When I first started downsizing our possessions, I did not think of the long term ramifications of my decision. I was mostly preoccupied with the feeling of being suffocated by the sheer amount of things that we owned.

This was compounded by the fact that I maniacally cleaned my house, all the time. When I decided that I would not return to work and would instead start staying at home, I was determined to be the best stay at home mom there was.

I cleaned every single day. And when I say clean, I mean carpets, bathrooms, the whole shebang. I also found time to schedule an outing or play date every day. It got to the point where my toddler son would ask what we were doing the next day as I was getting him ready for bed. We were always on the go and he had come to expect it.

But I reached my breaking point one winter morning when I was tired of putting my perfectly placed decorative pillows back on my recently jumped upon bed and getting upset that the kids had messed them up. It just wasn’t worth it. They were the first things to go and then it snowballed from there.

My major focus was to get rid of the stuff that we weren’t using. All of the stuff that I had to care for, or clean around, or move every day.

I didn’t know at the time that there would be so many benefits that would follow. I knew that things could be better but I couldn’t foresee how much better things could be with less stuff.

I didn’t know how much time I would save by having less material possessions. I didn’t know how this would eventually lead to me to lessen the amount of commitments we had.

At this point in my journey, I feel like we have a lot of time in the day to do the things we want to do, not the things we feel expected to do.

Some of the ways that minimalism has helped me save time over the past few years are:

1. Less time spent caring for items.

With fewer items, there is less time spent dusting them off, moving them out of the way to be dusted around, rearranging them or getting upset if one gets broken.

2. Less time spent cleaning my house.

I’ve come to realize that minimalism isn’t about perfection and I wasn’t doing anyone a service by trying to be perfect. By letting go of the items that I had purchased while trying to curate the perfect home, I let go of the perfect ideal that I was trying to live up to.

3. Less time spent organizing possessions.

Before decluttering our belongings, I would go to the home section of TJ Maxx or Target and buy the prettiest baskets that I could find to organize things into closets, or under the bed or in plain sight on the floor.

I remember going to Costco and buying 3 large organizers with pull out baskets (one to put in my son’s room to organize all of his little toys that he kept in there and two for the family room to store all of the toys that the kids didn’t have in their room).

I felt so good getting everything organized into perfectly labeled baskets. But when my kids cleaned up after themselves, they didn’t put things back into the appropriately labeled basket. So, shortly after, I would be back down there reorganizing the toys and putting them back where they belonged.

Once I got rid of most of the toys, there was so much less to organize and with fewer things, the kids were much better at figuring out where things went.

4. Less time spent shopping.

As I got rid of things in our house, I came to the realization that I would have to stop shopping if I was going to commit to a life with less. What would be the point of getting rid of a bunch of belongings just to replace them at a later time?

5. Less time spent worrying what others think.

At one point in my life, I cared an awful lot about what other people thought of me. I didn’t just want to keep up with the Joneses, I wanted to be the Joneses. But that quest just left me stressed out. Minimalism helped me let go of those feelings.

Minimalism is so countercultural to everything that the Joneses stand for. If I was going to pursue a such a lifestyle, then I was already prepared for people to think it was strange for me to have bare cupboards or no decorative pillows on my bed.

It’s safe to say that I no longer have a desire to keep up with the Joneses, but I wish them all the best.

6. Less time spent packing.

When we go on a trip nowadays, we each take one carry on. Minimalism has taught me that I don’t need a lot of stuff, especially when I travel. Having less clothes, makeup and beauty products means that there is so much less to take.

And having a carry on means that we can traverse airports easier and we never have to worry about losing our belongings, which has happened to us in the past and it was horrible. If we are traveling by car, it means that we have more space available and that we’re not engulfed by our belongings.

7. Less time spent looking for items.

Fewer possessions means that there are fewer things to get lost. Fewer items means that you are more likely to remember the majority of your possessions. It also means that it’s easier to give the things that you do keep a resting place when they are not in use, making it much easier to find them.

Conclusion

I’ve spent a good part of my life rushing from one thing to another. And for the longest time, I was exhausted from it but I didn’t know any other way of life. I just figured that it’s what everyone did. Minimalism changed that for me.

What would you do with more time and less stuff?