Life with 4 kids is chaotic.
And living in a small space makes it even more important to keep things minimal.
I spent a lot of time last year thinking about minimization.
I started with stuff.
My sister was doing “30 days of minimalism”, so I joined her. On day 1 you get rid of one thing, two on day 2 and so on for 30 days.. the math on this is 465 things.. geez that’s a lot of stuff! Towards the end, it does get hard, but it starts off slow and easy, and you feel really good – it became addictive.
After that I got inspired by Marie Kondo, and began sparking joy all over our home. I got so many bins and minimized every area further, starting with clothes, then books and paper. I went through the entire kitchen and living room, even rearranging furniture to help create better spaces for us to play, work and live.
It also made me think about minimizing in terms of commitments.
What really sparks joy in my life? And I minimized some time commitments. I said no, I started to do less. I read amazing articles by Mark Manson to help me define my values and goals.
I came up with these life goals:
- Creating health (for myself and others)
- Building relationships
- Meaningful work
I assess everything I do based on these goals.
As a mom, we tend to get into the habit of adding more and more onto our plates.
I feel it’s so important to think about efficiencies and minimizing, for our own happiness and health.
As a fitness trainer I also think about minimization.
How much exercise do we really need? What’s the minimum you need to do to be healthy, fit and strong?
I think we often go all out, quickly burn out, and just give up. But what if we started just one small thing today, two tomorrow, and so on. Or we had a program that was so easy and minimal you could do it forever?
That’s the ultimate goal for me, to create better habits for a lifetime, for me and others, building relationships and creating meaningful work in the process.