My Journey - Susan

First off - I NEVER thought about becoming a minimalist until about 6 months ago. But looking back over my life it really begins to make sense that I would come to this point.

I have moved a lot. Not so much as some people - like military families - but since college I have probably lived in 5 or 6 places, and I have been out of college for 10 years. Every time I pack up my possessions I get this overwhelming sense of frustration. I have often yelled out loud "WHY DO I HAVE SO MUCH STUFF!!" But it never occured to me that I DIDN'T need to have so much stuff. I just collected things over time. For about 6 years I was a missionary. I made practically no money, so if someone gave me something I kept it. I told myself "You will never be able to buy nice things" so if i received a 'nice' thing I would keep it, even if I didn't need it.

Eventually I started buying things of my own, never getting rid of anything else. When I moved out of my apartment a few years ago, I had about 10 bins of "stuff" that didn't fit in the new apartment, so it got stored away.

When my boyfriend - now fiance - moved in with me, he brought all his stuff too! It definitely didn't fit, so we did what everyone does : we got a bigger place.

I was pretty proud when we were able to fit almost all of our stuff in a 10 foot moving van. Forgetting of course, that Ryan had been moving box after box over to the new place when he wasn't working. So now we have a spacious 2 bedroom apartment with a den. Then - we bought even MORE stuff, shelves, cabinets, dressers, chairs anything that caught our eye at Ikea basically. We also got 2 more members of our family - Booth and Fiona - our cats. But they don't take up too much space.

I think it started when we decided to try and eat organic. We started reading blogs about organic living and cooking. Then one day Ryan stumbled upon Tammy Strobels Rowdy kittens . He kept talking about something called minimalism, and tiny houses. Well, tiny houses sounded cute, so I looked up Tammy's site. I became a person obsessed. It was like a missing piece had finally after some twisting and turning fit into place. This is what I was looking for, in a phrase - LESS STUFF. It could be done, you mean - I don't HAVE to own tons of books. I can cook with just one pan? 2 plates for 2 people? Insanity!!!

But it fit, it felt good, and so we were off and running.

With about 6 months left on our lease of our huge (well now if feels huge to us) apartment we are seeking to figure out what the next step is. Do we buy a small house? Do we rent a studio apartment? What does a minimalist wedding look like?

We hope this little blog will be an inspiration to others, we called it 'mini minimalists' because we are far from knowing what we are doing, we are making up some of the rules, and we are no where near living in a 80 square foot house (although we do like to look at floor plans)

I hope we can help other to eliminate some of the clutter from not only your house, but you life and spirit as well. We have found so much freedom in just the few things we have done so far, we can't wait to see what is next!