The hardest part of embracing minimalism was taking a close look at the personal mementos we were hauling around on this Earth and determining which of them needed to go. The answer was that the bulk of them had to go if we were going to live tiny and embrace minimalism.
Full Disclosure
We have a storage unit. There are pieces of furniture from my childhood and a dining room table that I couldn’t part with. I’m strong and my anti-consumerism game is growing strong, but I wasn’t that strong. We aren’t those people you see who have two pairs of socks and one spoon. They amaze me, but we aren’t there with our minimalism mindset. Still, the majority of what you see here no longer belongs to us.
Identifying Keepsakes
As suggested in Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, we piled all of these items together and saved them for last. It was easy to see those things could not fit on the bus and we needed to get rid of most of it. For me, that was difficult. There were items I had carried around since elementary school. Other items had belonged to my parents.
I closed my eyes and imagining all of those things on our skoolie. Nope. It was never going to happen. Embracing any form of minimalism meant that these things had to go. This is when an idea was born. I started by sorting the items into 3 piles: Keep, Digitalize, Trash. If I couldn’t remember why I kept an item, it automatically went in the trash.
Saying Goodbye to Keepsakes
Once I had several items sorted into the Digitalize pile, I created an Instagram account and set it to private. I took a photo of each item and uploaded it to the account. Once I did that, I followed another tip from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I thanked the item for serving me well before placing it in the trash. I remember reading the book and thinking this part seemed so silly. It isn’t silly though. When you think back to the time that you used the item and how it made you feel, it is easier to let it go. One example she uses is thanking that shirt you bought but never wore. It brought you joy on the day you bought it. You don’t have to keep it out of guilt. You can release it.
I released item after item. The majority of these ‘important’ things went into the trash without ever being photographed. Some of it went into our storage unit. I plan to revisit in in a year.
The Aftermath
At some point during this process, I got bored with taking photos. I was about a month in when I realized I would probably look at the Instagram keepsake account as often as I looked through the mementos themselves. They were just taking up space in the closet. Now and then, I would find something that I deemed important enough to photograph, but my mindset shifted. I didn’t need those things.
It has been almost a year since I uploaded the first photo of my first keepsake. I looked through the photos today for the first time. Why? So I could show you some of the things I let go. My goal is to go through the remaining items a year from now. I am curious how I will look at those things after spending time living tiny. Minimizing our belongings has already shifted how we view the world. I can only imagine the next year will only intensify those changes.
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