pushed myself to the ending because I thought every book had something to offer. That is generally the truth (with a few exceptions), but it doesn’t mean I enjoyed the reading process throughout its duration. During the de-cluttering process, I started realizing that life is too short for that. Reading should be done for pleasure. Now I pick up a book, and if I do not like it, it immediately gets passed on to someone else.

De-cluttering books and clothes freed up so much of my room, let alone my life. I started to crave the absence of material things. My physical self felt so much lighter, if you can imagine that. I went from wanting to buy a new article of clothing every weekend, to buying less than 10 in the last year. I went from buying all the books I can carry at library sales and used bookstores, to wishing only to borrow books from the library or getting electronic copies on my kindle. Can you even imagine how much space a person frees up if they go from 500 books on the shelf to a single rotating book from the library? Or a single slender kindle by your nightstand? As a follow up question, do you even realize how much money you save? And going past money, look at how much time is freed up. No longer are you reading books just to say you read them. No longer are you standing in front of your closet for thirty minutes trying to choose what to wear. This opened up a lot of time for me, allowing me to explore the world, to learn new crafts, and to spend time with my loved ones.

So I kept on going. I went through everything I owned and re-assessed whether they were of use to me or whether they brought me joy. And when I finished the process, I started all over again. Things that initially were hard to let go, became easier to let go during the second round. And the third round. As I parted with more things, the less I needed. More importantly, I realized the gifts that living a simple life had to offer. Something in my brain clicked. Life became more about the people I spent time with, the hobbies that made me happy, the milestones that made me a stronger person and the achievements that made me grow. And this is why I named my blog, “The Simple Life”. I would never have had the time to start writing again if I did not go through this change. I realized that I was working to become a minimalist, in order to be a maximalist. I was minimizing the amount of STUFF that surrounded me, which allowed me to maximize reaching my true potential. And just like that, I was hooked.

And then something terrible happened right after I graduated and Mike and I moved in together. I suddenly became obsessed with furnishing our new place. I wanted to buy new furniture. I wanted to have it look a certain way, like warehouse meets bohemian meets mid-century modern and all the other bull crap that they feed you when you look through housing magazines in your average dental office’s waiting room. I bought and bought and bought, even before I started working, with money I didn’t have. I used money that Mike had saved up. Now our home looks amazing, and I love coming home to it every day! It is perfect in my eyes. But as time went by, I realized there were some things that we purchased that really is not the SOURCE of my happiness with this home. I do not love coming home to our loft after a long day of work so I could stare at my furniture. Instead, I love coming home and seeing Mike lying on the couch with his legs swung over to the side watching League of Legends on our projector. The couch and the projector were not the things pulling on my heartstrings. Also, we spent about $1000 on 12 dining chairs from RH. Don’t get me wrong, I love those chairs. They look cool and sleek and are comfortable and fit perfectly around our 12 foot dining table (A 12 FOOT DINING TABLE GUYS! I mean, Jesus!). But that’s not what made me happy. What made me happy is hosting a gathering for friends or family every week and having those chairs so that we could all eat a meal together. What made me happy were the PEOPLE, not the THINGS. We got Mike this beautiful RH computer desk, which is a modular system, meaning we could add more units to it over time (kind of like a sectional couch). We said we were going to buy an extension for myself after I started work and earned money for it. To this day, almost one year later, I have not bought myself the extension. I slowly started to realize that I did not need a desk. We get ourselves into these homes, with so much SPACE. And because there is the space, we feel the need to fill it with STUFF. I realized in the last year that none of this is true.

As I continued to de-clutter in all other aspects of my life, I was momentarily swept away by the idea of starting a beautiful home that I forgot what I was actually working towards. I started to feel like I needed to pick up more work hours, so I could BUY those dining table chairs. Imagine! Feeling the need to tie up your time with work so that you could earn more money to buy more stuff. Less time, more stuff. Therein lies the trap.

And then, two months ago, I decided I wanted a house. Mike and I heard of this amazing program for doctors that would allow us to buy a house, well, now. Right now, we are able to get a loan for a house close to one million dollars. ONE MILLION! That is a really big number. I became obsessed and threw myself into a headlong search for homes in the area, which are crazily spiking in value, by the way. As I looked for more homes, I became more and more grossed out by how large they were. How much excess space they had. There was a living room, AND a family room? A breakfast nook, AND a formal dining room? But why? I started to fall more and more in love with older, single story homes. I became obsessed with Eichler homes down the street. The smaller the better. Homes that nears 1600 square feet seemed extremely large to me. I started to look at homes because of their design, not because of their size. But even buying a house is a concept society tells you you should do in order to be successful. And even now, it’s hard for me to unwrap my mind around it. Yet another THING that I was told should be purchased in order to make me happy. And I am not saying it won’t make me happy. I think living and owning an architectural piece of history like an Eichler would be AMAZING. But who’s to say I am not equally as happy living in my current loft? We all know that the happiness level can only be so high. And I am VERY happy here. Lucky for me, something happened last week that really pushed me to step back, and re-analyze whether buying a house right now is right for us.

When I graduated dental school, I left school with a huge loan. Bigger than any other school loan I have heard of, I graduated with a debt of over $560,000. In order to pay back this debt in the standard 10 years, I would have to commit to 10 years of payments of over $6,500 a month. Think about how your life would be different if you spent $6,500 a month towards paying back a debt. Obviously, that is a huge chunk of change for most people. It was an impossible task. So we had agreed to commit to a 25 year loan forgiveness plan called IBR to get rid of this massive amount of debt. In essence, this program allows you to pay only a percentage of your income and then on the 25^th year, the loan is forgiven, but you have to pay the taxes of the left over amount, which would mean that on the 25^th year, you would pay over $477,000 in taxes. But it’s a more doable program because you get to raise this money over the course of 25 years and meanwhile, you only pay a small amount per month. Our financial advisor agreed with us and told us that this is the best way to go.

We started working with a budgeting tool called YNAB to get a better grasp of our finances and to plan out a future of 25 years worth of fun, but also, 25 years worth of saving money for this massive repayment when the loan is forgiven. Last week, I got on a call with my advisor, expecting to discuss with him about the possibility of buying a house. We were going to go over what we have been saving (on average) the last few months since the wedding, and we were going to use that to determine what a good price on a home would be, and also how much we should set aside each month for the loan repayment. And then he proceeded to tell me and Mike something that we never thought we would hear.

He said that we are saving so much money, that we could arguably pay back my student debt in ten years or less WITHOUT changing our lifestyle.

I was floored. And that’s when something in me clicked again. I am in a lot of debt, and here I am, ready to sign up for even more debt, for something that I was taught would define “success”. Mike and I knew how much we were saving a month, but when I heard our financial adviser tell us that we were saving so much money that what we once thought was insanely impossible could be done, I really truly woke up. And it is here that I want to drive in two points.

First, I can attribute the amount of money that Mike and I are successfully saving to the fact that we have significantly decreased our spending since the wedding. Simple as that. Do you keep tabs of where your money goes? Every penny? With YNAB, I now do, and I am able to curate my money-spending decisions and habits based on money-spending mistakes which I made in the previous months (I would be happy to write about the envelope system that we use to help us manage money in a different post). And with this comes power. Imagine if you just stopped buying things. If you just paid for groceries (and when I say groceries, not even an excess of groceries. I am talking about enough food to sustain you but not enough food to make you gluttonous), a roof over your head, and other bare (and I mean BARE) necessities. Do you know exactly how much you would save? Obviously it’s different for every person but I can tell you that it is a lot more than what you are saving now. Minimalism, or at least mindfulness with consumption of goods, has REALLY changed my life. It’s changed my way of thinking so completely that not only do I have more time, I also have more money without me having to work hard to make it that way. And this isn’t to say, live like a hermit and never succumb to any pleasures. I spend a lot of money on things that make me happy, including activities such a yoga, ceramics, and guitar lessons. I have no problem at all with spending money on things that will progress you towards becoming the person you want to be. But if you want to truly save money, don’t buy into the goods and the hype and the CRAP that they spew out at you. I have never, in my life, had excess money. But I have always had excess stuff.

And my second point is this: So many people need stuff so desperately that they are willing to add more debt and give away more of their life and their freedom in exchange for said stuff. How many people reading this have a car payment? A student loan? Credit card debt? A mortgage? I know I do. Did you know that the total debt owed by US consumers is $12.58 trillion as of 2016? 12.58 trillion! The Minimalists Joshua Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus put that into perspective really well. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year. 12.58 trillion is 398,909 years worth of seconds. You have no idea how much that stuns me. Did you know that the average household has debt with six figures? I came from a family where debt was always the answer. I will go over my money egg and experience with debt while growing up in a different blog post, but debt is never the answer. I went into debt to invest in myself and to pursue a passion that I dreamt about since I was eight years old. But that STILL doesn’t make it good debt. And I made bad decisions along the way. I took out the maximum amount of debt and spent the money on vacations. I worked three jobs in undergrad only to spend more than what I earned on going out with friends or on new clothes. Like I said, I was fooled. And even though I am getting better at realizing this, I was about to sign even more of my life away for something that I do not NEED. I should have learned my lesson about debt by watching those around me. Debt needs to be paid off ASAP. There IS such a thing as Financial Clutter. And if I truly wanted to minimalize and de-clutter in order to live a more meaningful, passionate life, I realized that I needed to get rid of this debt. I suddenly felt silly for wanting to keep up with the Joneses, for wanting to show the world what I can “afford”, in quotations, because I do not believe people buy homes they can actually afford. They buy homes their future selves would be able to afford, after a lot of work and time and years. I knew right away that buying a house was not the correct answer. Shouldn’t I have seen the warning sign when my dear friend told me that their first house purchase is preventing them from actually buying the house of their dreams. Tying them up like prisoners to the house they chose to live in. Weren’t the ridiculously rising house prices in this area over the past two months enough to make me stop and think if now is the correct time? How could I not realize that buying a house right now would be a mistake, when my co-worker who has been working for over 15 years chooses to wait one more year to buy a home? These were all questions I was asking myself after I realized what I was doing. And there was only one answer.

I truly believed that if I bought a house, it would show the world how adult I’ve become, how successful, how tasteful, how smart.

How silly.

De-cluttering and minimalism was the best journey I ever embarked on, and it was a decision that changed my life forever. And now, we are making another big decision that will also change our lifestyle in the next ten years to come (for the better!). I am choosing to pay back my student loans aggressively, and to channel my energy into being debt-free (more on thoughts about debt to come in a future post). Where people are throwing themselves into work to get more money to buy more stuff, I am going to throw my energy and resources to RID myself of stuff. I want to choose the presence of people, the presence of mind, the presence of everything else but excess consumer goods. And I am most definitely choosing the absence of student debt.

Join me in reading about how this decision, and all other decisions about simple living, shape our life. I have a feeling that it will enrich our lives that much more. I am not a minimalist by any means, but strive to live like one, in order to be a maximalist in other, more important things.

Is it beautiful?

Is it functional?

Is it necessary?

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