Holidaying like a minimalist

I’ll admit I’ve been slacking at home when it comes to streamlining my crap. I’m still plodding through various cupboards, and piles of stuff that seem to just accumulate magically overnight.

I’ve a holiday coming up though, and if there’s one thing that sharpens my minimalist mind, it’s travel. That joy of wafting through Ryanair’s hand-baggage checks; skipping about a new city for the day  – with all my stuff  – before checking in for the night; great outfits that require barely any thought of a morning (more time for seeing things)… I love it. The freedom, and lightness of it all reminds me how little stuff I actually, really need.

Last September, my first official attempt at traveling ultra-light, my backpack weighed less than 5kg and saw me comfortably through two weeks traversing the North of Spain. It’s Spain again this year; this time meandering through Andalucia for two weeks. The weather’s more dependably boiling, so perhaps I can even lighten my load even more.

I do geek out a bit over minimalising. I’ve put some serious time into streamlining my toiletries, I often find myself writing of items of clothing for being too bulky or heavy, and I have some ridiculously quick-drying knickers – of which will only be packing two pairs. I wash them in the shower – they double as washcloths – and then dry them overnight, or while we’re out and about.

Even my hoarder of a husband has now embraced minimalist-style travel. He had to keep his bag below 8kg for a three week trip through Chile and Bolivia earlier this year, due to a budget internal flight. He wasn’t keen to start with, but the comparative ease of having a lighter load, plus a few impressed fellow travellers soon had him converted. He loved that our backpacks kept getting mistaken for hand-luggage :).

If only it rubbed off on his habits at home…

 

Mini-victory over STUFF

Despite eliminating epic amounts of stuff from our house over the last few months, it still feels chaotic. My husband is a bit of a hoarder, after all. Installing Minimalism ’round ours comes as a series of small victories. My target last weekend was to start clearing surfaces. Even one was counted as a win. Great – that’s all I did. Our hall table. Behold.

I think we can agree that this extends way beyond clutter into slovenly mess…

So I got stuck in and ended up clearing the table top, the shelf underneath AND the wardrobe next to it.

And here it is sporting only the hifi (is that still what they’re called??). That will move, too at some point, but requires all manner of DIY decisions that we keep stalling on. This is as good as it’s getting for the foreseeable.

That pile of stuff on the floor? All outgoing. I think I can declare that a victory won over stuff.

casual inroads into minimalism

The abandoning of my former blog really started with my minimalism January challenge. Not that I didn’t enjoy it. More that I enjoyed it so much it kind of took over. I cleared masses of stuff from my home and three sizeable charity shop donations later,  remain alarmed at how much is still left. I now function with around 30 items in my wardrobe and I love it. When I travel, I do so extremely lightly. I basically am quite taken with the concept of living with less.

The fact that most of us just have way too much stuff has been a bit of an epiphany for me. I’ve started to feel the weight of it. It’s not necessary. Why do I have all this stuff?

The brilliant Project 333 was in no small way responsible for my getting swept up in this concept. Not least because it led me to Courtney Carver’s other website  ‘be more with less’ – a concept that really struck a chord with me. Owning less stuff is freeing. I feel lighter when I’ve banished stuff from my house.  Not shopping for stuff is freeing (of both money and time).  I began to suspect we might all be happier, and achieve more if we were all less distracted by stuff and the acquisition of it. That was the snowball that eventually became this blog. The idea of moving past stuff, onto more important  matters.

So, in pursuit of being a minimalist, I hit google. Turns out other people are sick of stuff too. They’ve shed their stuff and have written blogs to help others shed theirs. Approaches range from the very general ‘just get rid of some stuff and re-prioritise’ to the more focused ‘live with 100 things’ or even ’50 things’ challenges and NO END of 30 day challenges. Sadly nobody seems to be addressing how to be a minimalist if one’s husband is a hoarder…

I’m done with 30 day challenges for now. I did a whole year of them. Aiming for 100 things or scares me a little and could well send my husband into shock. To save him freaking out, the process needs to be a little gentler than that, but I do want some sort of target to work towards. After meandering through Be More With Less for a bit, I found a nice simple little objective that I can see myself having a good crack at over the weekend.  Clearing surfaces. I’m just going to clear as many surfaces in the house as I can over the weekend. Even if that’s only one, I’ll be counting it as a win.