Kind of glad this Christmas came and went without a lot of fanfare. It’s the first Christmas since my dad’s passing and that is, of course, going to take some getting used to. Shortly, I’m going to be coming up on 4 years since Mario passed away as well. As the years roll on, it’s just more and more empty seats at the table, so rather depressing, especially around the holidays.
Rather than dwell on it, I’m trying to have a little down time, but also balancing that with some preparation for the next year.
I might have mentioned it in a previous post or two, but I grew up with a lot of clutter (not to be confused with decor or decoration) in the house. My dad was the hoarder of the family. My mom tried to keep that in check though, making most of the house “off limits” for the storage of my dad’s hoarded things. There was a patio room off the dining room, a spare bedroom, and the garage that had a lot of clutter. My dad ran a machine shop out of the garage, so that wasn’t so much hoarder items as it was machines and tools for his business, but to say it was jam packed with stuff would be an understatement. The hoard spilled out onto the driveway and took over a metal shed as well.
Needless to say, that experience growing up left me wanting to never want to live with that much unused stuff around. I wouldn’t say I’m a minimalist but I don’t like having too many extra things or having things in closets that I don’t use or haven’t used in years. The older I get, the more towards minimalism I get with certain things. My exception is decoration. I have a ton of art and decor throughout the house. I’m more of a maximalist when it comes to that stuff 👇.
But that works nicely with my self-imposed “rules” about having clean closets too. That stuff is all out and displayed. As Marie Kondo would put it, those items “spark joy” for me. It makes my house uniquely mine and puts a smile on my face. Occasionally I will be “over” an item and I often just donate whatever it is to a local thrift store and replace it with something else. Many of the items have some sort of special meaning to me as well. Luckily, I have a decent-size home with a lot of wall and other space to display my treasures.
While pairing down other items is a year-round thing for me (Mario and I had collected quite a lot over the years we’d both lived in this house), the end of the year is always a time where I go at it twice as hard. Because I’ve been having to deal with my dad’s accumulated hoard in a multi-thousand square foot shop space, I seem to be even more driven to clean out unused items from my own space.
The other way I look at it is I am passing along items that I have once used or once loved to someone else who can use and love them. Some items I post on the local “Buy Nothing” group on Facebook (the purpose of the group is to give items away for free). Other items I donate to various local thrift shops. Many may file activities like this into “alternative living”, because they always choose to buy new or be reluctant to give things away, and that’s fine. But I think there is absolutely a place for this and in many ways, it’s a wonderful way to recycle, budget and help others out.
Going through the process does make you question what you really need in your life. This is something unique to each person. You could read, listen, or watch others talk about their own journeys with “stuff”, but until you actually start doing it, you really won’t know where you’ll land on the scale of minimalism to hoarder. One of the first things I can recall bumping into that made me think of what my essentials were was an old internet thing called “Burning House”. The premise was what items (yourself, other people and pets were a given) would you try to take if you had to evacuate a burning house (and people would send in photos of those things). It made me remember when a wildfire threatened my parent’s house many years ago and they had to evacuate and what they took. When I evaluated my answers (my computer, essential items for my cats, keepsake/family photos and favorite art), I realized just how replaceable almost everything else I own is.
Some may argue that if you have the space and it’s not over filled, why not keep all the things? But for me, things absolutely have an “energy” to them. And I guess because of the hoard I lived with while growing up and the knowledge that unused items are really of no use to me, but could be of use to others, it does get to me. Last week, I cleaned out the 2 “junk drawers” in my built-in kitchen desk. They had gotten to a point where it became a real bother digging around in them to find something I needed. So cleaning those out kind of restored a sense of ease and balance for me. I can now open the drawer and not only see the pair of scissors, but not have to root around to get to them. So I’m trying to make the rest of my home’s storage spaces just as simplified.
There is one other exception I make when it comes to items and that is owning certain tools. Tools are something you might not always use, but are very useful when you do need them. I just evaluate what the likelihood is that I may need them at some future time. For example, I’ve made some space in my garage to take possession of some tools that my dad had that may be useful in the future.
In some of my spare time, I’ve also been watching a lot of videos on a youtube channel that focuses on alternate living arrangements, particularly with tiny homes (both fixed and mobile), which have always fascinated me. Having only so much space really forces you to prioritize. But watching a lot of these “alternative” ways to live also gives you good examples of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and sustainability in addition to “living with less”. Being able to budget, “upcycle” and make do are definitely useful skills in my opinion (especially in times of economic uncertainty).
So in 2025, I’m optimizing my own essentials. What are yours?
