“That’s Not Very Minimalist.”

I really had no idea how my family would react when I told them I wanted us to become minimalists. I knew I was committed, but I was unsure to what extent they would jump on board. I’m the kind of person who goes all in, sometimes impulsively, and then in time, calms down and settles into a more realistic version of whatever situation or concept is in front of me.

That’s where we are at right now. Settling into our new normal. It’s funny, what initially felt like minimal living is now starting to feel like we own too much again. Don’t get me wrong, I have not added any more to our home, it’s just that I want more stuff gone. I have less of a tolerance for clutter and the process is moving slower than I would like. However, I’m realizing that patience is the only way I am going to get where I want to be.

A Moving Target

It raises the question, is “where I want to be” a concept that keeps moving out of reach every time I make progress? The day I donated coats and moved all of our winter boots out of the coat closet and down to the basement for the summer felt great. The closet looked awesome. Now I look at my closet and want to set it on fire. Still so many shoes, so many jackets.

I have to be perfectly honest with you. Part of this comes from a new fear that someone will unexpectedly show up at my house and accuse me of hypocrisy. I picture it either being an audible accusation or simply just judgmental glances around my house, followed by an eye roll. While being transparent and sharing our journey I have inadvertently threatened my desire for authenticity.

Fighting Perfection

Nothing makes me feel like less of a minimalist than that 4pm hour of any given weekday. The moment I decide to start making spaghetti sauce, my mischievous twenty-one month old manipulates open a locked cupboard and pulls art supplies out onto the floor. She then heads to my lazy susan and pulls out a bottle of olive oil and a few jars of spices before moving two cupboards over to empty all of my kids’ cups onto the kitchen floor. This typically occurs moments before she finds a crayola marker left on the floor by my 5 year old and proceeds to apply it to her lips like lipstick. If you were to walk into my home at that moment, I would want to crawl into a hole as you assess the hypocrisy of my claim to minimalism.

Half empty cereal bowls remain on the counter while I spend some quiet time to myself before getting my littlest up. I sometimes even leave these bowls out for hours and hours as I rush out the door to pick up my daughter from preschool. What can I say? If this wild little one year old sleeps in, I’m going to opt to keep reading. My kids still dump out all of the toys we do have on the floor, and there they stay as I send them outside to play basketball before it starts raining.

In those sour-milk-cereal, Crayola-lipstick, toy-sprawled moments, I worry what you may think of me. Since I find authenticity non-negotiable, I’m just going to put it out there. I haven’t mastered this minimalist thing yet.

Perpetual Discontentment

I wonder if there is a danger of replacing the discontentment clutter used to cause with a different kind of discontentment.

Am I doomed to never be satisfied with my level of minimalism? How do we find the ideal amount for our family?

Will the sentence, “You know, that’s not very minimalist,” spoken in jest by friends and family eventually begin to shape my actions?

I need to remind myself that the end goal is not minimalism itself. Minimalism is simply a lifestyle that facilitates getting to where I want to be.

Just as the habit of regular exercise and a balanced diet is the lifestyle that promotes a healthier and stronger you. The goal is not to always be exercising. The goal is a long and healthy life. A thirty day diet won’t guarantee health twenty years from now. Neither will three months of purging result in a lifetime of contentment. Minimalism is simply the guardrail that facilitates a journey toward peace, contentment, gratitude, and generosity.

I was never very good at keeping my home picked up and I was pretty vocal about that. I love that it now takes me less than thirty minutes to make this place look great. The thing is, I still have to do that because we live here.

Purpose

We have to stay focused on the purpose not the process because it is quite a process! We will become discouraged, self-conscious and distracted if the process is all we see.

Don’t trade one distraction for another. Appreciate the growth that occurs in the process, but don’t get hung up there. Perfection is unattainable and we have to appreciate how far we have come.

When we focus on the purpose, even the setbacks are still steps in the right direction because of the opportunity to learn from them.

While it is my job to edit what comes into my home, it is also my job to draw boundaries around the time I spend doing this. We went minimalist in order to live each moment with intention, not to constantly spend my time analyzing my belongings.

I didn’t trade in my clutter and chaos for a fear of failure. I traded it in for freedom. Managing stuff was a misuse of my time, energy and purpose. I’m certainly not looking to redirect that focus on how well I accomplish “minimalism.”

Minimalism is the path our family has chosen to undo what has distracted us from living life on purpose. Our time is more free to love on our kids and be available for a friend. Our money is more free to be used to bless others.

I just may always have a couple of pairs of shoes more than I need and I may never be able to make myself throw away a handful of things I probably should part with. I’ll probably break down one day and buy my daughter the bell for her bike she randomly requested. If that makes me a failure, then this minimalism thing isn’t serving its purpose.

For More Inspiration

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook

BECOMING MINIMALIST

It’s time to stop managing our families and start leading them!

2 years ago I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I had no capacity to mom on purpose!

Living with less has gifted me time, space and some much needed perspective of what truly matters most. Below is the link to my FREE Beginner’s Declutter Like a Minimalist Guidebook. It takes a deeper look at the 7 Steps to getting started highlighted in my popular post, Declutter Like a Minimalist.