Hey Guys!
Let's talk minimalism. As a family of 5 who lives in a 2 bedroom/1 bathroom home, it’s essential to my mental survival to live minimally. What exactly does this mean? For us, it means that everything we have serves a purpose and has a place. Does that mean we have no trinkets or decorations and live in a house that is as bare as an empty box? No. We do on the other hand have a decent amount of “stuff” but it was purchased or kept with intention and with a spot to keep it.
Our house wasn’t always set up to support our current level of minimalism. In 2020, we were fortunate enough to customize our entire house to our liking. We took an enormous risk and got rid of all but one cabinet (kept one in the bathroom) and eliminated all closets. We wanted to maximize the space of the two (small) bedrooms and the living area. Whoa whoa whoa, no closets? No cabinets?
wHeRe Do YoU pUt AlL oF yOuR sTuFf?!?
Removing this type of storage forced us to have everything out in the open on shelves in the bathroom and the kitchen. Let’s start with the bathroom. We have one cabinet with two shelves. This is where we keep the eye sore bathroom necessities like soap bottles, bandaids, tampon boxes, etc. Under the sink is a steel shelf that stores our towels and washcloths. On the other shelves in the bathroom we keep our daily use items such as our toothbrushes, hair brushes, make-up, etc. The rest of the shelves have little decorative trinkets.
This is a current picture of our bathroom. The door on the track is for our single cabinet.
Now let’s move on to the kitchen. We have two shelves above the oven which hold our coffee mugs. We have a ton of mugs because we are obsessed with coffee and believe in drinking the delicious nectar of the gods straight from whatever mug “sparks joy” for us that morning. In our pantry is where we store all of our plates, pots, pans, silverware and anything else of that nature. We have industrial style shelves so there is plenty of storage for those things. During the renovation we downsized our fridge and went with a sleek steel and concrete design for the counter tops.
These photos were taken right after the remodel and we have since added another shelf over the oven.
Okay now that the boring stuff is out of the way, let’s discuss how we came to these decisions, how they work specifically for our family, and how you can start to minimize if you choose to. I am well aware that the way my family chooses to live with 3 toddlers is not the norm and will not work for everyone. I also am not here to tell you that my way is better than any other way. When it comes to downsizing, everyone has their own reasons and will move at their own pace. One of the things that was important to my husband and I when we discussed raising a family was spending time together. But Ally, you’re a stay-at-home mom and your husband works from home. How much more time do you want to spend?! But what we mean is spending quality time together, not just being home. When my husband is done with his work day, he wants to be able to spend time playing with the kids, not cleaning the floor, or doing a bunch of chores. And when my husband is done with his work day, I’d like to be done with my “work” as well. (Honestly, I don’t know why I put ‘work’ in quotes as if what I do everyday is not work because taking care of a house, 3 toddlers, and homeschooling one of those children is certainly work). My days consist of the daily chores like vacuuming, cooking meals, cleaning up the kitchen after meals, laundry, homeschooling, and getting the kids outside. I wanted those things to be as simple as possible day-to-day and that’s why we designed our house the way we did. The why’s behind living minimally are the most important in my opinion because those are the reasons that your minimal decisions will remain intact long-term. If you are looking to start minimizing, start a list of why’s. My list of why’s include but is not limited to:
Less to clean, more QT with the fam
Easy to clean – full house can be deep cleaned in less than 2 hours
Clear space (for me personally), clear head
Less money spent on random items/less waste
I would say those are the biggest reasons we decided to live as minimally as we could. We are not perfect (duh) and the one area we absolutely have no minimalism is kid toys. While our children don’t have a playrooms worth of toys –although close to it– they still have the ugly, bright, loud plastic toys that kids love. You know the ones I’m talking about. The eye sore toys that you make your kids put away before guests come over. Yeah, we have those. We try to walk the line of not buying our children every toy they say they want at the store and still allowing them to have a say in the toys they want to play with.
The other “minimalism rule” I follow is the 3 month rule. If we don’t use something for 3 months, we usually donate it. Why keep something shoved in a closet that you aren’t using? I know you’re going to think, “but what if I need this in a few weeks?”. You will be surprised at how little you need and use on a daily basis. I know I was! Start small with your minimizing and certainly do NOT just go throw everything you own in the trash. Start to think about how you can donate what you decide to get rid of, how you can purchase new things with intention moving forward, and how you can simplify your living style overall. Simplifying gives you mental clarity which will in turn help you flow through your days.
There’s a stigma surrounding minimalism that you need to have a boring color scheme in order to be considered a true minimalist. I call bullshit. While our walls are white, we chose this for a couple of practical reasons. The white walls makes our house look bigger and more spacious. Our house is roughly 1100sqft and we want it to look as big as possible. We also wanted the house to be as bright as possible using only the natural light that comes in through the windows during the day. We typically try to save energy by not turning on the lights during the day (thank you, sunshine state!). The other way to offset the “boring” white color of the walls is to use your furniture as color pops. Right before writing this, our new couch was delivered. We decided to go with a mustard yellow colored couch to brighten the living room.
As with everything, you can determine what level of minimalism is realistic for you and your lifestyle. A lot of what I see online is that there is a right or a wrong way to do it. There isn’t. You do what’s right for you. Start with your list of why’s, go through your stuff and see if there’s anything covered in cobwebs that you haven’t touched in ages ;) and donate it if possible. Then moving forward, purchase with intention. Whether the intention is necessity, color pop, or must-haves (aka our coffee mug collection). This is not a process that happens overnight. It will be a learning process that you will continue to grow in. I hope walking you through part of our process was helpful in your journey to minimize or at least planted the seed to get you thinking about it.
Wow! Great commentary on minimalism. Thanks for adding the pictures so I really could see what you’ve done! Your bathroom and kitchen are amazing. Love, love, love the look! You said you downsized your fridge. How is that working out? No frozen food? Keep sharing. You are sparking my need to de-clutter all the things that have been sitting here taking up space.