3483: How Simplifying Your Home Can Teach You Who You Are by Shawna Scafe on Embracing Minimalism

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00] Überlass deine gesunde Ernährung und die Gains nicht nur deinem Bauchgefühl. Denn bei der Ernährung gaukelt uns unser innerer Schweinehund manchmal ganz schön was vor. Sag stattdessen Hallo zu deinem neuen Coach, Yasio. Yasio ist die meistgenutzte Ernährungs-App Europas, made in Germany. Egal ob Massephase oder ein bisschen Abnehmen, tracke Kalorien, Proteine, Carbs, Fette, Bewegung und Intervallfasten. Und mit den Tasty-Rezepten bist du ready für deine Ziele. Let's go! Lade die Yasio-App jetzt herunter.

[00:00:29] [SPEAKER_01] Before we start, please check out our new podcast, Good Sleep. Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_01] So press play on Good Sleep tonight, because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app, and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. It's a Minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily. How Simplifying Your Home Can Teach You Who You Are, by Shauna Scaife of SimpleOnPurpose.ca.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_01] And I'm Justin Malek, your narrator. And I'll keep this intro nice and minimal, so let's get right to it and continue optimizing your life. How Simplifying Your Home Can Teach You Who You Are, by Shauna Scaife of SimpleOnPurpose.ca.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_01] There are a lot of views on what minimalism is. Some people think it is a disappointing form of depriving yourself of stuff and shopping and having things that you like. Some people think it is a stark, clear space where you live with this Zen approach to less is more, maybe even making the state of less as the superior option.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_01] We hear various approaches to how to be a minimalist, and the interesting thing we also hear is that it is life-changing for those who have brought it into their lives. No matter how you approach minimalism, you'll see that it changes almost everyone who starts and sticks it out for the long run. Every person has the space to define what minimalism looks like to them, but a general definition is letting go of the things you don't want, use, or find beautiful.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_01] I started out with this definition. In my case, it looked like letting go of craft supplies I'll never use, the oversupply of t-shirts I couldn't possibly wear in a reasonable time frame, the blouses that I wore to work because I had to have something professional, the cheesy home decor I bought to fill the space, the extra seven mugs I actually didn't enjoy looking at, and the list goes on. Truckloads were taken from my home. But if you come to my home, you will see a kitchen with lots of appliances,

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_01] a ton of Legos, lots of art supplies, and an en suite full of makeup and face creams. I'm still a minimalist, but this is the stuff I love the most and wanted to keep. I think I would now define minimalism as owning the things that support the life I want to live and the person I intend to be today. Can you already see the power of minimalism to change your life? It's important to reflect on where we start out.

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_01] Before I decluttered, I had one or two of everything. I kept accumulating. Shopping was a form of entertainment. It was easy for me to spend money every time I was out. Things were a good deal, my rationale of choice. I could always rationalize that I needed it. Lord forbid I ever go without something. And most of all, it felt good to bring something new home. I never gave much thought about what I bought, and even less thought to what I kept in my home.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_01] Once it was in here, I just found a place for it, even if it was in the sea of boxes in the basement. It never occurred to me that I could just get rid of it. Then I had this dramatic moment where I suddenly realized I had permission to get rid of stuff. So I went to the basement and started the slow and emotional decluttering process. The reason it was emotional was that I was face-to-face with all these decisions about what would stay and what would go.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_01] And I was at a loss because I had no darn clue how to decide. I had no clue how to decide because I had muddied the waters of who I was. I was so out of touch with myself and what I liked and the life I longed for, that I had no stable way to make decluttering decisions. I was surrounded by all this stuff I had brought into my home over the years, and I couldn't pull out my identity from these items in a sensible way. This was before Marie Kondo was hot on the scene,

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_01] and I think her does it spark joy criteria would have saved me a lot of time and energy trying to make these elementary decisions. I've shared before that I had built up a lot of my adult life based on how I learned to define success from my upbringing and interpretation of the culture around me. The definition I had was both stunted and insatiable. It would never be enough. There would always be more to consume and buy and have.

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_01] Yet it would never satisfy because it wasn't a full and life-giving concept that was rooted in the life I truly wanted. I'd already felt the discomfort of shifting into a new definition of a successful life because I had left my career as an environmental health officer to be a stay-at-home mom to my three kids. But now, here I was spending hours sorting through boxes of my life, and I could see that this definition still wasn't expressed in a way

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_01] that was really aligned with who I was and what I wanted. I still had never thought about who I was or what I wanted out of life. It was easy to purge the obvious things that didn't belong. They were broken or a bad purchase from a decade ago. It was harder to wade through the things I wanted to keep just in case, or it's worth something. Even harder to differentiate what would stay because maybe I'll actually do or wear or try

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_01] or make this thing. These are the things I've come to call identity clutter. As I purged through my home, item by item, I came face-to-face with a lot of the ways I had mindlessly accumulated things. I had to sit with them and really start to find the separation of what this item was to me and who I was to me. I had to start to listen to that deep part of my heart that had been smothered with stuff. I had a cluttered heart, a cluttered mind, and a cluttered home.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_01] Decluttering my home left me in tears from time to time as I was unearthing this sleeping part of me that longed to be vibrant and creative and passionate and unburdened. The unearthing was physical and emotional. This is the power of minimalism, learning who you were before you accumulated the supplies for who you thought you should be. It is done by being face-to-face with the life you have accumulated around yourself and hearing the muffled cries of the person you are underneath all that,

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_01] listening close to those heart cries on what stays and letting yourself put the rest of the items in the box and waving goodbye to them from the driveway. If I could sum it all in one sentence, it'd be this. You have to simplify in order to learn who you truly are, and you have to learn who you are in order to truly simplify. This is what I've learned from decluttering my home. It sunk deep into me questioning who I am and what I was about.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_01] It helped me to put this lens onto the rest of my life too. It helped me to pursue life on purpose. How did I want to live in my space? How did I want to use my time? How did I want to show up for myself? When we commit to minimalism, when we simplify, we remove the distractions and the false identities and are left with ourselves. Minimalism is a tool to bring you even closer to uncovering the life you do want and making space to help you live it.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_01] You just listened to the post titled, How Simplifying Your Home Can Teach You Who You Are by Shauna Scaife of simpleonpurpose.ca. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Shauna. It's a great point that we're all starting from different places. That's no matter our ages. The youngest person listening to this podcast might have as many possessions as you or me. Who knows? And even if you've considered yourself a minimalist for years

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01] and you listen to this podcast every day for years, decluttering and making progress every day, you're still on a journey from somewhere and still learning. I know I am. It's nice to look back and reflect on both how far we've come in some ways, but maybe how we've stayed the same in others. And there's nothing wrong with that. But hopefully with that reflection, we can figure out where to prioritize our attention. I think that's where I am today.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_01] And this article was a good reminder of that. To revisit, look back, and then see where we'd like to have more improvement. Because there's always something to improve. A little off the topic of minimalism and this post in some way, but hopefully you'll take the time to reflect with me today. And with that, have a wonderful rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.