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A Year Ago on miss minimalist

My Minimalist Story, Part 3: My Life in a Duffel Bag: For six weeks this summer, I lived my minimalist dream—residing in hotels, with all my possessions in a single duffel bag. My husband and I purged almost all of our stuff, and sold our house at the end of July. However, we still had to wait several weeks for our visas to be processed before we could move to the UK. In the meantime, we “lived” in a series of hotels, as we wrapped up our old life and prepared for the new… {read more}

My Minimalist Story, Part 4: Our Dirty Secret: From the time we decided to move overseas, my husband and I fantasized about owning nothing more than we could carry with us.… {Read more}

Real Life Minimalists: R. S.

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 through mid-December — but if you don’t mind waiting, feel free to send me your submission!)

Today, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to R. S. She has two young children, and shares with us how she and her family have simplified their lives — and the payoffs of doing so! To read more, please visit her blog, The Suburban Minimalist.

R. S. writes:

First, the caveats: We are definitely in-process.… {Read more}

Welcome, Zen Habits Readers

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who’s come over from Zen Habits. It was such an honor to write a guest post for one of my favorite sites!

I’ve been blogging about minimalist living since September 2009, so there’s quite a bit of reading here. Therefore, I thought I’d share some of my favorite posts with you, as a little “Getting Started Guide” to my site.

I moved from the US to the UK a little over a year ago, and sold almost all of my possessions in the process. These posts detail my experience of paring down a houseful of stuff to one duffel bag:

My Minimalist Story, Part 1: A Clean Slate

My Minimalist Story, Part 2: The Great Unraveling

My Minimalist Story, Part 3: My Life in a Duffel Bag

My husband and I downsized from our 1000-square-foot, 3-bedroom house to a 390-square-foot, 1-bedroom apartment.… {Read more}

The Space Between the Notes

French composer Claude Debussy said, “Music is the space between the notes.” As a minimalist, I love this quote: it reminds us that beauty needs a certain amount of emptiness to be appreciated.

The space between notes allows them to resonate, reverberate, and reach their full measure of expression. Without this space, noise and cacophony would result.

The same can be said of our lives: too much clutter can stifle our creativity, and make our lives chaotic and discordant. Conversely, the more space we have, the more beautifully and harmoniously we can live.

Create Your Symphony

Think of every possession, every activity, every moment of your life as a note in your symphony.… {Read more}

Minimalist Workhorse: Mason Jars

Those who’ve read my book know I’m a huge fan of versatile items – from both a minimalist and ecological standpoint, I think it’s better to own one multi-functional item than several single-function ones. In my opinion, the more uses something has, the more worthy a place in our households.

When it comes to multi-functional items, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better workhorse than the humble mason jar. Besides their obvious use for canning and storing food, they can fill myriad other roles in our homes: from serving as lanterns, to drinkware, to impromptu piggy banks.

The best part: they can do double-duty as both storage and décor.… {Read more}

A Year Ago on miss minimalist

My Minimalist Story, Part 1: A Clean Slate: I think every minimalist fantasizes about starting over with a clean slate—it seems a heck of a lot easier than the slow (and sometimes painful) process of decluttering the stuff you’ve accumulated over a lifetime. I for one had been decluttering for years, and still seemed nowhere near my goal of living with just the essentials… {read more}

My Minimalist Story, Part 2: The Great Unraveling: Most of us spend our lives in a constant state of accumulation. It all starts when we leave our parents’ homes, and start acquiring the “stuff” to lead independent lives.… {Read more}

Real Life Minimalists: Jennifer

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 through mid-December — but if you don’t mind waiting, feel free to send me your submission!)

This week, I’m happy to bring you Jennifer’s story. She tells us what inspired her minimalist journey, where she is now, and what she’s working on for the future.

Jennifer writes:

A few years ago, I got my heart broken, and in those first few awful days following the break-up, I was in deep DEEP denial.… {Read more}

Leo Babauta on his new book, “focus”

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m not the productivity type. I take a fluid approach to life, rarely set goals, and would rather empty my schedule than jam more stuff into it. To me, it’s a serene and creative way to live.

Over the last year, however, my digital commitments have increased dramatically – and I’ve found that between email, blogging, Twitter, and the myriad requests that fill my inbox, it can be difficult to find the mental space to write and create.

Enter “focus,” the new book by Leo Babauta from Zen Habits.… {Read more}

Radical Downsizing

A little over a year ago, my husband and I were living in a 1000-square-foot, 3-bedroom house with a 2-car garage and postage stamp backyard.

Now we’re living in a 390-square-foot, 1-bedroom apartment.

I have to admit: I loved the idea of such a radical downsizing, but wasn’t quite sure how it’d work out in practice. But you know what? So far, we’re functioning perfectly well in about one-third of our former space.

Here are the differences between our former (larger) house and current (tiny) flat:

Former house: 3 bedrooms Tiny flat: 1 bedroom Thoughts: Having three bedrooms was a lot of wasted space for us.… {Read more}

A Year Ago on miss minimalist

Minimalist Travel: What’s in My Suitcase: I received several requests that I list the contents of my carry-on. I’m happy to oblige, as I think we’d all be happier travelers with much less stuff…The list below covers what I pack for a trip of about 10-14 days (the typical length of my overseas travel). However, I’d pack the exact same stuff if I were traveling for 3 months… {read more}

The Top Ten Benefits of Being a Minimalist: A lot of people think being a minimalist is akin to being a monk—living a sort of ascetic lifestyle in which you deprive yourself of “wordly” things simply for the sake of it.… {Read more}