I suppose that minimalism and sound financials can be closely related. I've been focusing more on the minimalism side of things over time.

For me, it started when I had my children. I was clearing out one room in our house for our second child and something about the nesting instinct put me in purge mode. I had my children in my 20s, so it's been since our 20s that we've been scaling down and not trying to accumulate more stuff. I don't know that we had bought a lot at that point but we sure had a lot of crap. 10+ years later and I am still digging through the crap. I can't even imagine what this is like if you spend your 30s and 40s (and 50s and 60s) accumulating the crap.

Since this all happened around the time we had kids, we have always been very 1-in and 1-out with their belongings. I think both of us would just feel too overwhelmed if we didn't stay very on top of it. When baby stuff was done it immediately left the house. Outgrown clothes are sifted out regularly.

I don't think we were quite there yet, when our second child was born. But at some point in our 30s, maybe amid all the de-cluttering, my MH and I both decided that we missed condo living. It was so much simpler and lower maintenance. What had been a lack of options in our youth (due to crazy expensive housing) eventually turned into our ideal. We personally really value our personal space and are fine with raising our kids in our current house. But the second they are grown we do plan to downsize. For the two of us, we just don't need this much space. & since we got to that point, we've been cognizant of not expanding and buying more stuff. While most Americans seem to be in an endless "more more more" mode, we are more in a "less less less" mode.

Anyway, every once in a while I come across a really great article that makes one think, and I decided to finally add a "minimalism" category to this blog. So I kind of wanted to do an overview of where we are at with that. & I should have done this a long time ago. & I thought of another article that I read recently, that I will share below.

We still have way too much stuff and I am still in the de-clutter stage. I think part of the problem for me is that I don't like to spend a lot of my time managing and organizing and cleaning my "stuff". The whole point in not having so much stuff in the first place is so that I don't have to expend energy on "stuff". & so putting all the effort and time that I need to de-clutter is just not happening for me. But we aren't planning to move for another decade and we are at a place already where we wouldn't have to get rid of anything to transition to some place like our first condo (which was half the size of our current home). I'd like to just be "moving ready" when we move, but I have a lot of time. I know we could fit into our future dream home today, but I also don't want to be sorting out junk and deciding what to keep when we move. I want that part to be done before we move again. So that is what I am working on.

My goal for the here and now is to go through all of my belongings and to pare down to what I truly want/use/need. I may be getting close. It could maybe even happen this year? Fall is when I usually get into de-clutter mode. When the weather cools and I get stuck inside more. From there, I really need to work on MH. He likes to accumulate and collect things. Like movies or video games. I am totally fine with that. I know not everyone wants to be able to carry the vast majority of their belongings in like one suitcase. I am resigned to the collections (& he does actually use them and enjoy them, which is a lot of it). But what drives me crazy is the boxes that have just been sitting around since we moved in 15 years ago. I just really want to have my own crap in order before I start leaning on him. I think my slow de-clutter is also good because the more I de-clutter the more my MH seems to subconsciously want to keep up. So he's been taking the initiative to also slowly work through his things.

Some day we will get there. I know it will probably also be a LOT easier without kids and that I may be able to more easily make our next home more of a stuff-less haven. I am resigned to a little extra chaos in the interim.

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Here is another excellent article that I came across recently:

http://www.becomingminimalist.com/target/

Parents, Stop Getting Mad at Your Kids for Wanting Stuff at Target

"So I get it, our kids have stuff. Probably too much. But I think, as parents, we too often put the blame for this reality on the wrong person.

Our kids do have lots of toys and clothes and video games and crafts. But let’s remember, they aren’t the ones with the steady paychecks and they didn’t organize their last birthday party.

If there are too many toys in your playroom, you put them there—or, at the very least, you allowed them to stay.

Even worse, often times, our kids are simply following our lead. When the average American home contains 300,000 items, how upset can we really get that our kids own 238 toys? And when 33% of us can’t fit both cars in our double-garages, how unreasonable is it to assume our child will fill their art and craft drawer to overflowing?

In a society that encourages consumerism at every turn, what else should we expect? Our children are only following our lead."

"But we ought to remember that our children are watching us closely. Whether we like it or not, they are soaking up values from us as parents about how to live, how to work, how to achieve significance… and how to spend money. And if we are constantly desiring things we don’t need, why would we expect anything else from our kids?

Maybe we should stop getting mad at them for wanting things at Target… and start questioning if we really needed to be there in the first place."

I thought this was interesting in terms how it comes up sometimes with other parents how "amazing" it is that we can so no to our kids. ???

But it's not even that we can say no. They really don't even ask.

I think some of it is that we very rarely even take our kids into stores. My spouse and I would help each other enough that we wouldn't see the point in dragging our kids along to all our errands. When I do take them to a store like Target, they don't ask for stuff. IT could be the very consistent boundaries that we set early on. Like saying no to every little whim. & giving them allowances and allowing them to make their own purchase decisions. They've always been able to buy whatever their little heart desires. But they think about it a little more carefully when their resources are more finite.

I know it's no surprise that kids mimic their parents or what they see, but I am taken aback by how financially sensible my kids are. I mean, they are only 11 & 13. I couldn't even get 13yo to buy one souvenir on our last trip (with money that Grandma had slipped him).

I'd think that we are mostly raising them the same way that we were raised. But I think there's two key difference in my own childhood. My parents said no a lot. They said it too much. If someone gave me $30 for souvenirs, I expect I would have spent it in under a minute. I felt deprived. They wouldn't let me spend my own money even on something they thought was too frivolous. We let our kids make those mistakes when they were like 5 or 6, and they have learned and moved on. I also grew up in a culture of shopping. My parents didn't have a lot and they didn't buy me a lot. They weren't huge shoppers. BUT... Shopping was something we did all the time. My mom certainly took me along on all of her shopping errands. My dad would take me shopping on the weekends (generally music stores). I think it was good from a standpoint of learning to manage money. But compared to how we live in the here and now, it was a *lot* of shopping. Maybe these days we do a lot of it online and the kids just don't see it. I don't remember if I have ever taken my kids out just to browse around and buy things. I don't think we have *ever* done that?

Oh, and the average 10yo owns 238 toys? ???????? My MH is a collector and he likes to collect video games, books, and board games. I think I'd be hard pressed to come up with 238 x 2 of those items (& technically a lot of those are for us adults too). My 10yo outgrew "toys" a while ago. So MH's collections would be the bulk of his toys. But I'll have to go count later. I am curious. (I really wouldn't be surprised if we could come up with 238 if we counted every junky party favor type toy that my kids still have. I expect that they have WAY less, but let's see... They are probably due for another purge anyway. A charity is coming by tomorrow so maybe we will do a count and see if they are ready to let go of anything they didn't want to let go of last year).

Edited to add: I couldn't even get up to 100 toys between my two kids, and they do have a lot of junk. They are doing a purge of outgrown toys.

P.S. Are there any minimalist blogs that you follow? OR anything as to managing time as well? The two that I really adored have both been retired. I need to find some more inspiration.