Went to an on campus event tonight and got free pizza!
Saving that money
Went to an on campus event tonight and got free pizza!
Saving that money
(Source: beanfield, via mini-mal-me)
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
– Leonardo Da Vinci - (via mini-mal-me)
The First Step
The first step into a more minimalist lifestyle happened by accident. I dropped my blackberry in the toilet on New Years and decided I would just use my old phone until my next upgrade in August. I’ll be saving around $30/month and I don’t have to worry about losing/breaking my phone in my last party filled semester of college.
My first project was to go through the small dresser. (Foreshadowing: I have a large dresser to get through fun!) So this small dresser has 3 medium sized drawers. The first is my pajama drawer. It turns out underneath a bunch of pj’s one of which being my AWESOME sushi pj’s, I had my old ipod, 2 pairs of headphones, some coins, buttons, a box of checks, a wallet and some random junk. I threw out some of the stuff and shoved the other stuff in my desk drawers so I can minimalize that stuff in a later post. All that I have left are my favorite pj’s!
The second drawer is not pictured, because it just has towels in it, which I have a pretty good rotation of so I don’t feel the need to get rid of any.
The third drawer is like my medicine junk cabinet. I have terrible allergies and tend to get the sniffles a lot. So this is where I keep all the goods. Turns out I have a TON of allergy medicine I didn’t even know about! And that’s expensive to keep buying! So I organized it all up, threw out stuff that was old or I didn’t use and organized it up. I also learned I have quite a collection of scented hand sanitizers & lotions. I get this stuff as presents a lot but I don’t use it because it bothers my allergies. So instead of wasting it I think I’ll package it up and send it to my sister who loves all that crap.
Organization makes me happy.
Scaling Down
Over the past year I’ve become somewhat of an organizing freak. I don’t really know how it started or why it stuck but suddenly everything needed to have a place, if it didn’t it usually ended up in one of my sister’s hands, a goodwill bag or the trash. More recently I’ve become obsessed with this minimalist idea.
But before I go there, here’s a little more about me: I’m 21 years old, a senior in college. I’m majoring in digital media & music business. My passions are music, running, hanging out with my friends/family & boyfriend. I’m not really into the idea of journal-blogging or whatever. But some of these topics may surface on my little minimalizing journey.
I started doing some researching on minimalism after I saw a guy on the news who was trying to eat free for a year and was fascinated by the idea of it. In a world where everyone has access to pretty much everything, people are scaling down to what they really need. Some go to extremes like only owning 15 items or living off $40 a month. The more research I did the more I wanted to give this a try. I also noticed most blogs or interviews were of dudes. There was no guide to “minimizing for girls” which I think is entirely different then for guys. I think stereotypically, girls have a lot of clothes, shoes, make up, etc…well I’m one of those girls. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it. I just want to scale down so I save money and put good use to the things I have.
Each week, I will go through some of my stuff, organize & get rid of it. Some side projects that I’ll focus on will be living on a budget and couponing.
And that’s really the great thing about all of this. It’s not about how many things you own. Nobody cares how many things you have; I couldn’t care less whether you own 50 things or 5,000 things. It’s all about YOU and how it makes YOU feel. If you just can’t bring yourself to get rid of your books or your beer stein collection or your grandfather’s World War II uniform, you don’t need to. Nobody’s making you. But start getting rid of the stuff you CAN part with, and you’ll be amazed at where that takes you.
http://thebacklight.com/how-to-become-a-minimalist/
So this is going to be a work in progress. I was going to create a site for a project for my senior seminar, but I think that for now it will be easier to compile all my little projects on this tumblr.
Happy Simplifying!
