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, Laura and Mark Tong share their story. They radically downsized—from three houses to a small studio!—and have found substantially more freedom and fulfillment in their new minimalist lifestyle. Please visit their blog to read more.
Laura writes:
Okay, I admit it. I am a minimalism evangelist!
You know why?
Because I find minimalist living allows me to breathe and to think. It gives me the physical and mental space to truly enjoy the important things in life . . . like my husband, Mark. He’s unbelievably important to me, but incredibly, there was a time when I could hardly see him for all the clutter I had in my head and home!
As a couple we’ve had loads of fun downsizing hugely over the last ten years. We’ve decluttered our home, our lives and our thoughts. And we absolutely love the results.
There was a time that we had three houses, in three different countries. What a logistical nightmare that was. We could never remember what we’d left in each house so we’d end up transporting a whole home’s worth of everything back and forth each time.
There’s a good chance that a whole network of European home furnishing stores flourished entirely on the ludicrous amount of purchases we made. But still those houses felt rather empty and unloved, they never felt like home. Our heads were as cluttered as our homes.
And then there was the finances! Forever trying to transfer funds to different accounts in different currencies to pay bills in languages we didn’t understand. Oh boy, it got tiring. It got so we felt we were owned by our homes rather than us owning them.
And cars! We love cars, quirky, unusual cars but excessively owning four at one time was another perpetually onerous exercise that drained our energy and our wallets. Just keeping up with all the legal tests and taxes proved way too much for our already overburdened brains.
But it also led us onto a far better way of living. You see, the third time we forgot and were fined for having let the road tax expire on yet one more vehicle, we realized life had got completely out of control. We were drowning in possessions and the to-do lists (and bills!) that came with owning them.
Today we live in what is quaintly described as ‘a Studio’ which by any definition translates as ‘tiny’ but cosy. It’s basically four rooms, well okay, one main room, a tiny kitchen, a bathroom and a funny corridor area that functions perfectly as our office and dog-holding area.
My wardrobe is a 30cm wide shoulder height bookcase. Our bed folds out of the way and doubles our daytime space. As our chef, Mark has three kitchen gadgets: slow cooker, pasta server and a corkscrew. We own 4 physical books, but only because we wrote them.
Our friends bring food for our bird table or flowers for our tiny but bird and bee friendly garden as thank you gifts because they know we don’t ‘do stuff’. We love it. This truly feels like home.
We share a car, a quirky unusual little run around that has trundled us along 60,000 miles of European roadways in perfectly adequate, if cartoon-style comfort. It’s also been our sole house removal vehicle three times over.
Our minimalist lifestyle leaves us free to work on our blog, Enjoy Life Slowly. People can’t cope with everything they are supposed to do, be and own. They need a philosophy of living that puts quality of life first, like we believe minimalism does. Our blog helps people declutter their minds and lives so they can be happier and have quality of time for themselves, the things they love and the people they love.
Which is what becoming minimalist had done for us. It frees up huge amounts of our time (and income!) that we used to spend on low value tasks like shopping, tidying, cleaning, maintaining, replacing and insuring.
Our minimalist lifestyle truly allows us to breathe, to think and best of all, it allows us to enjoy life slowly together.
{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.}
Mark and Laura, I love your story. Due to escaping the recent heatwave in Los Angeles, I’ve found myself at the mall…shopping!! After downsizing – donating tons of shoes I turned around and bought five pairs. My mind has been cluttered with so much stress that I actually enjoyed the shopping. I realize it’s only a temporary fix and I long for the mental freedom that the two of you are experiencing. After reading your story, I think the first thing I will do this morning is return the shoes and use the money toward the credit card bills I’ve racked up this year. Thank you for sharing.
Hey Tara, thanks for sharing your situation at the moment. You know, stress is a toad for fooling our brains into thinking we need stuff, and there’s nothing wrong with a self-gift to help you keep on keeping on. We still treat ourselves to something we love, and yes shoes do feature. It’s great though that you recognize that going a bit too far with the shopping may in fact end up just adding to your stress with running up bills on your credit card. The most important thing about minimalizing is to enjoy the process, never feel bad or berate yourself if you act a little human sometimes. It’s about making life great, and that means it’s got to work for you. Good luck :)
For a long time I had difficulty walking the fine line between being an evangelist and being preachy. I often have to fight back the urge to tell people what they’re doing wrong and what I think they should so instead. The best thing I can do it to live it, show how minimalism has worked for me, offer advice when asked, and sometimes bite my tongue and let people make their own mistakes.
Thanks Berin, you make really good points here. When I say I’m an evangelist, I’ve learned to share my enthusiasm with those who are keen . . or curious. Being super happy with the way we live is one of the best ways to help others see how great a minimalist life can be, so often we’re asked all kinds of questions about how we make it work, challenges we had to overcome and what’s the biggest benefit. I think that even if we evoke some interest in people who are struggling with stuff and over-stuffed lifestyles, they’ve made the first step in seeing just how great life can be. :)
I am not a minimalist, but I do have minimalist tendencies. However, my mom is a hoarder and we often have disagreements about stuff. Eventually, we learned to just accept each other as we are.
Thanks for joining the discussion Lynn. And you are far from alone in being a minimalist among non-minimalists. We’ve asked a lot of minimalist bloggers what theire audience tells them is the biggest challenge to minimalizing and the common response has been – that someone in the house doesn’t share the minimalist dream! Wishing you lots of fun in learning to respect each other’s views :)
Great to read your minimalist story Mark and Laura. Your honesty and enthusiasm shine through and I love the quirky details :)
Thanks so much Claire, so pleased you enjoyed it. Our thanks to Francine for letting us share. :)
I mentioned Project 333 to some friends last night. They were appalled that anyone would willingly choose to live with so little. When I said I had done it over the summer and exchanged T shirts for sweatshirts so I could do it again starting October 1, they changed the subject. My small closet is half empty. Just the way I like it.
Hey Tina, it’s great that you’ve found your groove in a minimalist lifestyle. We’ve found that it works best when people look at it as being a personal thing that needs to work for them – for some that’s project 333 or 55 things and for others it’s downsizing by just 1’000 ft and still having 4’000 ft. Enjoy your space :)
I’d love to see pictures of your place! And I’m intrigued by the bookshelf wardrobe…wonder how that works!
Thanks Carolyn. We haven’t gotten around to doing photos but it’s on the list. We find our home super cosy but we still find a lot of people think it must be a nightmare! My wardrobe is really cute – will work on getting photos up. Enjoy :)
Wow! A complete turnaround. Love your story and it inspires me at a time I feel like I’m never going to make it (in the midst of downsizing now).
Thanks Tania. So pleased you enjoyed this. Good luck with your downsizing. We definitely believe that it’s a totally personal journey, one to be taken only as far as suits you. :)
My hurdle was telling gift givers I didn’t want anything for Christmas, birthdays etc. They’d say no, I must have something, so I’d ask for a practical item like a telephone gift card to use towards paying the bill, or a hardware store gift card so I could buy paint to decorate my home. They said things like that were boring and not considered gifts. I couldn’t win.
Now, if I’m not working Christmas my husband and I run away for a few days and have a mini ‘gift-free’ holiday for ourselves.
When I tell people I’m a minimalist, they don’t understand the what and why of it. I don’t preach to them, it’s a lost cause. They are the same lot who cannot comprehend how and why I travel with only a small carry-on bag, be it a week or five!
C’est la vie! :-)
Thanks for sharing your experiences Paula. You’re certainly not alone in wondering how to explain your philosophy sometimes. It has taken us a fair while to have our closet family and friends understand that we treasure time with them more than anything they could buy us… but they still want to say ‘hey we care about you’ by giving us gifts – so we found a great compromise. Our passions outside of helping others simplify is making furniture, flower and bird boxes (sometimes upcycling, sometimes from scratch), growing a fantastic wildlife friendly garden and watching and feeding wildlife – well, there’s a whole heap of things they find gift ideas for (and yes the birds and hedgehogs are dining in style!) :)
I hit on what struck me as a genius idea with respect to gifts. When I moved into a new home I asked for candles: you get to watch the beautiful flame and warm glow whilst thinking of the person who gifted them to you, and there’s nothing left to store or dust. If you are given the cheap imported ones that don’t burn properly you can recycle them into new candles (a favourite hobby – yep, requires some clutter in itself but BF and I enjoy doing this together so it’s worth it) then give them as a thrifty gift or enjoy them yourself. Another gift option was white hand and bath towels. Once they get to the ingrained grubbiness stage I don’t bleach them to death, just use them for rags or take them to the Dogs’ Trust. Still I have enough to last a lifetime…
A minimalism evangelist. I love the image. I can see you telling people honestly and with heartfelt depth, “Yes, Less is truly More!”
I too have found that to be true. It’s liberating.
I found another stack of things to take to the library. Some craft items and some old magazines. I had given away 2 sweat shirts and bought a new one. I forgot I bought the new one and last year I bought a new sweater. I threw out some rags because they had broken glass on them so I will have to cut up another ratty towel.
I saw a young girl today with a gorgeous designer purse and very expensive looking gym shoes. They were collecting old shoes at the
Library a week or so ago. I give classes on living with less.
I teach several craft classes every year. I get the materials free. We made flowers out of misprinted papers. Christmas decorations were used cards, paper scraps, buttons and ribbons. There are so many people with stashes of paper and fabric that I seldom buy anything but glue.
I really enjoy seeing empty space. I would be happier with even less. I have more to give away every day. I don’t know where some stuff even came from.