The benefits of minimizing your life.

I am completely fascinated by the tiny house movement and other ways to minimizing your life. Not only do I think it will lead you on a path of self sufficient living , but I think there is a sense of spiritual release from the whole process. On a personal level I am a being who is concerned about the ecological issues we face in the world today. I am also someone who doesn't want to be mortgage or power bill broke. It has been a slow process of redefining what really has purpose in my life. Now you don't have to go to the extreme of living in a 200sq foot home or even living completely off the grid to actually benefit from this kind of mind set.

Some of the ways I have started to change things in my life to live a more simple and minimal life style are things like gardening so I am not spending as much on grocery bills. Three years ago I started my very first garden and I learned how to can what I grew. Then I learned how to dehydrate food as well. I took up sewing and crocheting to make house hold items like bed spreads and wash rags. This is an afghan I made for my son.

This week it has been all about purge the house of items that either we no longer use or do not really benefit us any longer. There was a wonderful experience of me finally after five yrs, releasing those size zero jeans that I wore before I got pregnant for my last child. It was a process of not only excepting  my new body shape but realizing that I no longer have to try and fit into what society says is beautiful. In case you are curious before my pregnancy I weighted 95lbs and wore a size zero I now weight 133lbs and wear a size 6. Me throwing those jeans into the get rid of pile was a symbol of me loving who I am and a release of the ten plus years I had starved myself to be skinny.This first picture is me before I had my last child.

and  this is a picture of me now

So you can see I truly was way to small and unhealthy and now I'm at a healthy weight. My point is it was a huge step to healing for me to release those jeans.

I started to wonder what else in my home could we live without. I am at heart a huge book lover. I love everything about books from the journey they take you on right down to how they smell. I have a huge collection of books and by huge I mean thousands,lol. Being a homeschool family books are a big part of our days and our curriculum so I knew getting rid of most of them wasn't even an option. yet I wondered are there books I am holding on that no longer serve a purpose on my path right now, that have essentially become nothing but dust collectors. What better way to share my love of books than to send them out into the world to be read by others. That is what I am doing today.I am going through every book shelf to decide what to pass on and what to keep. Every room in my house has books including the bath rooms,lol so this is a big job that may take days. You can see a picture of just one of my book shelves here.

Don't laugh I told you I was a huge Book lover.

So this morning as I was having my morning cup of coffee and reading some of my homeschool facebook groups I noticed I am a member of over 150 groups. Some of which I never really get around to visiting and other I have found I just do not fit. I noticed that more and more some of the parents on these groups were so set in their ideology and methods of a certain style of homeschooling that they will actually attack other parents who do not perfectly fit that style. Now I am not saying they don't have a right to express that what you are or are not doing doesn't fit the method of that group but I think they could be kinder about it. I realized that spiritually these groups were not benefiting me in any way. That in a sense they were spiritually harming me by effecting my mood after reading how they treated others. I decided that this was another area of my life I could and really should minimize. When it comes to homeschooling my take is every family is different and that if they want to pick one style or even blend multiple styles together that is great as long as it works for their family. I don't personally feel the need to say we are only this way or that way. I just do what works for us. At the same time I am one of those people who enjoys helping others so if someone post looking for thoughts or ideas I most definitely will throw in my two cents on the topic. In some homeschooling groups it seems this is frowned upon. If you comment and it doesn't fit the ideology to a T then others will rudely comment that you should not even speak. That blows my mind because homeschooling is in my opinion a lot about personal freedom. So instead of getting upset about this I figured it was best for me to take a leave from groups that are ran this way. For me life is about living as drama free as I can.

I look forward to continuing my journey of living a more simple minimized life style. I do plan on living in a small home but that will be yrs down the road. My husband and I have a plan. We will have this house paid off in about 5-6 yrs then we will live here for another 5 yrs mortgage free to save up more money. The way I see it we should have 60,000 saved that way not counting what we will get buy selling this house when we find the perfect land to build our tiny house on. Now we want a bit more than 200sq foot home. Maybe something close to 600-700 sq feet with a small guest room for our one day grandchildren to visit. We want to install solar energy and a well. Grow our own food and raise a few cows and chickens. We have a plan and are doing tons of research now so that when the time comes we will be able to do this on our own and in the most cost efficient way. I know for some this is not the life style you may want to choose but for us it feels just right.