If you feel overwhelmed by clutter, maybe you're over committed
and maybe it's hard to clean things. Maybe you're even spending too much money. Then
I think this video is for you. It's all about why minimalism might be a good choice for you.
Hello and welcome back. On this channel I like to make videos that will save you either time, money,
or energy. And if you start to move towards simplifying your life, then you will actually save
all three. Now I make videos for overwhelmed women who are trying to declutter all of the access in
their lives so that they can start living them. Now, I was inspired to make this video after
reading this comment by Margaret. She reinforced one of the comments that I made in my minimalist
secret video about why clutter is so bad for women. Now, if you leave a comment, you will help
feed the YouTube monster algorithm, which helps me continue to make videos for you on this channel.
So I'm going to get into why minimalism might be good for you, what some of the benefits are and
how you can do it. So what is minimalism? Minimalism is about less being more. Now,
normally more is more and less is less, but in the case of minimalism, less is definitely more. It's
about avoiding unnecessary clutter, unnecessary commitments in all areas of your life. It's not
about sacrificing, but it's actually about joy through removing things that are distracting you
and basically harming you. There is a huge continuum of people when it comes to minimalism.
There are people who live with nothing. They have no furniture, they have one bowl,
they have one shirt and those people who have that and are very happy, I think that is wonderful. I,
on the other hand, like to live with less, but I still do want a few creature comforts. I still
want my favorite paintings, et cetera. Now, I have three boys, ages, 11, 13,
and 15. I have a first responder husband and I myself am a nurse. So our life can be pretty busy.
Now I started noticing there was a problem around 2010 when I decided to go to nursing school when
my youngest was one year old and our life was kind of crazy as it was, we were surrounded by clutter
and school was definitely a challenge with little kids. So I thought, Hey,
you know what? I'm going to declutter some toys. De-cluttering the toys, that's the answer. I mean,
we couldn't get to our one son's bedroom without potentially risking our lives stepping on Lego.
So I decluttered a bunch of toys, and it didn't even fix the problem. By the way,
I do not recommend starting with your kid's stuff. So fast forward seven years, I was working as a
nurse in the emergency department and dealing with people who were dying,
people with serious illnesses, bad things happening to people. And I would come home at the
end of the day. I would just want to kick off my shoes, watch some Sense And Sensibility with some
tea. And really what I did come home to was just a stressful environment. There was clutter, there
was mess. It was hard to clean. It just was not working for us. And we didn't even really realize
it. And the thing is, happiness is a choice. There are things you can control in your life
and things that you can't and your environment generally is something you can control. Especially
if you have a lot of clutter. And I'm going to say this time and time again, don't be rigid,
be flexible. Don't be hard on yourself. So some people, they have very, very stark
empty minimalist homes, that does not have to be you. Do not be stressed by that. It really is just
an idea about not keeping things that aren't serving you. So what are some of the benefits?
Number one, let's start with the kids. Now, kids can really be affected by clutter and they might
not even realize it. It can affect their mood because a mom of teenagers, we certainly don't
need any more bad moods. It can affect their creativity and it can affect their focus.
So once you start minimizing your household, you will see an improvement in all of those things.
Now, I'm not saying that you need to get your kids to completely minimize their room. I don't
think that that necessarily works because often kids like to do the opposite of what you say.
Oh yes. Oh yes. I am encouraging you to pierce your nose, your eyebrows
and your lip. Yeah in one day. I think you should. You know what? Maybe I'll do it too.
Let's do that. If the environment is clean, they still will benefit from being in that environment.
And hopefully they will adopt some of those habits as they get older. And now, speaking of stress,
as I mentioned before, clutter is bad for women. Why is clutter bad for women? I think it's because
at the end of the day, if there's still a bunch of clutter around,
I honestly feel stressed just thinking about it. At the end of the day, if there's clutter around,
we just cannot relax. We just feel like there's still stuff to be done. And we really cannot get
a moment of peace. And that is exactly what we need in our home, is for it to be our sanctuary.
Since we've decluttered and simplified our homes, we have way more time. I can go out
in my garden, come inside and not feel like there's a mountain of things to do.
Not a ton of cleaning. We have less to pick up. There's just less cleaning to do. And it
is easier to clean overall. So I have way more time to have more tea watching Harry Potter with
my kids or Hot Fuzz with my husband. But sometimes I just watch a lot of YouTube like Dancing Bacons.
And overall your house will be happier. Now, how do you declutter? Number one,
start small. Do not start with the hardest rooms. Unless you feel very led to start with your
kitchen, don't start with your kitchen. The other thing don't pull everything out. Just go item by
item. Start with the easy rooms though. I would suggest going with bathrooms, your living room,
maybe your bedroom. And what items do you keep when you are decluttering? Make sure that the
items that you are keeping are serving you, that you use them, that you like them, that
they add value to your life. Like this painting behind me. I love it. I'm going to keep it.
And another thing you can do is keep watching these videos because I have a lot of decluttering
videos coming up and I've made a lot in the past. So make sure you hit subscribe. This playlist here
is my minimalist playlist and I even have one on de-cluttering Lego which I think that you will
like. And this video YouTube thinks you will like. All right, thanks for watching beauties. Bye.