Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words (click here for details).
This week, Jake writes from Australia. He tells us about his decluttering progress, and how it’s had a positive impact on both his own mindset and his family life.
Jake writes:
Dear Miss Minimalist,
Thank you for being an ongoing inspiration to help me remove so much clutter and junk around my house. Just today I donated a whole boot load of stuff from the back of my car; the things had been collecting gradually just in the last two weeks alone. At present I’m also selling the silverware cutlery set which was inherited and never used. Most Aussies don’t really get into pomp and ceremony with fancy stuff like that at the best of times anyways.
Just like you mentioned in your book (yes I have that and reading it at present, it’s a great read), once you start decluttering there’s no stopping you. The lounge suite is next, and replacing it with one that is more suitable for the lounge room in the house, as the way we have now is awkward and way past its prime.
I have all my CD’s on my Apple Mac, along with all my DVD’s, and also all my old books hence no more bookcase. Backing up on a separate external hard drive gives me peace of mind that all music will be well protected. The photos have been scanned on computer—all 4000 plus of them, which took a while but was an enjoyable past time, away from television and other wasteful hobbies. Hopefully I will be able to completely part with the family photos one day.
I’m hoping once my family gets used to the idea of not having so much crap around the house we will become a happy family unit, rather than just people roaming around in a house full of dusty old things. I’m starting to see some positive results of it already, as we turn the television off during dinner time and talk of our day, and even play Scrabble some nights and find that more enjoyable. Thank you so much for bringing the family together again.
{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.}
Thanks for sharing your story, Jake :)
Just a word of warning to people. If you’re looking to stay on side of the law, you should be careful when ripping CDs to your computers and then selling them (technically you don’t have permission to do that – although I know everyone does it).
I love that you want your family to closer as a result of you minimising – I think that’s a perfect reason to do so :) Thanks for sharing your story! I hope for the best as you’re on your minimalist journey!
I love to hear from another Australian. All the best, and keep up the brilliant minimising :)
Just wanted to say that I sincerely wish your family every happiness and hope that you create the closeness you want! All the best!
Hello Jake,
I am a brand new user of this blog, and this is my first reply on this site. It was great to read about your decluttering progress. I am doing the same here in this tiny Slovakian village. Recently I inherited my parents’ old house. My mom was a huge junk collector for 50 years, so I don’t know how long will it take me to create some order here, but I am doing my best…
Juditka, If it’s any help, my Father-in-law lost his mother back in 2007 and “inherited” her whole house full of internet purchases and knick-knacks when she passed away. We moved close to him shortly after and once we set aside a few truly worth keeping pieces, we had a huge yard sale, and donated anything that didn’t sell that weekend. I honestly don’t think my Father-in-law would have been able to handle the emotional toll that comes with parting with a loved one’s belongings. He is happy and I think (at least hope) that his mother is happy that he didn’t hang onto “stuff” due to guilt. Anyway, good luck to you and my condolences for your loss.
Dear Anna, thanks for your kind words. I have been thinking about doing a yard sale, which is probably going to stir up this neighborhood, since yard sales are unknown in this part of the world. It will be interesting to see how people will react to it. Who knows, maybe others will follow, and eventually we could live in a clutter-free neighborhood:).
Juditka,
My mother passed not long ago and I was faced with a similar challenge. My heartfelt advice is to keep the decluttering energy flowing by taking occasional breaks to have a nibble and read minimalist blogs and posts as you celebrate your successes. Before and after photos can also be inspiring.
Just a thought – is it wise to be so technology dependent? All it takes is a good storm, electricity goes, and where you are with your digitalized stuff in a dead piece of metal and plastic?
He has it all backed up as well.
This is a good one :) And how he can get to the backed-up materials without electricity, eh? Or there is another possibility – I’ve seen a person accidentally drop his iPad into the sea during the ferry trip. Suddenly his colleague who had the paper versions of their documents ceased to be an old idiot who doesn’t know a thing about technologies, and became a true saviour. Sth to think about, isn’t it?
I have to agree with you. I have all my children’s growing up years on VHS tapes. And who owns a VHS player nowadays? No one. So I’ve learned to keep photos. Technology evolves too fast.
I still own a VHS player. And zillions of tapes. And one day I’ll get round to digitalizing the lot. Hopefully before the VHS player dies.
Touche, Mrs. Brady :)
I have the same thoughts as Kurkela. I learn more and more that there are many things that I really don`t need. But I wonder about digitalizing everything. Well, after a storm, electricity will hopefully come back sometime. But I don`t know how our world will develop with all the ecological problems – how much electricity will we have in 20 years or so? And I`ve often heard about people who have to flee from a war or a fire and can`t take one single thing: after a while, they get over loosing all their possessions. But they always miss family memories, photos and such. I’ve personally heard people being sad about missing family photos 50 years after they lost them fleeing from the socond world war. Today, I see our problems more in the energy that gets more and more scarce. So I surely try to keep only those photos and sentimental items that are really really important for me, and only very few of those, but I would never digitalize everything – I just don’t have enough trust in technology to do that.
It’s so much easier to declutter material stuff than digital stuff. Do we really listen all those songs or watch the pictures we have in our computer?
That’s a really good point, MV. I’ve recently started decluttering my digital items as well. It’s way too easy to overaccummulate when the items aren’t taking up physical space.
you can listen to your music from the computer especially when you put together playlists to chose from.
and photos can ‘pop-up’ sorta like a screen-saver…i’ve seen more photos from trips that other family members took than if we all had albums.
storing in the cloud is helpful and there are solar chargers available for laptops
“I’m hoping once my family gets used to the idea of not having so much crap around the house we will become a happy family unit”
i know this maybe sounds rude, but this just reminds me of people telling (and thinking), i hope that when we buy [thing] or do this incredible expensive [thing] we will become a happy person/family/whatever.
Like you probably did before stumbling upon minimalism, you let your happyness depend on things. This time it’s just the getting rid of things.
When it comes to relationships, having things or not having things or decluttering just don’t matter, the THINGS are getting in the way, either way.
I think the sentiment is that he hopes his family with embrace his minimalism and not cling to materialism, at least that is the way I read it.
I don’t get that impression. I think he is probably looking towards the extra time and energy they will have once there is less stuff to arrange/clean/constantly demand attention.
He doesn’t see minimalism as making him happy but the resulting clutter-free house as making them happier? A house that will allow the family to come together more often and focus on each other, rather than be distracted by the stuff in the house?
That’s the impression I got anyway.
Even if he is looking for “something” to make them a happier unit, he’s taken active steps in a direction that he hopes (and already sees) will bring them closer together.
Good on him.
:-)
Karen (Scotland)
Thanks for sharing your story. Just a random thought and not directed at you in any way – I really like looking through the online archives at old photos of the city I live in here in NZ, old photos of where we live and the city itself. It’s fascinating to see photos of our house, people who lived on our road etc from 100 years ago. I do fear that this rush for everyone to digitalise, never print photos out, get rid of old family photos will lead to a historical void. I know libraries, museums etc will be saving things for the future, but for the average family there will be no physical evidence for people to look back at.
All the best for your decluttering.
Dont bin the photos!
Wow, 4000 photos scanned! That’s pretty impressive. I have scanned several of my favorite photos, but not everything as of yet. You’ve inspired me to take the plunge.
I used to have a hundreds of books too and it’s so great going digital, isn’t it? I love the instant gratification of being able to download a book I want right away. I also like being to take my book collection with me on a trip and have it weigh almost nothing!
Thanks for your post, Jake. I like your thoughts about getting rid of stuff helping to free up time for your family. I have found this too. I have less to clean, which gives me time to spend on other things, and I also have only what I really love and use, so I can enjoy it more. I stopped printing out photos over a year ago, as it was becoming very difficult to keep up with, and I already had a shelf and a half of a bookcase tightly packed with photo albums. Adding to these albums year after year wasn’t going to be sustainable in terms of space! I’m still trying to come to an ideal solution in terms of photos, but in the meantime I make sure the photos on my computer are culled, sorted, and regularly backed up.
I spent many, many hours scanning over 4000 photos. Once I had finished that task, I uploaded all of them to photobucket.com. This lets you share with family and friends with just an e-mail link. So very nice! I also made sure to backup to external hard drives as well. Very liberating to be able to let go of all those albums.
Great to hear from another Australian! I totally agree, once you get started decluttering its addictive! Glad your already reaping the benefits:)
Yay, another aussie! :)
Jake – I had to laugh when reading about the silver cutlery set and it’s lack of use.. So true!
Best of luck in your journey and please keep some physical photos! ;) I too am one of those with not enough faith in digitalizing everything.
Jake..Very inspirational..thank you.
Lovely to hear from another Aussie.
I’m envious that you can trust digital technology enough to say goodbye to the ‘real things’ – I struggle with that, and I am very tech savvy. But having worked with archives I have seen too often how obsolescence is the issue.
While we are no longer in Australia, we are still of the same attitude about pomp and ceremony – no such thing as “best” dishes in this house. They all get used, although I must confess I don’t give my favourites to the 4 year old to use ;)
Enjoy your journey toward minimalism – I hope it does bring your family closer together, that is a lovely idea. I hope it can do the same for my family too.
Loved reading this, Jake.
We’re just a regular family with too much stuff too and it’s such a great feeling when I can spend a Saturday with the kids and husband rather than “put away” all the stuff lying around or clean some unused stuff.
Enjoy your journey to less stuff and more time.
:-)
Karen (Scotland)
I have to disagree with Aussies not into all that pomp and ceremony stuff Jake! We minimalised all our every day crockery and cutlery and now only use the ‘noice’ cutlery and crockery we were given as wedding presents. And if some of it breaks we will replace with a trip to the opshop :)
As for photos I have come to terms with that dilemma. Photos are important to me so each year I collate my favourite 100 photos from that year and create a photo book. I have been doing it since I had children. There are 3-4 photos to a page, both sides of the page are used so the book is really quite thin. I have decluttered 300+ normal books from our inbuilt shelf so there is plenty of room for them. I also have a little album with all the ‘1st school day photos’ in it. It is the first thing I would grab if I had to leave a burning house.
Nicole, that’s exactly what my mother did, and I plan on doing that too once I’ve got the OK from my mom to take over the silverware she doesn’t use anymore!
In reading onine about digitizing photos and organizing the digital images, I have seen advice to NOT get rid of the paper copies. They say digitized photos can eventually degrade, and in future years you may want to rescan the original hardcopies in a new format rather than transferring the digital images to a new format.
You can keep a few pictures. You can keep a few of anything. The key word is few. I don’t need 16 matching plates,bowls,saucers, or anything else. But I enjoy my kids college graduation pictures. I keep a few DVD’s that I enjoy. Less than 10. I haven’t bought one in years because we live next to a library. Each person chooses what is important to him. It’s being selective that makes us minimalists.
I am going through my pots and pans and finding this week’s big bag for Goodwill. There are only a few pots and pans I use on a regular basis. SOme I only use once or twice a year. I am finding books to give to my mom and looking for books to give away to the library. It makes me sad that my mom spent so much on tchotchkes that none of her children or grandchildren want.
Before we put mom in a nursing home, she was giving away money, and spending money on all kinds of junk she bought from catalogs and magazines. Now, every time she sees an ad for something in a magazine, she wants it and I won’t let her have it. She doesn’t need a food processor in a nursing home. I give her $5 a week spending money but she wants $20 a week, she has her food and shelter and clothing provided. I think a lot of very old people get scammed because they don’t understand money.
Hi there,
My name is Milena, I work for the Insight program on SBS TV, Australia.
We are currently working on a program about people’s attachment to ‘stuff’ – from minimalists to hoarders and everything in between. I am hoping to speak with Australian minimalists about their journey and their relationships.
I would love to speak to Jake about his progress! Please email me at milena.dambelli@sbs.com.au
I hope to hear from you soon!
Thanks,
Milena
My mom died in December. We found 14 bags of stuff she had hidden behind her clothes and in odd spaces in the nursing home. My daughter wanted 2 shirts. I sent 2 night gowns to my SIL. The books I kept here to bring when I visited were divided into piles by author. My brother is selling his big 4 BR house and moving to a 1200 sq ft condo. I went to help him go through his closets. Huge garbage bags of things to give away, bags of papers to recycle, and lots of things to throw away. I have 1 small linen closet. He has a huge one. I suggested he give the worn towel to the local animal shelter.
I do a lot of crafts. I also teach craft classes. It is all upcycling and people give me big bags of stuff. Unless I will use it in the next year or it is rare and valuable, I pass it on to other crafters. There are people with big bags full of egg cartons, and cabinets full of beautiful paper. I couldn’t live like that.