273: Five Things I've Learned from Going Extremely Minimal

273: 5 Things I've Learned from Going Extremely Minimal

Hello and welcome to today's podcast. I'm your host, Megan Hillukka. I’ve been feeling cold to talk more about things about this podcast that are related to motherhood in general. And not always, so focus on nothing but grief.

A lot of what I talk about here will still be relevant to that, but I want to see what happens if I love to talk more about other topics as well. I have so many things that I can talk about and share, and I feel like I'm excited to talk about a lot of things. I would just love to share it here.

Today is the start of something a little bit different. We'll see how it goes and what I decide to do. I don't like to be held to anything. I say, like, what I'm going to do. So, we'll see. I'm going to share just a little bit differently. It's not so focused on grief.

I'm going to share about five things I've learned from living extremely minimally for two years.

We are currently kind of in limbo between being ready to be done living on the bus and having been living on it for two years. If you don't know our story, we converted a school bus into a motorhome, and we've been traveling the country for two years. Within those two years, we have stayed at a few places for a couple of months at a time, but mostly we have had to move every night—between one and five nights is the most. Sometimes two weeks, sometimes one week, but those are rare, like one or two couple months or days. We are in between that and waiting to close on a house that we're buying. And we are so ready to just be in the house for the time being and not have to move every day, one week at a time. but before we moved into the bus, we got rid of everything, and I mean everything when we moved into our bus. A lot of people were surprised that we didn't have a storage unit somewhere, or they would be like, Where's all your stuff? Where's your house? like we don't have a house; we sold everything and got rid of everything. quick, funny story. My mom is so funny because she has saved a lot of things for me. Things that I got rid of in my mind, I got rid of. Now she's like, Oh, I saved this for you. Do you want it? So there are some things that I am getting back because my mom saved them for me because she was like, Yeah, right, you're going to want that soon, and she was holding on to it for me. So that's just a funny side note about my mom. And I just love it about her. But when we're living on the bus, we have the very basic essentials. because, if you think about it, we have nine people living in 280 square feet. and all our stuff is in here too. and everything for each person adds up so fast. There's just no option to have tons of access. We just don't have the space. We don't have a room. and it's just something we must deal with. Each of our kids has a drawer. So, this is an example of something like the IKEA shelving racks. I don't remember what it's called, but all those baskets are kind of like an upright shelf, and each kid has one drawer. This one drawer is for everything: T-shirts, pants, sweaters, shorts, underwear, socks, all of it. and my two little boys share a drawer because they share clothes. It's impossible to have lots of things, and even with what we do have, I sometimes feel like it's too much because the drawers are quite stuffed. and if something doesn't have a place, it's quite annoying in a tiny space. Sometimes I do feel like even with what we do have, we do have access; we do have too much, like we could stand to get rid of more things.

But I want to share five things that I've learned about living extremely minimally because it has felt extremely minimal for two years.

Number 1. We really don't need much to live a comfortable and amazing life. I know I get this because I often think—I love buying things—I want to buy things, and I always think buying something is going to make me happy. It can and it does and having a beautiful space is amazing and I think it's a good thing to have a space that you love to be in. But just buying things in excess is something we don't need. We do not need all these things; we have basic things. And like I said, in some ways we still have access, and it's been amazing to me how sometimes the simpler the things we have, the better. The less we must take care of, the fewer things that break, and the more time we get as a family, the more time we get to do things we love instead of taking care of our things. and I would say that we've managed with these little things. It hasn't been a problem. like we have all our basic needs, all the basic things that we need, and then some. I just think about what we have compared to most people. We probably have like 1:100th of what a normal family has, even a normal family that just has two kids instead of seven living kids. and it's just amazing to me how little we need and how much we tend to have. and how it really is OK, and you're going to be fine if you just have the basics.

The second thing that I've learned is that having a little makes you take care of what you have, and you'll find it if you lose it. I've thought about this one a lot because all our kids have one pair of shoes and one pair of boots, and some have one pair of sandals. But our little girl had one pair of shoes for a long time, and the other thing about having one pair of shoes is that if they're lost, you can find them. We spent 20 minutes looking for this one pair of shoes because she would take them all around and hide them in places that we couldn't find. but we would always find them because we take the time to find them. When it's her only pair, we must. I know if she had other pairs of shoes or another pair of shoes, we would just pull out that other pair, and maybe we wouldn't find that pair later. Maybe we would; who knows? But this is just one small example of how if you only have one of something, you take care of it. and you make sure you find it if it's lost because it's your only one. Excess can lead to wasting it, not caring about it, and not taking care of it. Maybe some of you are good at that. Maybe some of you are good at taking care of something or taking care of a lot of things. I know for myself that I'm not.

Let's go to number 3. This one is a funny one to me. I'm not sure if I'm a maximalist or a minimalist after living on the bus. I joke about this because living so minimally is also stressful for me. I love only having one pair of shoes, but I also dream of having a million things. I dream of being able to buy huge packages of Costco food and having a place to store them. Having been able to buy all this stuff, I like buying in bulk and not having to run to the store all the time. and just being able to make things from my cupboards because I have all this stuff stored in my house. I just dream of being able to buy a head of clothes for my kids, say for the next spring or summer, but I don't because I don't have the space for it or things like that. Sometimes I just want to buy things, but I don't because we don't need them or have the space for them. It could just be a ‘me’ issue, but it can be kind of depressing at times. I just really want to spend some money, and I can't. Obviously, that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing for me to learn too, because I like to spend money, and it's a good thing for me to practice. It's like this push and pull between being OK and having very little. And, oh my gosh! I would just love to have tons of things. I know I don't want tons of things. I don't want excess. But when it's like the extreme of being extremely minimalist, it's almost like I want to swing to the other side. We've been living in 280 square feet, but now I want to have a 10,000-square-foot house. We want tons of space and tons of room, and we want all this stuff. It's just that's not the kind of house we're buying. We're going to be living a lot smaller than a lot of people in general. and the way we're going to be living is different anyway. but I just sometimes dream of that because of how minimalist we've been living.

Number four. Let's talk about the fact that it's a good practice for all of us, including me and Justin, and for our kids to get rid of things and go through our stuff often to see if we still want to hold on to it. Our kids have little baskets in their beds; that's their stuff. If they want to put more things in their basket, they must go through it and make room for it. and I do think that we get so attached to stuff that it's a good practice to be able to let go of things. because things really don't matter. Being attached to them, in my opinion, really doesn't lead to anything good. But this can be hard, and I get it for myself. It's hard to get rid of things. I guess I appreciate, with seven kids, that they have a visual reminder of how much they can keep in their bins. I'm not sure how we're going to do this in the house because they will have more space; they might not just be restricted to their little bin in their bed. but it's a good reminder for me as well to constantly go through all the things I have. every drawer, every you know—my clothes, my kids’ clothes, pots, pans, all the stuff, even cupboards. To see what we have and what we haven't used in years. Well, why haven't we used it since we moved on the bus? Do we need it because somehow other things just get added to your things and to your space, and then suddenly you have all these things that you haven't used in years taking up space?

The last thing I want to share today is just this idea that I hope I can take forward these habits of not buying too much excess into our house. Even though we'll have space in the room to buy more things, we must buy everything right now. It's a little bit overwhelming how much we will have to buy when we move into a house because we don't have beds. We have mattresses, we don't have couches, we don't have a kitchen table, and we don't have literally anything that you would have in a house. All the furniture, all the things we have, all the basics that we can have on the bus—we will make do until we buy them. But you know, there are a lot of things we must buy, even skates for our kids, all the winter gear, and all of that. Anyway, since we're living in Minnesota, I do want to take this forward of not buying too much excess, especially with kids’ clothes and basically anything. We'll see if I can keep this going forward in some sense. I don't think I want to live as minimally as I have in the past two years, but I also want to be mindful that every cupboard doesn't need to be stuff-full. Every space in the house doesn't need to be filled. Every empty space doesn't need to be filled. I know that there's this saying that empty space is like a vacuum; it just can't help but be filled. I want to practice driving in empty spaces. It is actually a nice thing to have at times. and when my kids have fewer clothes, laundry is so much easier to keep up with. We have just said, for example, one bedding set for every bed plus an extra if we need it. We don't have to source sheets and bedding anywhere. You don't have all these extra tons of towels. Maybe a few extras for if we have a guest or something. We do have a towel for each person, and that's the way I like it. I like having one towel for each person. Those towels get washed every few uses, so it's just so simple. So clearly, everyone knows what towel there is. That's just an example of things I want to take forward with us. No, I don't need 30 towels. I really don't. I don't need all this extra stuff. I don't need 50 bedding sets. I just have one for each bed. I'm trying to think of other things, but I just want to keep it simple. You know, every kid just has one pair of shoes and one pair of boots. Just the real basics because it just adds up; it just gets so cluttered, and the bigger our family is, the harder it's to manage all this stuff. and it can already be overwhelming, as we have nine people. Two pairs of shoes per person are 18 pairs of shoes. Suddenly, 10 pairs or 9 pairs of boots take up a lot of space.

That's something I want to bring forward with me: just trying to be as minimal as possible in many areas. I don't want to have to restrict myself from being able to buy things and have more things in our lives. What habits do I want to bring forward with me? and one thing that I've thought about a lot—this is an extra thing, I guess—is that as we move into this house, I want to be super mindful of what we bring in. So, what furniture? I don't want to just buy furniture for the sake of buying it. I want to love each piece that comes in. I want to enjoy it. because we do have a unique situation where we're basically starting from scratch. I just want to really enjoy our space and want to make it a place that I love to be.

I totally forgot my thought that I was going to share, so that was just a side tangent of a thought that I forgot. I guess they didn't get a little bit of it. But there you have it—five things and the little, tiny bonus that I've learned from going extremely minimal for two years. As always, these are just the five things that came to mind for this episode. and I'm sure there are many more things that I've learned. We are so excited and ready to end this time of extremes and minimalism. I'm grateful for the lessons that we've learned along the way and the experiences that we've had in our travels. We are sure looking forward to a normal or more normal life, even though we don't have a normal life at all. I don't think in any sense of the word.

Before I sign off, I wanted to let you know that I am currently looking for nine women who are experiencing anxiety on a daily or weekly basis. Women who are tired and sick of living with anxiety. Moms who are exhausted find anxiety draining their lives. Where it's taking away from you, and you're just like, I'm so tired of this. I'm looking to assist these moms in being anxiety-free in just two sessions together. and because I'm looking for more testimonials and people to share their experiences with it. with what I do and how I do it. I’m offering this at an extremely low discount just for these nine women so that I can show you that it does work and you can be anxiety-free in just two sessions. It's quick and effective, and at last, it lasts, and it's not painful. I know it sounds crazy. I can hardly believe myself when I say this. I get it. I get that you're like, two sessions? What are you talking about, or how can you clear your anxiety? That's all I must manage for the rest of my life.

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You can go to meganhillukka.com/beanxietyfree to check it out. I had someone tell me that if I can deliver what I'm promising, I'll solve a $10,000 problem in just two sessions. You better believe it when I say yes; I promise that. If it doesn't work for you, I didn't do any of my job properly. Again, I will double your money back. Go check it out. As soon as I get nine more women, the price will triple. So don't wait; go do it right now. Again, meganhillukka.com/beanxietyfree.

Take care, my friends. See you next week!