Friday Feelings | Is enough, enough? A case for minimalism.

(Our living room in the beginning of construction/overhaul – I’m not sure we’d even seen this much of our floor in a long while!) 

When I went to university I only took as much as would fit into my dads Volvo. I had my basics, a couple of books, dvd’s my kitchen and bathroom stuff and a couple of weeks of clothes.

For months, I never felt like I didn’t have enough. I didn’t go clothes shopping, I didn’t need to and although after a few months I shopped again and things changed as I went back to work (I didn’t work the first year of university, or the last) but I bought more, but never as much I have now, never as much as I had a teen but the reality of this story is this, I never needed for more, and I was happier, with less.

I’m bringing this up because Josh and myself are so sick of having so much stuff. We’ve just done over our living room, including the floor and as we went to put all our stuff back in the room, we refused to. Instead we wanted to chuck most of it out.

Currently upstairs in our house is a mess. I feel suffocated by all these things, now that I know how it feels downstairs with just a few things.

I’ve not gained happiness by having more stuff. Instead I’ve crowded myself more instead. I’m not saying that we are going to sit in an empty, minimalist house but we are certainly looking to have less, buy less and hopefully be happier in effect.

It starts with having a shopping ban on fast fashion in the home and on clothes but also on food and other little things, beauty products, make up. Actually focus the stuff factor to what I actually need rather than a lot of things to make myself feel better.

That money we save gets to go towards our savings again and our time gets given back to us as well. I for one am looking forward to seeing the white spaces in my wardrobe again and on that note, less time spent in shops and more time living.

The most interesting part of this is that prior to the last wedding year we had achieved this goal, we had been so focused on living over stuff and I’m sad to realize it didn’t stick properly. I’m not looking to downsize our house and live in a shoe box, live in empty rooms, true, current minimalism isn’t me either but its finding a happy in between, its finding true to us happiness in what we have and what we do.

As we go on this journey it will be interesting to see the little ways our lives change from now to living more simply, of course I will share it all here and I’m thinking it will of course re start in my wardrobe.