HOME: Clearing Clutter in Waves

The past few days at my home have been built around several long sessions of clutter-clearing.

How is it that a family who has adopted a minimalist lifestyle, purged more than half of their belongings, and has completely altered their buying habits still has so much clutter to get rid of?

It's not so much that there's more clutter, it's that the minimalist mindset has helped us to be more aware of what we use and what we love. Because of that, we can see that after the initial purge earlier in the year that we're still not using the majority of the things we kept.

Enter stage left: the second wave of decluttering.

HOME: Minimalism Is Not Just Black and White

When you ask most people what image comes to mind when you say the word minimalism, they will quickly describe to you a stark white room with little or no items inside of it, much like an art gallery in the 1980s and '90s or a surreal futuristic scene from a sci-fi film. If they do describe any decor, it's usually white on white or some other stark black and white palette.

Well, I'm here to tell you that minimalism comes in every color of the rainbow!

Thankfully, there is no set of rules when it comes to what constitutes minimal living for each individual. The items that I need to live my daily life may not fit in a backpack, but yours might. You may need a car to commute to work because jobs in your area are far from affordable living space and there is no public transportation, while I might ride a bike only a few miles to my job each day.

We can both lead minimalist lifestyles, but chances are that they will look very different from one another.

HOME: Quality vs. Quantity (or How Minimalism Helped Me to Have a Stress-Free Holiday)

This year was our first Christmas season as a minimalist family.

Sure, my husband and I have been making strides in the lifestyle for a while, but our children (now 15 and 10) are finally on board and have been enjoying the benefits of having easier access to the things they love while having to deal less with the chaos created by the things they don't. Hey, who wouldn't?

In the past, the winter holidays have been a source of stress and anxiety in our house. Maybe not all are quick to admit it, but we dreaded the sudden influx of Stuff and the responsibility of figuring out what to do with it when the whirlwind of December came to a close. Even getting ready for the holiday was a pain--pulling storage bins out of an overcrowded attic, rearranging the already-tight confines of our living space to accommodate a tree, and carving out a place to stash and wrap gifts were overwhelming tasks.

Our uncluttered home made decorating and wrapping easy this year, but there was still the daunting subject of the Stuff that would be showing up soon.