AMA - My Journey to Minimalism

[Verbena17]

Hi 😊
Ask me anything…. about how I went from cluttered house, mind and life to how I started and continued my minimalism journey.

I don’t know if this is something that interests people but if it is, ask away!

Have you got rid of things that you were concerned you might regret, but ultimately didn't miss?

Did you manage to declutter paperwork and small things that sit in drawers because they will be useful eventually, maybe 20 years from now? I always start with clothes, get as far as toiletries and books then fizzle out.

Thank you for your lovely response 🙏!
I always find women's choices interesting, and I did wonder if there was something like neurodivergence involved. I think that really helps autistic people, having order and clarity in their lives.
I'm also glad it helped you! Well done 👍

Yes and our life WAS totally like that too when my kids were little/early teens.
I hated the stuff we had bought them for Christmas - stuff that my autistic DC often never even looked at again!

So now, when it comes to birthdays (for myself) if family ask what I’d like, I would either say vouchers for shops i use, or the shampoo i always use because it’s a bit spendy! 😂. Literally that’s pretty much it. Every Xmas, one of the kids will buy me a calendar which I need and DH will probably get me some chocolate which I’ll eat and the other DC will probably get me shampoo. No waste and nothing i didn’t need.

The kids ask for money or toiletries. DD gets beauty products she tells us she needs and DS asks ‘please don’t get me anything’. We mostly ignore the last suggestion and get him a few bars of chocolate he likes or some new T-shirts but he’s happy with nothing. That can annoy family though so we tend to say get him money or gift cards for stuff we know he might use.

Party bags that came home when they were little generally involved me and DH eating the cake because they didn’t like b’day cake and keeping the little crappy bits of plastic for a couple of weeks before I chucked them in secret 😂

The thing I have a problem with is stuff from elderly relatives whose houses I've had to empty. So many memories of loved ones, not least of happy childhood days for me.
I'll need to get rid of some stuff, I know, but it's hard.
Any advice?

it is definitely easier to start with non sentimetal stuff like clothes books itchen equipment out of date medication and toiletries
Some paperwork must be kept as well as the obvious birth death marriage certificates, lair certificates for a cemetery, passport driving licence, proof of degree qualificationsetc. also insurance policies share certificates bank account details,evidence of your pension from everywhere you have worked at and contribued to, you might not remeber your 2 years from company Y from 1998-2000 when you are 67 and certainly not policy number keep payslips unitl you get end of year statement personally i would never get rid of these as they prove how much tax, national insirance and pension you paid
but electric bills from 2021 and credit card statements from 2018 they can be shredded

I don’t really have any hobbies - I used to be in choirs so that didn’t involve any supplies other than one music folder. Saying that, I did have a LOT of sheet music i had to declutter/tidy from years before but it was all just kept in ring binders so didn’t take up too much space.

I know people who do crafting and find it tricky to store everything. I guess it’s prioritising what you actually need and if there are projects that you’ve had on the go for years, you’re probably better off slimming them down.

Yes, that's all sound advice, @Cottagecheeseisnotcheese

My mum has already declutters their house whilst she is still alive! Isn’t that ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’? So we don’t have to clear out their home so much when they’re gone. Saying that she has got about 12 serving dishes and 63 tea towels…..just in case! 😂

It is sad when our family pass away and it’s nice to keep photos/photo books for the memories and when my grandmother passed away, I kept little things that I would use every day so weren’t actually extra clutter. Bed linen, hand towels, mugs etc. Things I used at her house that remind me every day of her.

@LochKatrine sometimes it helps to only keep a small thing instead of keeping the whole teaset just keep the little milk jug and display it rather than whole teaset in a box or cupboard. Take photos the real memories are in your head not the item, try setting yourself a limit, maybe a high limit to start with say 20 items from granny and 20 from grandad plus photo and jewellery then later you can revisit it

Thanks, @Cottagecheeseisnotcheese . I think part of the problem is that they came from poverty in Ireland and were so proud of what they had. I just remember their pride in the teaset etc! I think I'll just try to do that and keep small items as memories. Photos are a good idea.

Sorting out the cluttered home of a loved one who has died is utterly traumatic. Hopefully I’ve got a long time left yet 😂 but it is one of my motivators for keeping on top of my stuff, having had to sort out the house of a loved one while still in fresh grief.

I love this thread, full of useful advice! I’ve had to clear out both my grandparents belongings and my dads in the last five years or so. My approach was to buy a large clear plastic box for each of them (and did the same for my two sons), and told myself that I would fill the boxes with whatever I wanted to keep. These now live in the loft, and admittedly I haven’t looked in them since I filled them.

My dad was a hoarder and it cost me thousands to clear his flat after he died, it made me even more conscious of clutter and I try to keep things minimal. I’m now about to embark on packing up all of ex-DH’s stuff who left in 2023 before I sell the house, I estimate when I’ve done that I could
probably pack up my things and leave the house in under a day!

@rurbane So I have a triple wardrobe with drawers underneath and that’s it for every item of clothing I have. If I can’t fit everything in it, I get rid of stuff. As long as everything fits neatly then I don’t feel bad if I haven’t declutterred my clothes for a while. Then when I do have time, I’ll do a section or a drawer. Today I threw out socks that weren’t comfy anymore or that I hadn’t worn for over a year.

With regards to regret, my entire adult life I’ve never had regrets. If you have regrets, you can’t easily move forward. Regrets weigh you down, like clothes you don’t need! So instead of regretting things I might have got rid of, at the time, I thought very carefully whether I might need something or still wanted to keep something. And if the answer was a possible yes, I would keep it. I didn’t get wound up about it - I just kept it and then revisited stuff later. Second time around, it probably got chucked!

Dawn ‘The Minimal Mom’ keeps a box in her hallway or garage for things she isn’t sure about throwing away just yet. Then if she hasn’t been back to the box in a while, she knows she can chuck it. She calls it her ‘time will tell’ box.

As a child though, my mum threw stuff away of ours that I cherished and I do still feel sad even now that she didn’t keep our fisher price tree house 😭

When it comes to kitchen /lounge drawers, I love having a sort out. I’m like ‘chuck….chuck…chuck’. I use carte d’or ice cream tubs in drawers side by side to store related items in and it works well.

@Skade tell me about it - when I cleared my Aunt's house, I did 12 trips to the dump and then nearly as many to charity shops.
All the previous generation have gone now, so I'm just thinking I don't want my adult DC to have such a problem.
@Verbena17 - I like that box in the hall idea, a sort of stay of execution!

How has it changed over the decades for you?

I feel like I kept a lid on acquisition in my 40s now in my 50s I'm shedding. Spotify and Amazon have also greatly changed things, I don't need a bands while output on vinyl, maybe just one favourite vinyl for the artwork. I don't need books like I did in my 20s in case I never found them again.still reading, just don't need to display.

You are right, my reply was probably uneccesary, but it’s not aggressive or nasty.

Questioning someone calling themselves SAHM in my opinion is.

Forgive me if I misread and being passive agresdive wasn’t your intent.

Have you found any aspects painful, how did you overcome?

I found my ' you failed your degree letter' and a whole load of paperwork from an unhappy time. I felt so sad then angry for the that young woman, I became a bit paralysed and it's all shoved back in a box.

What's the loveliest thing you can imagine your kids treasuring, way into the future? Photos? A book? A set of stuff?

I think it was having a head overflowing with stressful stuff relating to the children - having an autistic child with an eating disorder totally takes it out of you and looking at piles of stuff here and piles of stuff over there just wore me down!

I also think leaving the military as a family triggered huge change in our mindset.

Military quarters are often a good size and I bought stuff to fill wall space or look nice on top of dressers etc. Stuff we really didn’t need. I also had loads of serving dishes and crockery for entertaining as part of DH’s job. So once we left, I was motivated to get rid of the stuff we knew we wouldn’t need again for those reasons.

@TeenMeno I would get rid of the "you failed your degree" letter, you won't forget but you don't need the painful reminder, maybe a sort of ceremonial burning goodbye for that paperwork

Yes exactly!

It certainly was not "passive aggressive". As the OP has understood, and replied to in a pleasant way. She has very kindly clarified because I did wonder if it was linked to autism in the household, which I recognise.

I don’t think I’ve found any aspects painful - other than photos of family who are no longer here. But then I have such happy memories of them, it’s more of a positive seeing those photos. I always try to be a glass half full person in general i think.

And I'm mostly a SAHM, I do all the heavy lifting for the home and the kids in their late teens and 20s. I'm the glue that means people save money on taxis, eating, pet sitting all the crazy money saving things we do when as a team we are time short.
I'm the woman in the community that stops the school run away, I take the time to talk to the widowed cashier, I pick up the bin bag that someone dumped near the park.
I'm amazing. And I'm not too proud to ask lots of questions to improve our consumption of stuff and our home environment.

I hear you, @TeenMeno . I'm like that, which is why I really need to get rid of stuff and why I admire the OP. It's necessary to let things go.