The minimalist life chose me

There’s a new show on Netflix this month getting lots of buzz. It stars a cute little Japanese lady, who helps people minimize the amount of stuff in their homes. It’s perfect for everyone making decluttering new year’s resolutions. Have you seen it?

I haven’t (yet)… and I haven’t read her books either. But I know enough about the concepts to realize I practice most of them on my own already. No I don’t say “thank you” to my items before putting them in the donation box, but I do generally live by the overall theme of only keeping things in our home that bring us joy (or are extremely useful).

Our current home is about 1600 square feet. That’s 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (well… we’re still finishing one of those), an open-plan kitchen/dining/living room, a basement living/play room, and an office/music room (which could be another bedroom, but has no closet).

Before finishing the basement in 2016, all we had was 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and the kitchen/dining/living space. The basement was “usable” (aka storage and blankets for playing on the concrete floor) but not exactly livable.

As we finished basement rooms, all of the stuff ended up in the garage for the summer. Finally the walls were finished and carpet was installed…

And the emptiness was beautiful.

We took our time bringing things back into the house. Everything had to have a purpose and a “home”. A place for everything, and everything in its place. We were following The Nester’s Cozy Minimalist Home approach before the book ever came out.

It’s said that moving is a great time to purge and declutter, as you’re touching every item in your home anyway. And the longer you live in a house, the more likely you are to just collect more stuff. I suppose we had a pseudo-move when we finished the basement, but overall we’ll have been in this house for 10 years this fall!

I really don’t feel like we have a lot of stuff. Maybe my eyes would be opened if we decided to move (it’s always in the back of my mind), but I think we just don’t have enough space in our house to get cluttered in the first place.

I didn’t choose the minimalist life — it chose me. A smaller house naturally means less stuff.

Would you be interested in reading a few deeper, room-by-room posts about how we live minimally? Kids’ bedrooms, play room, where this bibliophile keeps her books??