Sometimes you just have those moments when a concept you’ve been trying to understand for a while just clicks.
Recently I had one of those moments. Life is very busy and overwhelming lately. We’ve had lots of things to do and places to go, lots of thinking about the future, lots of decisions to make. It feels like I’ve been going nonstop since getting back from Hawaii in mid-April, honestly.
There have been plenty of fun times, but also extremely stressful ones where I feel like I’m absolutely past my limits—as a parent, partner, friend, and simply as a human being.
It’s felt like there is simply not enough of the big resources to go around: time, mental capacity (like patience, resilience, and motivation), and physical energy.
I wish I had more time to have fun with my kids. I feel like we spend almost all of our time cleaning the house and preparing food.
In terms of physical energy, dragging the kid (A)/kids around to A’s various appointments is getting more difficult as they get older. Yet this part of life is unavoidable at the moment. There is nothing to cut out here.
With mental capacity, there is just too much to care for. Not even considering a 1-year-old, 2-year-old and a large drooly dog; our house is too big for us! I know that sounds laughable, as our house is not big by American standards. It’s 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and an office, and just the usual common areas besides. But we don’t need all that (or our large, forested yard) anyways.
And not just that we don’t need it, but we’ve realized that we don’t want it. We don’t want the suburban American life at all. We want less to care for, and more time and money for the things that we truly value. Nature, travel, real relationships. Experiences, with the smallest possible home to take care of.
I found myself wondering recently, how is anyone supposed to do it all?
That’s when it occurred to me that you can’t, that it’s impossible, and the real question is: what are you willing to sacrifice? What choices are you willing to take away from yourself, to create time and energy for what you really care about?
At its core, I think that’s what functional (not aesthetic) minimalism is really about. It’s not about owning the fewest possible items or committing to the least activities or maintaining the fewest key relationships, but about limiting the decisions you have to make on a daily basis.
The physical and mental things that you fill your spaces and mind with are not meaningless. They all add or remove value from your life on the whole. Every minute you spend scrolling mindlessly and filling your mind with junky or stressful tidbits, could be spent pouring into your wellbeing instead. Every item in your house is useful–or not.
xx Claire