Making Your Life's Styleboard

When going through our stuff - clothes, accessories, knickknacks, decor - I've found it helpful to think of my stuff in terms of a style board. A style board is basically a collage of pieces that are put together to define a person's style. This can be super helpful to figure out how your various accessories go together to define your style, how your accessories work together, and identify anything that doesn't work well with the rest of the collection. This will also help you to identify how you might want to adjust your style.

For me, in defining my style as it's developed to the this point, I have a casual, but professional look. Jeans, a button down, and loafers are typical for me. So when I'm arranging my clothes in my mental style board, where do my old Converse fit in? Basically, they don't. These are a well-loved relic from a previous stage in my life that aren't adding anything to my style today. They're going to the garage sale tomorrow.

This can also be applied to a style board for your home. Are you leaning toward more of a sleek, modern kind of look? Then perhaps an ornate/vintage/country knickknack doesn't really fit in to your style. On the flip-side, if you're trying to put together a warm, comfortable, cozy environment, then maybe modern/mental furniture or accessories are actually preventing you from creating the space you want.

This can also be applied to the style of your life. What's the theme you want to dominate your life? What are your priorities? Family? Recreation? Sports? Hobbies? Learning? Try building a collage of these things in your mind, then ask yourself if there's anything that seems out of place. Do you have a hobby/interest that takes away from the rest? It might be time to cut this from your life - especially if your significant other has suggested this to you in the past.

Tiny House Infographic

Here's an infographic I put together based off Andrew Morrison's TEDx Talk. Look at the graphic, but definitely watch the talk!

Attacking the Kitchen

Flickr: rubbermaid

We started minimalizing our house about 3 weeks ago. We started in our bedroom closets and are gradually spreading out from there. I will admit that my closet isn't done, but I have several things still mentally tagged for the sell & discard destinies.

The biggest area of clutter in our lives is our kitchen, though our bedroom was a top contender until very recently. It was difficult to know where even to start, so I started with the most visible thing in our kitchen - the utensils canister that holds the kitchen tools we use on a near-daily basis. I took some cues from Leo Babauta to guide me. Here are some of his tips:

1. Do it in small chunks. One canister, shelf, or drawer at a time. 
2. Take everything out of a shelf or drawer at once. Dump it all out, and maybe take the chance to clean the drawer/shelf/canister while you're at it :) 
3. Sort through your pile, one item at a time, and make quick decisions. Put back the stuff you KNOW you really use. The other stuff sort into sell/give away and throw away piles. 
4. If you are on the fence with a lot of things, create a “maybe” box. There were some kitchen tools we weren't sure of, so we put them in a grocery sack so they could possibly be saved from donation/selling. These were things like the 4th and 5th spatulas - Kyra does a lot of canning, so maybe she really does need that many, but probably not :P
5. Celebrate when you’re done! Don't forget to admire your accomplishments!

After we'd gone through this process with the canister, we'd managed to take out 1/3-1/2 the tools without eliminating a single type or size of tool that we frequently use. Duplicates were an easy choice, as were damaged items. 

2 days ago we started in on our glasses. We had multiple sets of very nice breakfast glasses that we simply have not used. If we hosted more breakfast parties, then perhaps they'd get a lot of use. That's DEFINITELY not where we are in life. 

The first real difficulty we had was our mug collection. I was all for eliminating most of the non-matching mugs and sticking to the mug set that matches our plates and bowls. Kyra felt the opposite - she prefers to have unique/special mugs to drink from on a regular basis and wanted to get rid of the boring matching mugs. We were at a small impasse until later that day I realized what our family norms are. My mother's kitchen only has matching mugs, my MIL's kitchen only has random mugs. For their family, choosing your morning mug is almost a part expressing your feelings about the morning. 

One thing we've learned in our marriage is to respect family norms, then work around them in a way that works for our little family. So with that we got rid of the random mugs that just didn't have much significance or were just plain ugly as well as about half of the matching mugs. We decided to keep 12 mugs. That number might end up going down in the future months, but it's still a good step. 

Other high points from the kitchen so far - if you honestly can't remember that last time you used a kitchen knicknack - no matter how useful it seems in theory - get rid of it! 

We're going to have a great garage sale in a couple weeks :P

Anyone need a couple sets of barely-used breakfast glasses?

Our Shopping Fast

So, last night Kyra and I went on a great date. We saw the new Cinderella movie (really, very good!) and had some great conversations. I've been spending a lot of time lately reading through the Becoming Minimalist archives, and I came across this article that talks about the idea of doing a "shopping fast." I also found a trio of interviews here  that wasprobably themost informative part. Quick refresher: a fast is a time of intentionally giving something up for the sake of a spiritual/philosophical time of growth. Think Lent. So this family decided that they were going to fast from shopping for anything but true essentials - food, toiletries, etc - for 1 year. I read it and thought it sounded like a great idea! We've been working on minimalizing recently, and part of what it's made me realize is that we really simply purchase too much stuff. So when I read this idea, I thought it sounded great. What I didn't expect was for Kyra to agree to it immediately! Here are our reasons:

1. We need to minimalize more. Our hope is to move into a small house (less than 400ft2) in the country within the next 2 years. In order for us to physically fit in that space, we need to have fewer things than we currently own! This won't be possible if we keep amassing more and more stuff.

2. We buy too much stuff. We both feel that we shop more for pleasure than for actual need. When we're stressed/tired/bored, sometimes getting something new just seems like an easy pick-me-up.

3. We're carrying consumer debt. It's not a horrible ammount, but until about a year ago we'd never carried a credit card balance for more than 1 month. For the past year we've been "trying" to get our balance paid off, but we've made little/no headway, despite me working a small side-job.

4. We don't want our kids to learn our shopping habits: Our kids are old enough to see stuff and want it. We're experiencing the toy aisle meltdowns. Maybe this is the nuclear option, but we want to be able to start teaching them now that joy doesn't come from things.

Next step: defining the terms of our fast. Hopefully that goes as smoothly :)