Embracing the Minimalist Life

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“The things you own end up owning you.” – Name that movie!?

In 2010, pre-kids, Big Beard and I (just two of us!) lived in a five bedroom house in Portland. At the time, it actually felt kinda small! Now we’ve flip flopped. There are five of us in a two bedroom condo, and I seriously think we could downsize! I’m just loving the simplicity, organization, and freedom that owning less crap has brought.

Last week when we were out of town we were stoked to host our first Airbnb guests in our home. A friend asked, “when you have renters, what are you going to do with all your stuff?”

Ummm, what stuff? If it’s not something you need in the home for a renter, and if it’s not something you’d bring with you when you travel, do you really even need it?

We have a new motto in our house… “When in doubt, toss it out!” So far, we have not regretted one single thing we’ve gotten rid of!!

I’d love to hear from you. Are you sentimental about things? What are some things you store away that are super important (what am I going to regret not keeping down the road?!!)? Are there things you are storing away that should probably be recycled?

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Less Stuff. More Life.

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We’re staying in a hotel (basically) for a few months and our kids have one small suitcase of stuff right now. Though when we’re in our “real house,” as they call it, they don’t have much more.

Don’t feel bad for them.

They’ve been pretending to travel and get on trains and head off to college with their suitcases. It was pretty dang cute actually, when our 2 year old rolled that suitcase out the front door last night and slurred her words with a mouthful of pacifier, “off to college.”

But I’m not talking ‘bout college today. (Thank God! We still have more time before that!) I’m talking ‘bout how less stuff can lead to more life.

At least that’s what I’m experiencing.

If you know our story you know @bigbeardcreative and I had approximately 5 hours to prep for parenthood. Becoming parents overnight isn’t even accurate, because we were called at about noon on a Saturday and our precious @solanagilbertadventures was in our arms at 5pm that day. An “over”night heads up would have been nice, but I think then we would have “over”thought it. Best it happened how it did. We lived in a 1 bedroom apartment attached to a church @snowmasschapel and had exactly nothing one needs to take care of a baby. Or so we thought. We soon realized we actually had exactly everything one needs to take care of a baby. We had a tiny home to keep her warm and we had tons and tons of love to give. (I blogged a lot about all of this when Ana first melted our hearts in 2013 / 2014.)

It’s so easy for me to go down the rabbit hole of thinking we need this next thing or that. At the ❤️ of it, there’s only one thing most of us really need more of… It starts with an “L”. Oh yeah, and, if you wanna have a lot of fun, a cardboard box.