Can minimalism save me money?

I am drawn to the idea of minimalism. I love the notion of only keeping and maintaining things that are useful and meaningful to our family. In practice, of course, it is much harder to get rid of all the stuff cluttering our house.

We live in a 1200 square foot house, so it is especially important for our family to only keep the things we actually need and have the room for. It is a continual process to keep our possessions in check. We struggle the most with toys. They are everywhere. No matter how many we donate, another birthday rolls around and more toys follow.

Although we’re not minimalist by any stretch of the imagination, I feel like I do a decent job of organizing and decluttering our home. But there is one area that is overflowing with stuff – our crawlspace. All of our baby gear, baby clothes, baby toys, etc are in the crawlspace. My teaching supplies from 15 years ago? Crawlspace. Random bins of crap? Crawlspace. Whenever I even think about clearing the area out, I am overwhelmed with a feeling of dread. But really, we could probably part with 75% of that stuff and never even notice it was gone. Chances are, if it’s currently in the crawlspace, we already forgot we own it.

Obviously minimalism can help keep a person’s house under control, but I think minimalism can also help keep finances under control too. Only purchasing the things we actually NEED takes so much stress off of the budget.  My mom always struggled with hoarding tendencies. Quantity was more important to her than quality. As you might have suspected, she always struggled with money too. 

This year, I want to try harder to eliminate the clutter in my house. But even more importantly, I want to be very intentional with how we spend our money in the first place. All of the things we bring into our house will have to be maintained/stored. In the coming weeks, we are going to be starting a closet makeover project. This is a perfect example of the cost of maintaining ‘stuff.’ 

Our game closet is currently overflowing. It’s so disorganized, my children have trouble finding their things. I hope you follow along as we start the decluttering and organizing process!