Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words. If you’d like to participate, click here for details. (Note: the schedule is now full until May — but if you don’t mind waiting, feel free to send me your submission!)
I was thrilled to receive this story from Karen Johnson, who proves that you can indeed be a minimalist even if you have kids (she has nine!). To read more about her family’s journey, please visit her blogs, Crunchy Minimalist and Be-Encouraged.
Karen writes:
The roof blew off my sister-in-laws house, the storm destroying it & much of their possessions including my mother-in-laws stuff as she lived in the basement suite. Then only 9 months later my own sister lost her house and possessions to a fire. I saw the emotional trauma this evoked in all those concerned, and the 13 months it took for each of them to get their lives and houses back to some semblance of how it used to be. I never want so much of my life and emotions to be wound into Stuff.
It was only 20 minutes after receiving the phone call about my sister’s house burning down that my hubby and I decided to uproot and at least temporarily move from westcoast island to eastcoast island and help my sister get her house rebuilt.
We hit the road just 3 weeks later, after a whirl-wind of activity, as you can imagine. But can you imagine doing that with 9 children??? Yes, we have 9 children. We basically kicked our 2 adult children out on their own (it was their {quick} decision not to go with us). We gave oodles and oodles of stuff away and arranged for the rest to be taken when the house was sold. Unbelievably, we packed our youngest 7 children and us 2 adults in a station-wagon and a mini-van crammed plum-ful with stuff. No trailer. No roof rack. (we did keep 5 rubbermaids at my moms full of filed taxes, completed scrapbooks and my wedding dress. That’s all we kept).
That’s just 38 months ago now, and we’ve had an adventure we never imagined. We’ve driven around North America, unweighted by stuff for the most part (unbelievable how fast one can collect new stuff if you let up the slack). We lived in Nova Scotia for a year 2 separate times, stayed in Arizona for 5 months, and have just recently settled in a westcoast community for my husband to start a new business. As a homeschooling family its been an incredible education, but its taught our children so much about consumerism and different lifestyles.
Our children enjoy not having so much stuff. They see that having less stuff has made us more versatile, more mobile, and for that they are thankful. They say they like the space to play around in with less clutter to clean-up. Instead of more house work we have more time for reading. More time for games, to talk, for creativity.
We aren’t wanting Bigger, Better, Faster, More.
We are learning Contentment and Happiness with Less. And loving the Freedom that comes with it.
__I’m a SAH homeschooling mom of 20+ years. I love to learn about things that pertain to natural and healthy living, and am somewhat of a crunchy mama. I blog over at Crunchy Minimalist, about how we attempt to live a green-tinted minimalist lifestyle with a non-minimalist number of children. I also have a memoir-style family blog at Be-Encouraged.
{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
Bless you for sharing this! I feel encouraged. I have 4 kids & made a major move as well in the last year & feel much freer for it. Moves definitely encourage one to minimalize.
I embrace another move (that probably sounds weird to a lot of people). To me, staying settled anywhere too long is like a stone that collects moss….unnecessary stuff. So, I agree that moving encourages one to de-clutter.
Wow,Karen, what a great post, we uprooted and moved overseas after radically minimalizing, but we have no kiddos! Very impressive to say the least! Francine, I always enjoy the real life minimalist posts, such a variety of us minimalists, we love how this lifestyle works for such a variety of people! Thanks for sharing.
Good on you for making the big and probably a bit unnerving move overseas. With or without children we each have fears or uncertainties to overcome. But you guys went for it.
Great post.. I always enjoy reading these.
I love this story! Love the idea of traveling light and showing kids the country! We homeschooled for 8 years and had a family biz during that time that allowed us to travel for a week or two at a time. That was great fun. Kids are about grown now, and hubby and I are looking to do some roaming ourselves in the upcoming years!
Bernice
The Gifts of Imperfection- A Giveaway!
I love the freedom that homeschooling and home business can bring. I’m sure your children were greatly blessed by the travels and time you poured into them in those earlier years (not that it stops when they are adults. Its just Different). I trust you and your hubby will find the perfect style to roam the places your heart desires.
Wow…I will definately be visiting your blog for ideas minimalist mom! Nice job!
Thanks, SoCal.
Totally awesome. We have 6 kids and have shed 90% of our stuff or so in the last 3 years. So great to hear from another large family.
Wow! Good On You, E! That’s an amazing de-cluttering. With more than average # of children it seems so easy to accumulate and then justify why to keep it, doesn’t it? Hope you are enjoying your Lighter Life.
karen, you and your husband are so cool your children are really blessed. The time spent traveling with your kids is going to be something they will never forget unlike things you buy that wear out!
I’m amazed at even what the little guys have remembered of our travels, and the people they’ve met. Visiting different places gives them a bigger worldview, and makes reading stories more real to them because ‘we’ve been there!’
Thanks for the compliment, Tiffany.
Good post crunchy mama, will check out your blog.
We minimalized for a specific reason too. So that my partner could earn a decent income to support his children back in New Zealand and I could start to earn an income as a freelance writer and blogger. I don’t want to ever go back to the clutter I had before but at the moment we are living with borrowed kitchen stuff while we wait for ours to clear customs and I do miss decent pots, pans knives etc. Oh and my bed, I soooo want my bed to arrive. Didn’t you miss some of your comforts?
Deb
Honestly, there has been very little that we have truly missed. Occasionally a tool (dh used to be a house builder & could fix just about anything, so that frustrates him occasionally) but one becomes more creative of how to get the job done with something else.
Each of us has to decide on what we feel is necessary in our lives/home to help us enjoy life. So if your kitchen stuff (good quality) is important to you (me too!) then I can understand your frustrations. But its just for a period of time, right? You’ll make it thru this transition and have your own kitchen set up sometime soon.
Focus on the blessings you Do Have right now rather than give energy to the discomforts.
Great inspiration, Karen!
Thanks, Diane.
Amazing! We moved a couple years ago, with only two kids, and it was not light! On the bright side, we did get much stuff out of our life before the move. Your story is an inspiration… Thanks.
Thanks for sharing, Minimalist Wannabe.
Do what fits your family. Its so individual.
Because of the size of our family we’d normally need the largest moving truck available to rent (and still have to de-clutter as we couldn’t fit it all in. Been there. Done that!) we just didn’t want to spend loads of $$ every time we wanted to move. Not to mention all the hours/days of packing and unpacking.
Because of starting a new business recently we have become a little more stationery at present, so we’ve tended to pick up a little bit more. But still our house isn’t full at all to western standards, and I think our garage is the only one on the block not full of excess household stuff rather than a vehicle. (Well, ours doesn’t have a vehicle in it either, but that’s because our van is too tall The dc play & create in there instead)
This last move we packed up one evening, drove the next day pulling a rented small trailer, and were unpacked completely, and supper made/eaten/cleaned up, and everyone in bed within 4 hours. Dh has never enjoyed moving this crew, but this time he changed his mind!
De-cluttering truly makes a Life Change.
I only own about 2 weeks’ worth of clothes. It’s the books and hobby stuff that take up space. How did you move pots and dishes? Just one or two boxes? I’ve often thought the smaller families must have more stuff per person.
Many years ago a friend who had 2 kids said they had to rent a dumpster to clean their house. Another friend with 8 kids had much less stuff. Not everyone needs 12 sets of Legos for example. We never bought gum machine prizes but there were parents who always did. People make choices to live lightly or be surrounded by clutter.
When I worked in an office, my desk was very neat. I can’t live with clutter. I am always finding something to give away, recycle, or pass to one of my kids. I have a few more things to give away at the end of the winter if I haven’t used them.
I give a big bag of art and craft supplies away every month or two to my grandsons’ art teacher. I have also been giving craft supplies to a nursing home and a friend who teaches Sunday school.I just gave away a bag full of costume jewelry to some young friends of mine.I wasn’t going to wear it and they liked it. I am 68. I wear the same few things most of the time. If the jewelry is real, it goes to my daughter of one of my DIL’s. I am giving dishes I don’t use to a friend’s rummage sale.
I was given a bagful of balls of yarn. The smallest balls went to a friend who demonstrates cornhusk dolls. Then a bunch went to a preschool. When I was given wallpaper samples I kept about ten and passed the rest on. There are crafters with huge bins of yarn, silk flowers, or scrapbooking supplies. I have a shoebox for each type of supply. When the shoebox gets full either I plan a group project or give things away. None of my supplies were new.