Having Less to Have More

We are by no means “minimalists,” but over the years we have found ways to get rid of some of the clutter, and more importantly, not bring more stuff in. We’ve answered lots of questions since launching the Core Truths episode, “The ‘Things’ Taking Up Our Time,” and we thought it best to share more of what we’ve done. Whether it is buying the things, storing the things, sorting the things, or even purging the things, we have found that by having less we are getting more of what we really want, which is more TIME!

Our journey to having less stuff and having more time started back in 2015 when I read the book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up (I share more on this in “The Great Purge”). I’m not going to lie, I thought the book would be about how to organize and store and how to keep the house clean. Boy, was I wrong. We started out following the guidelines in the book and have continued to do so through various stages of purging. One of my favorite principles of the book is there’s no right or wrong amount of purging. You can do it again and again and you will know when it is your “just right." 

Besides getting rid of things, I think the bigger take away for us has been accumulating less. Every time we go through things and get rid of things, I literally see it as money down the drain. I used to keep items because I equated the item to the dollar amount we spent to buy the item not because we used it or the kids played with it. Once I stopped keeping things just because we bought it (let’s face it, we buy most of the things in our homes), I saw those items as huge wastes of money. And we didn’t want to be wasteful anymore. 

It is in the spirit of not wasting our time or money that most of the below ideas came to be.

Gifts

We realized we spent quite a bit of money on gifts; birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, gifts for friends and family, gifts for one another. We wanted to find a more meaningful way to gift give without giving another item to go in a closet or to later find at the bottom of a toy box. Here are some of the things we have come up with:

• Experiences: This has by far been one of our greatest ideas. Rather than giving tangible items, we have started to give our kids and each other experiences as gifts. We try to plan events for that particular kid that would otherwise be too expensive for the entire family to do. Since it is only ever one or both parents and the one kid, we get one-on-one time with that kid…talk about invaluable quality time! Some of the things we have done includes concert tickets, major sporting event tickets, a weekend trip to the beach, and we even planned a day at The American Girl store when our youngest daughter turned seven. We have made memories that will literally last a lifetime and there’s nothing to sort or toss out later!
• Photo Gifts: We love giving photo gifts because these can be very special and is something someone is more likely to keep. Some ideas have included photo coasters (our kids made these), Shutterfly photo books, photo made into a puzzle (ours is framed and hanging in a hallway), and photos enlarged and framed.
• Bedroom makeovers: When our older daughters were ready for “big girl rooms” and no longer shared a room, we gave them bedroom makeovers for their birthdays. Think of Extreme Home Makeover but for a bedroom while the birthday girl was away celebrating with friends. The birthday girl got to come home and see her bedroom in a dramatic reveal. It was fun and exciting and is still in use today several years later. Nothing to toss out there!
• Edibles: For smaller gifts, we like to give things people can eat. Some ideas are homemade cookies, specialty cookies, homemade edible arrangements for Valentine’s and Mother’s Day, and specially made meals. We also like to give gift cards to restaurants for kid’s birthdays. This way the parents can treat the child at their leisure and there’s no toy to be stepped on. When we host birthday parties, we give edibles as party favors rather than giving small gifts. I mean, you can probably get 1,000 pencils for $2, give every kid 50 pencils each, and feel like you’ve done your part…but don’t. Give each kid a bag of Goldfish on their way out…this is a situation where you do not want to give a gift that keeps on giving.

Clothing

One thing we used to buy a lot of is clothes. One thing we tossed out a lot is clothes. Talk about a huge waste of money. Eventually I realized a good bit of my clothes buying was done because “it was on sale.” I thought I was saving so much money by shopping on the clearance rack. Yes, the clothes on that rack do cost less, but that is no indicator it is something I need or even want. Turns out, I bought a lot of clothes because they were cheap. But buying something cheap, then not wearing it, and then later throwing out, well that ain’t cheap!

I finally started thinking about a capsule wardrobe. I had to learn what was in style, and what pieces I would need to create that style. I tried to find examples of capsule wardrobes that fit my current day-to-day and that included pieces I already owned. From there, I bought the pieces I didn’t have so that all items can be interchanged to create various outfits. For the first time I was buying items because I needed them, I liked them, and they fit. I paid less attention to price as long as it was within an amount I felt comfortable spending (think Target and Old Navy here). Now, I have fewer clothing items but I have altogether more outfit options.

I am spending far less time getting ready because I already know exactly what I have and exactly how pieces will go together. I am spending less time keeping my space tidy because I simply have less stuff. And I am spending less time shopping because I don’t have to peruse every clearance rack I pass. If I need something, I know what it is, and I look for that one thing. This all adds up to more time and less money wasted.

Other Items

In any home, there’s going to be other stuff…movies, books, kitchen things, bathroom stuff, holiday items, sentimental keepsakes, and general storage. We do what we can to purge these things, not buy more of them, and to store and organize in a way that makes things easy to access. Our kitchens and bathrooms have been whittled down to the things we actually use on a regular basis. Movies and books have been minimized to only those of some importance. Our holiday storage is in easy-to-store containers and are for the most part stored together by holiday. I am still struggling with sentimental items, but I am getting better. For me, it’s not about tossing everything, but storing it in a way that can be easily gone through and shared. My kids like seeing cards and letters exchanged throughout our marriage, they like seeing old pictures of our family, and they like seeing trinkets from vacations and reminiscing. I enjoy those things, too, and I want to make sure we can do it at our leisure…not because some box of old stuff in my closet fell on me one day and suddenly we’re looking through it all.

We also try to give away what we don’t use…in the recent past we have given away a push mower, a lawn fertilizer, bikes we’ve outgrown, etc. Why keep things just for the sake of keeping them? If you don’t need it, sell it or give it away.

Because we have gotten rid of so much over the past five years, we see how unimportant most items are…overall, things have less of a value to us now. We have adopted a mindset of not spending money when we don’t have to—or to spend as little as possible. With this in mind, we have started buying as much as we can USED. With a little patience, we have managed to buy a good bit of furniture, a pool table, outdoor seating, a push mower (hence giving away our old one), bicycles (we needed to replace the ones we’d outgrown), and the list goes on. We can’t see paying full price and we know someone somewhere is probably purging too and has things to give away or to sell.

The truth is, the less stuff we have, the less stuff we have to keep up with and this means we have more time to spend the way we want to spend it!