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A Year Ago on miss minimalist

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My Minimalist Story, Part 5: Starting Over: Don’t get me wrong, apartment hunting in a foreign country was an exciting experience—in fact, it’s something we’d always fantasized about on our travels. Unfortunately, however, it marked the end of our blissfully minimalist, hotel life. It had been my long-time dream to live in hotels, with nothing more than a single suitcase; and I was fortunate enough to realize it, for six weeks, while we moved from the US to the UK… {read more}

Minimalist Living: Life Without a TV: For years, my husband and I talked about giving up our TV.… {Read more}

Real Life Minimalists: WellHeeledBlog

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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 January — but if you don’t mind waiting, feel free to send me your submission!)

This week, we have a wonderful submission from WellHeeledBlog. She explains that for her, minimalism is not about placing arbitrary limits on her things, but rather being mindful of what she owns and the choices she makes.

WellHeeledBlog writes:

As a personal finance blogger, I am often searching for ways to make my money work for me.… {Read more}

My Minimalist Wedding Ring

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This week, Tammy of Rowdy Kittens wrote a wonderful, very thoughtful post about her wedding ring. I liked it so much, I was inspired to write one about mine.

When my husband and I married five years ago, we were already well into our minimalist journey. Instead of a big, expensive ceremony, we opted to elope to Iceland – I packed my dress in a standard ziplock bag, and we sent out postcards from Reykjavik announcing our nuptials. It was a beautiful, romantic experience; and best of all, the event left us with no debt or excess possessions.

Accordingly, I wanted my wedding ring to reflect our minimalist philosophy – so I chose a simple band with seven tiny diamonds across the top (pictured at left).… {Read more}

Real Life Minimalists: R. S.

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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

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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}

Minimalist Workhorse: Mason Jars

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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

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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”

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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

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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}