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.
This week, we have a wonderful contribution from KandK. They tell us how simplifying their work inspired them to create an open, airy, uncluttered home.
KandK write:
My husband and I drifted into minimalism, starting around the time we simplified our work. In the late ’90s we went from being owners of a small business with a staff, a payroll, and rented office space to being independent contractors working in cozy home offices. We didn’t make as much money as we once had, but our work didn’t cost as much either. We had done away with most of our fixed costs along with the daily hassles and stress of management. The biggest issue on our daily commute was somebody forgetting his coffee and turning around on the stairs. We saved more money by cutting back to one car, and we began to walk or cycle to run errands.
But home became more crowded when we added our offices and a large amount of computing equipment. We got organized, made good use of shelves and floor space in closets and built rows of wide shelves in the basement, then filled all these spaces high and tight with what can best be described as “stuff.” It seemed that everything our family had brought into the house over twenty-odd years was still there. We used some of it some of the time, but mostly it was squirrelled away on a shelf or in a closet.
Now, my husband (K) is a wonderful man, and I love him, but he’s clumsy: two left feet. Unlike me, he’s uncomfortable without a lot of space around him, and although I found our situation cozy he had difficulty in what he experienced as cramped quarters. This was the impetus for the next change, which started slowly and picked up in earnest when our teenagers grew up and moved on. Over the course of some years we made room by freeing the house of an astonishing amount of that stuff. Not being garage sale people, we looked for places to donate. Furniture and clothing ended up at our local Goodwill. Surplus building materials and tools made their way to The Habitat for Humanity. Through Freecycle we found new homes for old electronics, textbooks and computer programming manuals, surplus garden tools, and even a stack of previously trodden patio stones. We donated books to our local public library and excess office paper and art supplies to the neighbourhood school.
It wasn’t easy to give these things away, but we learned to manage and negotiate emotional attachments, and though we (more often I) couldn’t bring ourselves (myself) to dispose of everything, we ended up with a small stack of boxes that fit unobtrusively and neatly in the basement. The benefits were many and easy to identify. The house became easier to clean, and the very atmosphere felt lighter. We didn’t hesitate to open closet doors for fear of what we’d find stashed inside. And, most importantly, my sweetie found he had room to move about without tripping or knocking something over.
By the time we’d taken most of the stress out of work and eased our “stuff burden”, we found we had time and head space for the next step. We embarked on a campaign of simplifying the house itself. We resolved to rid ourselves of cubbyholes in which clutter could breed unnoticed. We took doors off closets and turned them into open shelving which we keep only lightly populated. We turned a narrow, gloomy front hall into a bright, sunny space wide and clear enough that K can turn around (see photo). We gutted our galley-style kitchen and rebuilt it in a streamlined Scandinavian style (did I hear someone say Ikea?) with a pantry unit at one end, no upper cupboards, and a hand-picked piece of postmodern art mounted above the sink.
Our story isn’t over. Hobbies beget clutter, and my stash of fabric and knitting supplies threatens to swell on a weekly basis. K has built new shelves in the garage, and the last time I looked there wasn’t much free space there. But even if we backslide a bit I believe we’ll be able to keep it under control because we’ve developed a mindset that must be common to the people on this site. It’s best described by the words of a visitor to our bare-bones kitchen. When his wife, looking thoughtfully at the bare wall, asked if it would be possible to put back the upper cupboards, he said in a soft and wistful voice, “Sure you could, but I like it like this.”
{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.}
Would love to see a picture of your kitchen, KandK! Thanks for sharing your story!
Great story…I can so relate to “negotiating emotional attachments.” Those are the “toughies” for me. Best wishes on your continued journey. :)
You’d be surprised how much stuff can accumulate even when you move often! I had an idea in my head that there were certain things that just must not be thrown away–old photos, journals, that kind of thing. But I never, ever look at them, so… out they went this time.
Sounds like you’ve done an awesome job making your house livable!
I can relate so much to this – thanks for sharing your story! My husband and I have both worked from home for the past 20 years. We’ve shared a car for the last 7 years. Even in my efforts to simplify and declutter, we still have too much stuff. My office is brimming with family history and I am determined to take it to the next level. My goal is to eventually get to the point of people being surprised at how much I don’t own! Thanks KandK – you’ve given me a boast to get that moving forward for me!
I love the idea of a working from a cozy home office. And I, like your husband, also feel cramped in tight quarters and love having empty, open, space around me. So great that you were able to find that from eliminating stuff! Thanks for sharing. It’s always inspiring to read about others’ journeys!
Your point about getting rid of cupboards and cubbies in the house so that clutter won’t breed was really good. I had never thought of that! (And I’ve read a lot about minimalism.)
Storage spaces do have a tendency to fill up. Eliminating the storage space would eliminate the temptation to hoard.
Great thoughts!
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your beautifully written story. You have a lovely, easy way with words and it seems clear to me you’ve been making minimalism work for you. I agree that changes to furniture and layout to prevent ‘clutter spots’ is a great idea. No matter how much I love a well organised cabinet, having too much storage space is just an invitation to temptation! I hope your home continues to evolve in a way that suits you both.
KandK,
Is there any way you could post a picture of your kitchen? It sounds beautiful!
Amaizing story, loved to read that :) I love being minimalist even when there are little steps back. You purge your stuff, a bit comes back, but your life still never gets the same because of that mindset changed, exactly as you write. It’s weird, when applied to excercising for example, loosing weight and that gaining a bit back, I’d lose my motivation and feel down. When it happens with my stuff coming a bit back, I don’t worry, I’m still SO happy that I got rid of plenty. Isn’t that strange?
I have the same, I lose all hope of ever losing weight, but I know that if I keep chucking
things away I will eventually get a lovely empty tidy minimalist home…
Yes. And this blog helps keep that mindset going when some of the stuff creeps back. Love all these stories.
Still finding things that need to go. I wish I could just take a big bag and fill it with things I don’t need or want. Instead, I do a little bit at a time, all the time. I have very few clothes, a library next door so I don’t need many books, and very few pots and pans. I think I will give away some knives I have but don’t use. We eat meat very seldom and I can’t remember the last time I had red meat that wasn’t a hot dog or a hamburger.
Still finding craft materials to pass on. I have been giving away some magazines I was saving for the projects. Rearranging what is left so shelves are uncrowded.
I designed the kitchens in my last two homes to have a lot of open space on the walls. There were ample base units to house food and kitchen equipment, to the point there was very little on the work surfaces.
Now living in my BF’s tiny home we struggle as he has multiples of everything in less than 2/3 the space than I did (noting my small home was about 600 sq ft). It is crazy making, drives me insane. I am torn between donating my own 20-year-old cookware items, which function as well as the day I got them and are still packed away in the garage, in order to lead by example versus keeping them in case I snap and cannot take his refusal to pare down any longer, and end up having to move to a place of my own again. In the meantime I continue to Freecycle or donate items of my own that I no longer need nor love.