So I'm starting this journey. It came from feeling like I can't keep up. And I don't mean keep up with the Jones'. Just simply keep up with my life. Have a clean house. Give attention to my 4 young children. Handling our family budget. Keep track of all our appointments, schedules, and to dos. Personal time? What the heck is that!
As a stay at home mom, a clean house is sort of the bane of my existence. My mom, whom I love, worked hard as a school teacher and my dad had his own business, AND they raised 6 kids. So housekeeping was not their priority. So as much as I love them both and think they did an amazing job raising us, I didn't learn how to keep house very well growing up. Let's just say, I've never had a problem falling asleep with a sink full of dirty dishes. And yet an unkempt house makes my stress level rise. And I feel a true sense of duty that it is my job to keep our home nice, since well I stay home.
My kids are young. 8, 6, 4, and 1. So even though the older 3 do have chores, they are only moderately helpful in the whole scheme of things. And the 1 year old more than undoes what help they do. So there have been many times, I have just told myself this isn't the season of life for me to have a tidy home.
But I still felt like that is a cop out. I remember putting our other house on the market and having it "show ready," and my husband saying how nice it felt and couldn't we have it like that all the time. I flatly said NO without hesitation. I mean seriously it took a storage unit, several boxes, and meticulously cleaning every morning before we left the house to keep it that way.
And yet.
I crave a simpler, tidier home. So I started reading minimalist blogs, read the Japanese magic book, listened to podcasts, and started purging my house. I felt like the real "answer" if you can call it that is having less. In the simple terms that I explained to my kids, isn't easier to pick up 10 toys if that is all you have than having to pick up 100 toys. And the journey began.
No I'm not all the way there. So far I have tackled my own closet. My linen closet. My kids bedrooms. And my pantry. But I have a long way to go. We have a large house. We have a lot of kids. So as much as I would love to do it in a week and be done that won't happen around here.
But I'm hoping to share some insight, tips, mistakes, etc as I go along. I feel like many minimalists are single or at least don't have kids. So the challenge is to make it work for a family. Miminalism for a FAMILY. Minimalism for SMALL KIDS. How does that work? Let's find out together.
