What does minimalism mean for us

We are one adult and two children living in an 1100 square foot home.  It's not big by today's standards but it's not tiny either.  Because I got to make some changes to the layout of our home when we rebuilt after the fire, our home is now perfect for us.  The space is much more user-friendly than before and there is really no wasted space in our home.  We could get by with less space quite easily but it doesn't make financial sense for us to sell this house and find a smaller one.  It also doesn't make emotional sense for the girls, who have already been through so much and need stability right now.

We currently don't need to do a lot of downsizing in stuff either.  One thing with a fire like ours is that you lose everything.  We saved a few very special outfits for each girl, outfits bought in other countries with special people.  Outfits that can't be replaced here.  The little girl has one stuffed animal and one blanket from before the fire.  The big girl has a wax hand made the weekend before the fire.  I saved a desk my grandfather built when my mother was little and my childhood teddy bear. 

As we replaced stuff, I tried to be very conscious about what we were getting.  I got kitchen stuff that we'll actually use. I've bought some clothes for me but the only clothes I've bought for the girls are school uniforms and a couple of fun things.  We have the necessary furniture, although I haven't looked for real dining chairs yet and we're still using my parents' folding chairs.

The biggest issue with stuff is the little girl.  She attaches tremendous value to every. single. object!  She rarely agrees to throw anything away because it's all too special.  While I haven't bought her many toys, she's been given several stuffed animals.  She saves school papers and kids' menus and everything else.  It is a constant battle to keep her stuff under control. 

The big girl has seen the light as far as having enough but not too much.  She struggles to keep organized and realizes how important not having unnecessary items are in her quest to keep a neat room. 

I don't want to buy stuff for me unless I have to.  I'd rather not spend the money or have to figure out what to do with that item.

So, ultimately, for our family, I don't see minimalism as moving into a tiny house or scaling down possessions to fit in the back of my car.  For us, it means having only what we need...no more and no less.  Now if we can just get the little girl to see how much less she could live with.

Cleaning and purging

I am not a clean and tidy person by nature.  I blame my mother...not what she taught me but the genetic stuff she gave me.  I am so much better than I used to be but there is still lots of room for improvement.  Unfortunately, the girls aren't clean and tidy either.  For them, I'm not sure if it's genetics or living with me.  It doesn't really matter because the outcome is the same...we all struggle to keep the house relatively neat.

When we first moved back home, the big girl was doing such a great job keeping her room neat and tidy.  She was so proud of herself and she loved it.  Unfortunately, life got in the way and she let it go.  Because of Romeo, we keep all the bedroom doors shut so I hadn't realized how far it had gone until New Years Eve morning.  I had reason to go in there and saw the true disaster it had become.  In the past, I would have just started yelling and threatening and taking away privileges.  That's almost what I did that morning but then I took a deep breath and remembered all the great parenting strategies I'd learned over the last several months.  Instead of doing all those things I would have done in the past, I told her it was clear she needed some help in figuring out how to get her room reorganized and I was going to help her with that this weekend.

I picked the girls up from a sleepover this morning and I'm sure the big girl was dreading coming home to clean but after I had a few short moments to snuggle the little girl, we got to work.  It ended up only taking about 2 hours to get most of the work done (everything except the laundry).  We purged and cleaned and organized.  We threw away 2 big bags of trash.  There is another big bag of clothes that will go to the clothing bank at her school once they're washed. 

Her desk is now usable.  We stapled a ribbon on the back of her calendar to make it easier to hang when she takes it down to redo it each month.  We hung her new alphabet sign and bulletin board.  We organized her closet and she washed all the stuff on the floor...pretty much her entire wardrobe.  Then she put it all away.  This is where the benefits of having only what you need really comes to light.  When you don't place sentimental value of stuff, it's easy to get rid of things you don't need and/or enjoy.  That makes putting away the stuff you keep so much easier.

Her room looks great.  Her pride is back.  She spent much of the afternoon in there covering notebooks with duct tape and getting ready for the new semester.  We talked about things she can do to make the upkeep easier and when she can ask for help (anytime) if she's overwhelmed or unsure.

After we finished with her room, I moved on to my room.  I cleaned out my closets of the crap that had been accumulating...bags and boxes from the holidays, unfolded clothes that had been stuffed onto shelves in a rush.  I got my laundry and the little girl's laundry that was clean put away.  I emptied bags that had been setting on the floor for months.  It was mostly old catalogs and other trash.  I organized the little girl's hair ties in the bathroom...it's small and there is no drawer space.  They'd all been piled on the back of the toilet.  Now they're tucked neatly into a mason jar on the back of the toilet...so easy and so much better.  Why did it take months for me to do this?

I still have lots more to do.  There are some shelves in the living room that need to be cleaned off and organized.  Still, it feels so good to have gotten so much done today.  It's amazing how quickly messes like this can accumulate.  We've been here 6 months.  As I keep reminding the big girl, it's an ongoing process.  We won't be done until we can afford to pay someone to do it or we die. 

(Thank goodness, my mom helped the little girl clean and organize her room last week.  I have much harder time helping her since she's my hoarder...everything is special and meaningful and nothing can be thrown away or gotten rid of...ever.)

Goodbye holidays

I put up the Christmas decorations today.  It took about 20 minutes.  All we put up this year was a tree and one other decoration.  I couldn't find the stocking holders in the garage so we just set them out on Christmas Eve and put them up on Christmas Day.

The tree was lovely.  It was smaller than our pre-fire tree and fit perfectly into the space we now have for it.  We bought new ornaments on our summer travels and a weekend get away, plus we had a few gifts.  It was full, except for the bottom which was left empty to keep the pup from eating any ornaments, but not overly full.  All the ornaments are now tucked away in a box in the dining room bench.

I loved not being overwhelmed by decorations during the season and by the thought of undecorating.  We had enough to look like Christmas and now the holidays are done and put away.  Lovely!!!

4 weeks

Yesterday was 4 weeks home.

We were out of town for a long weekend last weekend so we didn't get anything done around the house.  The only thing we came home with was a Monopoly game and some Christmas ornaments.  There was lots of other stuff I could have bought so I'm glad I just replaced some stuff lost in the fire.  We'll have a full tree by December for sure.

Yesterday, we spent most of the day in the kitchen.  My mom came over in the morning and helped us can tomatoes.  She had previous experience but this was my first time so it was nice to have her input rather than just following a website and hoping for the best.  We ended up with 20 pints of tomatoes.  Yay!  We have a few more tomatoes in the freezer too.  As the last full batch was in the water bath, one of the jars broke open so we had to let everything cool to clean it up.  Fortunately, clean up wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  If these end up tasting good, I may do more next year.

I also made brownie bites for the big girl's back to school pot luck.  It was a new recipe but they turned out well. 

This afternoon, I need to cook a cabbage and potato dish (at the big girl's request) for school lunches later this week and then I'm going to work in the little girl's bedroom until time for the big girl's school pot luck.  There are a couple of boxes in there that need to be unpacked so I can get to the top of her desk to finish painting it.  I need to hurry since school starts soon.

The good news of the new house...the big girl has made her bed every single day and yesterday was the only day I haven't made mine.  She's also kept her room neat (although I haven't looked in her closet.)  In fact, the whole house is pretty neat.  It's easy to do when you haven't been home much but it's nice.

Minimalism and money

Since we had the fire, I've had to buy some things...new underwear and socks, a new washer and drier, etc.  Still, I haven't bought a lot.  We were lucky enough to have enough kitchen supplies and furniture donated or loaned to us that we haven't needed to buy much for the rental.  Other than the new underwear and socks the night of the fire, I also haven't bought the girls any clothes or shoes related to the fire (that doesn't count the new riding boots I got the little girl...that was not because her old ones were fire damaged.  They were just too small.)  I have bought myself a few new clothing items but not many.

Anyway, since I started contributing to the retirement plan at work and funding a separate Roth, saving extra money has been hard with all the other necesities of daily life.

My motivation for not shopping now is that I really want to get by with the bare necessities until we move back home.  I want the girls to learn how to live with less stuff.  I want to have less stuff to clean and organize.  Plus, we don't have storage pieces of furniture...at least not much...nothing like we were used to having.

The amount of time spent cleaning and organizing while still having a neat house is tremendously decreased from our prefire life.  There are some things laying around because we don't have book shelves to put them on but our house doesn't look like a tornado hit.

Another benefit of not buying...extra money.  I get paid every two weeks.  Two weeks ago, I had $400 left over from my previous paycheck.  Yesterday was payday again and I had $300 left over.  That was after some extra eating out, a trip to the Ethiopian restaurant an hour and a half away, and buying myself a new fitbit for $140.  Had I been better about the food, I would have had lots more left over.

There are a lot of easier ways to achieve a more minimalist lifestyle.  However, since this one has been forced upon us, I'm going to enjoy the side benefits.

What is forced minimalism

Forced minimalism is what happens when you have a house fire and lose almost everything in the span of less than an hour.

That's what happened to us on December 7, 2013.  No worries...we're all okay.  The three people and two dogs made it out of the burning house.  The only life lost, as a certain kiddo won't let me forget was our beta fish, Prancer.

The whole thing is still pretty surreal.  Sometimes this new life is starting to seem almost normal and other times I think, holy shit!  I can't believe that happened to us.  Losing everything in a fire happens to other people, not to us.  Except it did.  Wow!

The nitty gritty details...
It had snowed and the roads were still icy.  After spending the morning cleaning house so we could decorate for Christmas, the girls had spent some time jumping on the trampoline in the snow.  I'd turned the fireplace on so they could warm up in front of it when they came in.  (A backstory...my parents' neighbors had a chimney fire in early November so I had a chimney sweep out the day before Thanksgiving just to check things out before I turned on the fireplace for the first time this year.  Everything looked fine with the fireplace.)  Anyway, after the girls came in and warmed up, we started decorating the Christmas tree.  The tree was almost done when I turned and looked into the living room.  There was a layer of smoke across the room at the level of the mantel.  I ran over and turned off the fireplace, opened the door, and turned on the fan to clear the smoke.  At that time, I thought it was just smoke building up from the fire place.  Then more smoke kept coming and coming.  That's when I realized it was something more.  The girls and I grabbed the dogs and ran out through the garage to get leashes on the dogs.  Molly bolted to the back yard before I could leash her so as soon as I finished calling 911 (which took me several tries because I couldn't remember how to unlock my phone and make a call), I sent the girls all the way out to the yard and went to the back yard to find Molly.  Fortunately, that was quick and we went to meet the girls and head across the street to wait for the fire truck.  While I was getting Molly, I had the big girl call my parents and tell them what was going on.  My dad said when he answered the phone, the big girl said very deadpan, "mom told me to call you and tell you the house is burning."  The way she said it, he couldn't tell how bad it was or if we needed him to come.  We did!!!  Sometime before the fire truck showed up, the house flashed.  The big girl said she saw it (we left the door open as we ran out).  I didn't see that but I did see flames start billowing out the back porch.  Neighbors started showing up and after what seemed like forever (although I think it was really just a couple of minutes) the fire department arrived and got to work.  The rest was kind of a blur of talking to the firemen about what happened and my dad coming and taking the girls to their house before coming back to wait with me.

I assumed the fire was from the chimney because we had the fire going but the fire inspector said it was really from an outlet just down the wall from the chimney.  Two days later, the origin and cause investigator for the insurance company said the same thing.  Apparently, when that outlet was put in (sometime before I bought the house), when they pushed the wire though the floor, the insulation on the wire was torn so it was just a ticking time bomb all that time.  At least it picked a time when we were all awake and together to go off.  In other circumstances, it could have been much, much worse.

Our house was declared a total loss.  I've sent a few things to restoration...a desk my grandfather made when my mom was a little girl, a case he made for my childhood teddy bear and my teddy bear, my great grandmother's old singer sewing machine, and a few special outfits for the girls.  Otherwise, everything will be trashed.  We are starting from scratch.

The night of the fire, after we got to my parents, we all went to Target and got some new underwear and socks, a pair of jeans and a couple of new tshirts, and a pair of pajamas each.  Talk about minimalism!

Since then, we've receive a lot of clothing donations.  We've kept what the girls like and what fits and the rest have been passed on to other fire victims via a friend.

Besides clothing, someone basically furnished our house as he was moving out of his apartment, giving us a couch, desk, tv stand, and kitchen stuff.  Another person gave us a king size mattress and box springs while our landlord is loaning us a twin bed and bedding.  We've had to buy almost nothing.  It's been truly amazing. 

Of course, the little girl wants to replace every single thing right now.  And she has been given several stuffed animals.  However, the big girl and I have talked about my goals for our life in our rental and our life when we move back home.  I hope to maintain a minimalist life.  I'm hoping to limit our purchases while in the rental so we have only clothing and such to move when the time comes and then limit the purchases for our home to the things we really need and love.  The big girl has always complained about having too much stuff to clean and organize so I really want to prevent that.

I'm hoping that while we're here in the rental with so few things, we can all develop some good habits about picking up after ourselves on a regular basis.  And really, when you have nothing, cleaning up goes really, really fast!  It's kind of awesome.

So what's the purpose of this blog?  To chronicle the next 6ish months as we demo and rebuild our home and return to normal while continuing the minimalist lifestyle that has been force upon us.