How Would Living With Less Make You Feel?
I’m going to add something to your to-do list today. I promise it will only take a second and won’t require anything but a pen and paper and that glorious heap of matter between your ears. Make a plan today to walk into your house with a handy dandy notebook and write down your first impression of your home. What do you see first? How does what you see make you feel? Do you feel relieved to be home? Overwhelmed that you have so much more to do? Write that down. Once you’ve written down all of your feelings think about how you WANT your house to feel? Are they close? Or are you miles away from having what you so crave at home?
Girlfriend, I know how you feel. A few years ago, I felt so UNSETTLED. I had so much to-do and it was all little piddly things that didn’t amount to a hill of beans, but I couldn’t relax because everywhere I looked I saw things that needed attention. Clothes that needed folding and papers that needed sorting. And if I’m being honest, there were emotions that needed checked, but I couldn’t even begin to process them with the length of my to-do list. I couldn’t be free to chill with my kids because my home was a wreck and I was a mental wreck too. But, I decided NO MORE! I’m here to tell you, you can say BE GONE with all the piddly things in your life too! I swear it.
“The most important work you’ll ever do is within the walls of your own home.
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If you’re like me and every other desperate momma that has tried to put the kibosh on your ever growing task list, you may have bought into the notion that you need a daily detailed cleaning list or that you need more totes to stick things in. One time, I downloaded and printed (very expensive) a 365 day planner with a different cleaning plan for each day of the week. You know how many days I followed that plan? About five. I was wrong, my friend. I didn’t need a cleaning list for everyday of the week and neither do you. You need to bless yourself with the gift of less. THEN and ONLY THEN do you need totes. Totes are tote-ally great for the things you need and want to keep, but if you don’t first separate the likes from dislikes—the things in your life that aren’t enhancing your life or fulfilling a purpose— you can bet your bottom, you will just end up with the same pile of junk being moved from one place to the next.
When you have less in your way, you have more time, energy, and space to focus on what matters most. What do you think your loved ones would write down on their notepads if they did this task? Maybe they could care less about the piles of papers on the counter, the laundry on the floor, or the dishes in the sink. Well, them’s the breaks, but, I’ll bet your four year old would care more about cuddling than your pruny dish washing fingers. Keeping your home in haven-mode can take less than 30 minutes, but you’re the queen of your domain, you have to take the lead. Get your mind right; think about feeling more at peace, lighter, and comfortable in the home you live in. You can make a positive change on the people you love (get that sour look off your face) and the space you share with those loved ones and you may luck out and they follow your lead (it worked for me). The trick is having less to maintain.
So many of us think it would take hours to get your house “put together”, but if you had less to maintain because you’ve let go of what you don’t need, what isn’t serving a purpose, or what is no longer loved, you have less to keep track of and it takes less time to do it. If that doesn’t sound like a dream come true, I don’t know what does. For me, from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed, I follow just about the same routine. I have adapted a few habits and must do’s that I do throughout my day that help me keep on top of the housework game. Just like you, I don’t like to make things over complicated, so nothing I do in my routine feels like a burden, but instead, an easy to accomplish set of tasks that I chose to do BECAUSE I want my home to represent how we feel.
First thing every morning, I walk through the house, grab all the dirty laundry and throw it in the washer to start later (while I’m at it I switch the clothes in the washer to the dryer). I grab nighttime water cups and take them to the kitchen. I make a light breakfast and empty the dishwasher while the kids eat. Then I have them BRING me their dishes (remember I said they should carry their own weight, but no one loads the dishwasher like I do). Just like that laundry and dishes are taken care of and I can help get kids ready for school. Any other out of place items through out the day are simply picked up and put away by walking from room to room. Part of minimalism is that everything has a place and because I don’t keep around things that don’t belong in our home it’s easy to put these things in their designated spots. If an extra pair of shoes are kicked off in the kitchen, I can pick them up and carry them to the closet. On my way, I may find a kids book in my bedroom. I can carry that to the proper room on my way down the hall back to the kitchen. I never feel overwhelmed by this because, really the amount of things I pick up and move are so little it can be taken care of in one fell swoop. In the evenings, kids (the husband included) take responsibility for taking their dirty clothes to the washer. I start the load of clothes and as needed I wipe down counter tops (I tackle kitchen counters after meal times because, why not). Then the day starts over tomorrow. It all comes down to this: leave the house in ship shape. Go to bed with the house in ship shape. Rinse and repeat.
How much more time would you have for yourself or for your family if this was what your routine looked like? What would you do for yourself? For your family? The world would be your oyster. Minimalism isn’t just about cleanliness and it’s not a one size fits all lifestyle. I know for my organizing clients, minimalism may be completely out of the question or it just look different than what others may classify as minimalism. That’s a-ok! Everyone has their own comfort levels with the amount of stuff they can live with or without. That being said, I think everyone would agree that it would be nice to have the freedom to have just enough extra stuff that you can easily put it all away and carve out time for playing with your kids, curling up for a movie with your spouse, or kicking your feet up and reading a good book.
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