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.
Today, Rowena from London explains how several of her personal philosophies led her to minimalism, and how decluttering is already making a difference in her life.
Rowena writes:
I teach in London where I live with my musician husband, Dan, and two young sons. My journey towards minimalism has had several other names along the way! First I called it feminism, when, in my mid-20s, I rejected many of the useless and costly accoutrements of the female consumer. In my late 20s our children arrived so I called it natural parenting and eliminated unnecessary items by breastfeeding, co-sleeping and using baby-led weaning (although not nearly as much as I should have done. Ah well, hindsight is 20:20). Our adored children naturally limited our finances, so then I called it economical living and began to reduce our grocery bill by using cleaning tips from Kim and Aggie’s How Clean is Your House? Their natural cleaners led inevitably to an interest in the environmental impact of our household, and so in my early 30s I called it ethical consumerism and eco-living and invested in crystal deodorant, eco-balls, Ecloths and other environmentally-friendly items. Last year I got into vintage fashion and adopted the ‘buy-less-love-more’ approach.
However, I was still living in a tiny flat with Dan (and his drums), two young children (and their paraphernalia) and my own accumulated junk (and almost no storage). I have an exhausting job and no inclination to spend my evenings and weekends cleaning and tidying, so the flat was usually in a terrible state. Then, a few months ago, I stumbled across minimalist mother singlemomenough.wordpress.com and had something of an epiphany. Of course! If you have no stuff you never have to tidy any up!
All my various philosophies seem to have come together in minimalism. I suppose what they all have in common is a core concept of sorting what really matters from what society says should matter. I’m still a passionate feminist, attachment parent and environmentalist, but the Big Clear Out has begun! I have found so much peace and energy since this chapter of our lives began.
Some items are easier to reduce than others: my wardrobe is small and I’ve never spent much on clothing (see above!); CDs have been replaced with an MP3 player and rarely-used items are gradually leaving. However, we both have lots of musical instruments, with which we will never part, and I recently heard that there is a correlation between the size of a parents’ book collection and the standard of university that the child later attends, so I am firmly against reducing our 1000+ book collection by much. We also let the kids spend their pocket money however they choose (so that they learn early on what it is like to waste money!) and it does mean that various toys do enter our home, but they too have to learn how to manage their possessions.
Since beginning the purge of stuff from our home, I have at times been daunted by just how much we have, even in this small space. I have a couple of theories as to why we own so much. Our parents were born in the 1940s and 1950s, which in the UK meant rationing and ‘waste-not-want-not’. The flow of items into the home was much slower than now, and so they were raised to hang on to things, should they be needed again. Dan and I grew up in the 1980s, when consumerism ruled. Possessions were how you measured and displayed your success.
Thus the pair of us arrived at married life with the twin notions of hoarding against future poverty, and valuing the accumulation of items. Obviously, I can’t blame all this on our ages and those of our parents, otherwise everyone in their mid-30s would be living in chaos, but I do look around some of my friends’ homes (particularly those with young children, admittedly!) and do see that, yes, actually, lots of people our age do live with huge amounts of clutter. (Each to their own, by the way. I’m not criticising how other people live, just attempting to explain it). I must also point out that my mother is a superb de-clutterer!
I’m excited about where this journey will take us, and I love the feeling of airiness and order that has been created in our little flat even at this early stage. There remains a lot to be done, but the process is as satisfying as the result. Minimalism is the latest philosophy to enter my life, and I’ve written about the others – chiefly feminism and parenting – for some other sites. Please find links to them here: https://www.facebook.com/rowenapelham.
{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.}
Re Co-sleeping, please can I strongly caution against this, it greatly raises the risk of cot death in an infant. I am speaking as a mother who lost her son at 7 weeks of age.
Rowena, I am so pleased to hear that someone else is not ridding themselves of books or musical instruments (we’re voracious readers and my husband is a drummer) despite embracing minimalism.
It’s beautiful how many things dovetail into minimalism and emanate from it- complementing and enhancing the experiences of living and being part of the world rather than merely showing off.
I wish you all the best in your de-owning and enhancing.
I enjoyed hearing about your journey and wish you the best of luck. I was curious about your comment on books. We have had our children go to top universities, but have not had a huge book collection. There may be other factors, such as the parent’s values and attitudes towards learning that may make more of a difference. We did frequent the library very often and had endless amounts of books coming in and out of our home. Instead of us being the ones to dust and house all of them, the library did it for us. If there were special books that we would read over and over, then we made the choice to buy them, but kept only a few shelves of books that were our favorites. The example of parents reading to their kids and reading books themselves shows a love of learning, regardless of how many books may be in the home. Just a thought. It is very refreshing to read stories likes yours where you trying to leave stuff behind for a better quality life. Think of all the hours moms have spent cleaning and dusting clutter over the years!
I agree! My parents only ever bought a handful of reference and fictional books but we were at the library almost every weekend. Perhaps it is a matter of having access to a good public library? Plus my mum was a voracious reader and kids are a bit monkey see monkey do. I follow the same pattern myself now – I own about 30 books but I always have 20+ books checked out from the library. But to each their own. I too find there is a nice overlap between minimalism and environmentalism!
Our journeys sound very similar. Thank you for sharing yours. I’m writing about our simplification efforts every week here: http://everydaymindfulliving.com/simplify-saturday/
So nice to read about others on the journey. I have been doing this myself, for over 25 years, and I can look back and see the path. All the ebbs and flows over my own journey and how it has shaped where I am today with life.
I think it may be the hours spent reading and the hours spent discussing. Also we had a Tv but it was not on very much. The kids had to choose between TV watching and other activities. Doing your best as a parent means making choices so you do the best you can. A friend just wanted her kids to be the best dressed.
As to the books:
I have decluttered a lot of books in the past year.
I am living in a tiny space due to several factors and came with about 570 books.
I buy about one to four new books each month…
So what I do is declutter the ones I definitely do not read anymore. Those are donated to places that sell them for one Euro or give them away for free or use them in their library.
I agree that books should be in the house if children are around, but I don’t think it matters much where they are from. If they are easily accessible (coffee table, bathroom…), then kids will at least leave through them.
I would also advocate free use of pocket money but would practice and discuss with children how they can spend their money, especially how they can save. This is something I was not taught in my childhood, I was either allowed to buy something or not, but did not get ideas on how to save money.
I would make a plan, first short-term plan, with alternatives:
If I spend only half or three quarters of my money per week/ fortnight/ month, what can I buy with the savings after one week/ fortnight/ month, after two months etc.
What sum can I easily save each week and when would it be reasonable to spend it?
Are there events I should save up to, times when money is often missing?
What should I save for a rainy day, for a time when I have spent all my pocket money but it turns out I need money quickly?
When can I buy something expensive that I really want to have if I save … money per week?
What do I regularly buy, what does it cost, can I get it cheaper, do I really enjoy it (or is it the chocolate bar on my way from school just because I’m hungry), is there an alternative (pack a homemade muffin for the way home etc. ;-))?
Also for books and magazines:
Which books should I buy, which can I borrow, which magazines can I borrow at the library, or get from friends and relatives or neighbors after they have read them?
Magazines are usually thrown away after a week or so. Sharing is cheaper and more economical (what can I give in exchange?).
I don’t think children should be forced into minimalism by forbidding to buy toys etc., but I believe they should be made aware of conscious shopping, spending and saving. Also of marketing tricks that make you buy things you don’t want anymore after you have paid (or unpacked) them.
PS
I grew up in a household where my mother and stepfather never read, but where a lot of books were left by the previous tenants. My father, whom I only saw in the holidays, read crime stories.
Still, my brother and I read a lot and even once argued with my parents that THEY should read more.
So I consider accessibility to books much more important than reading parents, IF the kids are not homeschooled but exposed to books at school.
Most of the books I picked from the shelves in the house were unknown to my parents, both the contend and the fact that I was reading them. I never discussed books with anyone until I was about 17 years old, and then it was via internet fora mostly.
I find it important to teach children about possibilities to get books early on – take them to the library, show them, where they can find certain books or magazines, show them free e-books and how and where to get cheap second-hand books. Also, emphasize that buying second-hand is environmentally friendly.
I find it interesting that with the emergence of e-book-readers, a lot of people start (re-)reading classics because they are for free. That makes the e-book-reader kind of a literature advocate.
‘Airiness and order’ – perfect!
Ah, a kindred spirit. I am also a feminist, an a attachment parent and an aspiring minimalist. In fact, we came to minimalism via the same ephiphany. I got sick and tired of picking up children’s toys and, around the same time, read the wonderful book Simplicity Parenting. Ding! Ding! I’ll be interested to follow your journey :)
I am getting rid of some very easy books I kept for my grandsons. They are well past them so I will give them back to the library. We have my son’s sci-fi here and my mother’s romances which I take to the nursing home when I visit. I am also going through my DVD’s and passing on the ones we don’t watch.
My mother had boxes and boxes of mildewed books which we discarded. Now when I’m at a thrift shop or the library sale rack, I pick up a romance or two to take to her nursing home. I have a nearly empty bookcase so it’s for her use.
We go to the library 2 or 3 times a week. I read the classic 1930’s British mysteries. I also work with the slower readers at the kindergarten at my grandsons’ school. Sometimes I ask if they have books in the house. The school lends out books, too. I can remember being 5 or 6 years old and reading history and geography books. I was fascinated by the pyramids and mummies.
My kids are 42,40 and 36. They were all reading before they started kindergarten. I’m not sure it even matters what they read as long as they are reading. My daughter, who was never interested in arithmetic, learned fractions and percentages because she saw a use for them.There are a lot of engineers and scientists in the family, someone was always doing some sort of an experiment.