This is the story of our journey to become minimalist. In this post, we just found out about minimalism and started decluttering.
We found minimalism in a really weird way. I decided to stop paying for cable. Cutting the large cable bill led us to watch Netflix. Soon we came across the documentary Minimalism, and I was hooked!
This was the start of our journey.
We found minimalism and we are saving money in the process.
I have decided to adopt some of the philosophies of minimalism. This all started earlier this month when my car’s transmission went out. We had to have the whole transmission rebuilt for around $3000. !
That expense was expected and unexpected. When your car is 15 years old you know it’s going to start falling apart.
We decided it would still be cheaper to fix our car rather than buy a new one or another used one that could have the same problem down the road.
I have always been a frugal person, but I knew we could save more. After some research I found minimalism!
Saving Money on the Minimalist Journey:
I am currently a stay-at-home mom for a variety of reasons, but that puts us in the category where we only have one income to support the whole family.
We are fine with that, but we can only make so much money unless my husband decides to work every weekend and late at night.
What kind of life would that be?
One thing we can control is how much money we spend. If we spend less money we will have more. I looked at our finances and realized one thing we could cut out was cable TV. By cutting out cable we are saving $60 a month.
Of course, we still want something to watch so we got Netflix for $10 a month. We also bought an inexpensive antenna which gives us all the basic channels for free. That is a savings of $50 a month.
Netflix Changed our Lives!
We happened upon the documentary about minimalism. When I was watching this documentary it got me thinking about our life and how much junk we buy and store in our house.
I would go to Target for something to do and walk around looking for stuff we might need.
Thinking, hey maybe I will see something I didn’t know I needed. Wandering the aisles of Target was cheap entertainment, or was it?
The crazy thing is we were already trying to cut back on our spending and seeing this documentary put it all together for me.
This week I started reading all about minimalism and its benefits.
It can help with keeping your house clean.
I started to look at everything in our house asking myself, “When is the last time I used those 16 wine glasses?” “When was the last time I used those 30 blankets (we live in CA, it’s never cold)?”
This photo shows what our living room looked like before we started to declutter.
Where To Start With Minimalism?
I looked up ways to start cleaning out the house and for me, the easiest place to start was the kitchen.
We have way too much in our kitchen and I know it will be easy to spot the items we never use.
It was easy for me to keep 8 wine glasses and get rid of 8.
We are starting slow, I am not getting rid of everything in my house, but it’s weird that after 4 full carloads to the Goodwill, our house still looks the same. This is a work in progress I will keep you updated on how it goes…
Read more about our Minimalist Journey:
Month 1 of Becoming Minimalist
Minimalism Journey After 2 Months
Minimalist Journey After 3 Months
Decluttering after a year:
PIN Minimalism – The Start of Our Journey:
