The Minimalist Way Read online

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  Cover and Interior Designer: Merideth Harte

  Photo Art Director: Sue Bischofberger

  Editor: Melissa Valentine

  Production Editor: Andrew Yackira

  Photography/Stocksy: Brett Donar p v; Sophia Hsin pp viii, 76; Ali Harper p xii; Melanie DeFazio p 16; Ellie Baygulov p 34; Bonnin Studio pp 58, 114; MaaHoo Studio p 94; Lumina p 128; Nicole Mason p 144; GIC p 152

  ISBN: Print 978-1-64152-345-5 | eBook 978-1-64152-346-2

  To the incredible community that has rallied around The Life On Purpose Movement. Your stories inspire me every day. Here’s to doing life with community—and on purpose.

  contents

  Introduction

  1 the heart of minimalism

  Clutter: Physical, Mental, and Emotional

  Thinking Like a Minimalist

  3 Thought Patterns that Fuel Overconsumption

  Joy and Fulfillment: A New Approach to Consuming

  2 the key to minimalist living: know your values

  What You Value and Nothing More

  How to Embody Your Values

  The Power of Pause: How to Use Your Values in Daily Life

  Know Where You’re Going

  3 home

  Reflection

  Creating a Minimalist Home

  Key Areas to Declutter

  Common Clutter-Clearing Stumbling Blocks

  Your Home Is an Expression of Who You Are

  4 workspace and career

  Reflection

  Solutions for a Minimalist Workspace

  Do You Work to Live or Live to Work?

  5 family life

  Reflection

  Strategies for a Minimalist Family Life

  Bringing Love and Connection to Your Family Routines

  Minimalist Families Go Their Own Way

  6 finances and budgeting

  Reflection

  Strategies for Minimalist Finances

  There’s No One Path to Financial Freedom

  Strategies for Minimalist Shopping

  When Your Values and Shopping Habits Align

  7 time and time management

  Reflection

  Over-Committing to Others and Under-Committing to Ourselves

  Strategies for Minimalist Time Management

  Maybe You Have All the Hours You Need

  8 relationships

  Reflection

  Minimalist Strategies for Relationships

  People Are Not the Same as Things

  9 continuing your minimalism journey

  Tips for Staying the Course

  To Change Your Behavior, Change Your Identity

  References

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  how to use this workbook on an ebook device

  If you’re reading this workbook on a touch-screen device, you can add notes and highlight text just like you would in a physical workbook.

  Some sections will prompt you to write in answers or personal responses. It’s easy—give it a try right here: ___________.

  With your finger, tap and hold for a few moments on the line above. Depending on the device you’re using, an icon such as a magnifying glass will appear. Lift your finger and you’ll see an options menu. Select “Note” (or “Notes”) to add and save your own text. When you’re done, an icon or highlighted area will remain, which you can always return to and tap if you want to reopen and read or edit your note.

  The same tap-and-hold options menu offers “Highlight” or “Color,” which you can select if you want to highlight a passage or “check” a box. Experiment with it: By swiping your finger before releasing you can select entire sentences or paragraphs. The options menu also offers “Bookmark” for when you want quick access back to certain pages.

  This method is the same on nearly all touch-screen ebook devices, but some have slight variations. If you’d like more information specific to the device you’re holding in your hands, a quick online search will yield best results.

  introduction

  I knocked, waited for an answer, knocked again, and then slipped the key into the lock.

  As I stepped inside the apartment, something brushed my face, and my hand shot up to push it aside.

  Leaves, I thought. That’s right … this is Charlie’s apartment.

  I spent most of my twenties managing a large apartment building on the peninsula south of San Francisco. Every year for our annual smoke detector testing, I spent one full day stepping inside 53 different homes. As exhausting as that day was for me, my curious side loved getting a glimpse into how other people lived.

  I saw apartments full of knickknacks collected over a lifetime or passed down from generations before. I saw apartments with not a dish on the kitchen counter and others without a clear surface in sight. One apartment was packed with an eclectic mix of mannequins, costume jewelry, and bottles upon bottles of health supplements. (I have no idea why.) Another—Charlie’s apartment—accumulated more houseplants every year I entered, until most of the sunlight had been blocked by stretching green branches and I could barely walk through the living room.

  Stepping through these 53 doors each year gave me an intimate glimpse into the many different ways people live.

  A QUIET EPIDEMIC

  What I observed then, and what I know now, is that too many of us are burdened by o
ur belongings, our commitments, our calendars, and our mental loads. In this state, we can’t slow down and enjoy our lives because we’re too busy managing them. We’re afraid, deep down, that we’ll wake up one day and realize that we missed out on the precious years of raising our families or having good health—because we devoted so much of our attention to things that didn’t ultimately matter. This is the problem I want to help you solve with this book. This is where minimalism steps in. It’s not just about our stuff—it’s a way of life.

  MY JOURNEY TO A SIMPLER WAY

  I didn’t know what minimalism was when I first felt called to it. I was knee-deep in midnight baby feedings, wet toddler kisses, and drastic swings from feeling immensely loved and fulfilled to feeling hopelessly tired of being needed and exhausted beyond what I thought possible.

  Matching the chaos inside of me was the chaos around me. At the end of one particularly long day, I walked slowly through my apartment, feeling defeated by the mess. Papers, toys, bouncers, sippy cups, blankets, pacifiers, and books littered the surfaces. It looked like the baby and toddler section of Target had blown up in my living room.

  It was in the thick of these years that I felt a quiet voice inside nudging me to a simpler way, to a life built around the things that really mattered to me—the things that brought me joy—and nothing else. I gradually stopped saying yes to every request that was made of me. I started going through our home, evaluating our belongings with a critical eye. I began fiercely protecting our family time—our adventures to the beach, our Saturday hikes, our outings to the local airport to watch the small planes land. It didn’t happen all at once, but in a thousand ways, minimalism was changing my life for the better.

  My journey to minimalism may have begun during new motherhood, but yours can begin at any time, in any stage of life. It can begin today.

  MY INVITATION TO YOU

  This book offers a holistic approach to minimalism. My hope is to help you simplify your life not just by decluttering your belongings (although that’s part of it!), but also by streamlining your time and mental energy so you have the space to enjoy what really matters. As you read, you’ll learn to reduce what you currently own and commit to bringing less into your home going forward; you’ll evaluate your relationships and determine how they can better contribute to your quality of life; and you’ll take a critical look at your calendar to carve out more time for the people and pursuits that are meaningful to you.

  But on a deeper level, I want to help you stop living from a place of hustle and overwhelm and start living in a space of contentment and joy. This doesn’t mean you won’t still experience the natural heartbreaks of life or that you’ll never again find yourself in a season of busyness or stress. But through those challenging times, you’ll have the tools and mental clarity to discern what you can let go of—and what you want to hold close. Welcome to The Minimalist Way.

  1

  the heart of minimalism

  I sat in a faded sage-green rocker while my three young children played on the floor in front of me and the sun painted soft strokes of gold across the sky. I was hundreds of miles away from family, raising our kids while my husband traveled for his career, and working a job I didn’t love. I felt overwhelmed and alone.

  In the midst of this challenging season, I remembered there on that rocker that I was in charge of my own path. I didn’t have to do life by default. And if I wanted to design a life that really suited me, I needed to identify what mattered to me. I needed to focus less on what I was doing and more on why I was doing it.

  I believe that when you know your why—your deepest priorities, your core values—everything else falls into place. The nonessentials get stripped away, and you uncover the life you’ve always wanted.

  This is the heart of minimalism. It’s the privilege of cultivating a life that matches who you are inside. It’s the gift of pursuing what matters to you, free from the distractions that too often take you off track—and ultimately fill your life with things you never meant to acquire. Simply put, minimalism is the choice to live a life that fits.

  In that moment, what drew me to minimalism was a desire to push back against the culture of too much. I’d had enough of too much—too much stuff, too many calls to make, too many errands to run, and too many commitments to people I hardly knew. I was ready for less.

  But I quickly discovered that less isn’t always easy in a culture that values busyness, achievement, and the endless accumulation of material things. Together, let’s commit to adopting a minimalist mind-set and begin to free ourselves from pressure, guilt, and burnout by living in line with our deepest values.

  Clutter: Physical, Mental, and Emotional

  I believe one of the most powerful catalysts for adopting a minimalist mind-set is recognizing and internalizing the impact clutter has on you. When you finally open your eyes to the clutter around you and the clutter inside of you, that’s when you feel the heaviness of it—and you begin to want a change.

  Physical Clutter

  When I was in my early teens, a family down the street asked me to babysit. Our families knew each other well, but I’d never been inside their home until the first time I was left alone in it with their four children.

  I remember walking slowly from room to room, astounded by the volume of stuff one little house could contain. Dishes and food lined the kitchen counters, bookshelves were stuffed to overflowing, and layers of toys concealed the carpet in the kids’ bedrooms.

  What stands out most in my memory is the path their kids used in one of the bedrooms. They’d launch themselves from the threshold to the first twin bed, and then if they needed to get even deeper into the room, they’d fling themselves to the next twin bed, because that was easier than trying to carve a walking path across the cluttered floor.

  Looking back, I realize that their house may not have been as messy and cluttered as my memories have painted it. But it was so unlike my own home that I never really felt at ease there, even after spending a dozen Saturday nights taking care of their kids.

  Now—decades later—if my own house starts to fill with clutter, I notice that same uneasy feeling creeping in and putting me on edge. This is my cue that it’s time to simplify again.

  How do you feel when you step into a cluttered space? Do you notice yourself feeling slightly outside of your skin?

  If you sit down in that crowded space—maybe it’s your kitchen, your bedroom, or your mother-in-law’s living room—and allow yourself to really notice how you feel, do you find the pace of your thoughts picking up? Do you find it easier to get distracted from your task or your conversation? Do you find yourself feeling a little less hopeful than you did before you walked in?

  The more you start to pay attention to your thoughts and feelings when you’re in a cluttered space, the more motivated you’ll become to live a different way.

  Mental Clutter

  My inbox is full of emails from readers saying they’re buckling under the weight of their mental load. Do any of these comments resonate with you?

  “The inside of my mind feels like a game of pinball. I’m constantly darting from one thought to the next—to the point where I never really feel like I’m getting anything done.”

  —Mariana M., Tucson, Arizona

  “It feels like my brain is constantly putting out fires. Did I answer that email that came in late last night? Did I reschedule those dentist appointments? I can’t forget to buy printer paper. Did I RSVP to Danny’s wedding?”

  —Aaron J., Charlotte, North Carolina

  “It’s exhausting to be inside my head. Honestly, if I could spend my time anywhere else, I would.”

  —Abigail S., Leeds, England

  Technology is constantly at our fingertips, and 60- to 80-hour workweeks are becoming the norm. We’re expected to overachieve both at work and at home, and we feel a nonstop pressure to do it all and with a smile. It’s no wonder so many of us are buckling under the weight of our mental loads
. If our minds are as brimming with thoughts as our homes are brimming with things, how can any of us really find focus and clarity inside?

  Emotional Clutter

  Emotional clutter is the type of clutter that is the most unseen but has the greatest impact on your happiness and well-being. This clutter is made up of persistent thoughts that are so familiar, they may almost feel like old friends. Except when you drag them out into the light of day, you realize that they aren’t friends at all. They never were.

  Here are some common thought loops that can drain our emotional energy. Do any of these sound familiar? If you were to make your own list, what would you add?

  “I do everything around here.”

  “No one really cares about me.”

  “My boss doesn’t appreciate me.”

  “I’m a bad [parent/partner/spouse/sibling/friend].”

  “I’m terrible at making friends.”

  “I’m not cut out for this.”

  The more you allow yourself to think these types of thoughts, the deeper the pathways they carve in your brain. This is why it may feel like your negative thoughts run on autopilot. Thankfully, our brains are malleable. (In scientific terms, this is called neuroplasticity.) This means that with conscious effort and consistent practice over time, you can actually short-circuit negative thoughts and slowly replace them with better feeling loops.

  I’ve struggled for most of my life with a thought pathway of, “No one really notices or appreciates the things I do.” I can vividly remember venting this frustration, with tears filling my eyes, to a mentor of mine as early as my mid-teens. And it only became more pronounced when I started my career, got married, and had children. (Toddlers are not known for articulating their heartfelt thanks!)

  But over the last few years, I’ve begun to recognize this internal narrative as emotional clutter. It weighs me down and creates resistance in my soul. It holds me back from focusing on the good. I’m now choosing every day to throw out the manual I had for how others should act—to stop waiting for them to notice my efforts and to instead own that I do the things I do because I want to. I declutter our home because I enjoy a tidy, visually peaceful environment and the satisfaction of my hard work. I give my husband and children my best because I love them and want the best for them too. I’ve by no means arrived at this enlightened way of thinking, but I feel emotional freedom as I move in this direction. This is just one example of how applying minimalism to your internal life can have profound, lasting effects.