I haven’t always liked being a minimalist. I didn’t understand what it was. To me it seemed  that you must be either poor or really in love with camping if you are doing it. You must own less than 100 things and travel to Europe with only a backpack?

The thought of it would just make me of think of two things: a stark cold home and having to rewear your dirty underwear.

We all also have our defining life stories. One of mine is that the reason why I try and change my clothes a lot and not always wear the same outfits, is because someone made fun of me in high school once for wearing the same outfit two days in a row to school.

He pointed it out to everyone around us and just started laughing. Now that I think about it not a lot of people laughed or cared about what he said.Yet it made me want to follow an outward standard as to how often I should repeat an outfit and how many clothes I should wear. Wrong of my part! I should not have cared. As a young girl it stuck with me and it changed me until I was mature enough to break that belief and go back to my own.

It wasn’t until recently that I started reading about minimalism lifestyle tips and I fell in love with it.

I am not obsessed about it. I am not a 100% true minimalist. I like variety still and different things. I like the principles that stand behind minimalism, though.

It started this past year. David and I started to feel that we were heading exactly where the world would expect us to head.

Buy a house, grow your business, eat at nice restaurants, stay at expensive hotels and go shopping whenever we felt the urge to.

Being that I wasn’t raised like that and that I come from a different, less materialistic and less financially prosperous culture, I was starting to feel really uneasy with that.

I love shopping. I love a new outfit. But I would often tell my husband that I didn’t feel ok with how my life was becoming. Constantly buying a new outfit, constantly shopping, constantly going bigger and higher.

I didn’t like also how it didn’t feel like quality time when we were spending Saturday at the mall. I also knew that stats always say that your children are bound to do more of whatever you did or taught them.

If I as a parent tend to slack a little bit at something, chances are my kids will have a higher chance to give that one thing even less importance than I did to it.

So if my parents taught me to shop in moderation, and I was shopping this way, how much will my kids be into shopping some day? My parents sacrifice even to be an example at the time, made it easier for me to try and want to be the same way for my own children.

Does that mean that I will never shop again? Absolutely not. But as I read more about minimalism lifestyle tips, I remembered how it is to shop in moderation, and doing it for the right reasons. Not just to show off all my friends how nice my new clothes are.

I am trying to go shopping now because I am purposely needing that item. And careful when thinking of need. And when coming to material pleasures, trying to set a reasonable goal and not be too excessive with what I buy.

Another aspect of minimalism lifestyle  was that I  learned to let go of things.

I used to think that by holding on to things that meant I was being frugal and not wasteful.

I loved a deal, and if someone was getting rid of something nice and offered to give it to me I would usually take it. I hate throwing things away in the garbage that will sit in a landfill for millions of years. The poisonous gases and chemical… I also come from Italy and my parents’ generation was born right after World War II.

My grandparents always had that mentality of keeping things just in case World War 3 ever started. While I wasn’t as concerned about it, I am sort of wired to constantly feel the need to save in case hard times fall upon us. In case there is another Hitler or Mussolini or another atomic bomb.

I try and control those fears. But minimalism lifestyle tips have helped me to understand that I truly don’t need as many things even if those horrible times were to happen, and to realize that it’s ok to let go of what we have.

It’s ok to donate what we don’t use and give it to the rest of the world. After all we are so far away from poverty in this country.

The world average salary is less than $18,000 a year. Our country considers poverty at a way higher income level than that.

The last aspect I love of minimalism is the part where I had to come to terms with the amount in number of items that I needed for different areas of my life.

For example, when I truly think of what my kids and I personally need even for the next year in clothes, I know that my personal number could even be 5 outfits a week. Truth is we own so much more than that. But being conscious of it and counting as many things I have, helps me stay grounded and not constantly shop without a reason.

Those are just some of the reasons why I love a minimalism lifestyle. I’ll probably talk about more things later, but this is the geist of it for right now!

This is also one of my minimalism lifestyle books that completely helped us to declutter our lives, and go back to chasing what mattered most rather things!