Defining A Mindset of Small Living
What does “small living” mean? Most have heard of the minimalism movement, “tidying up”, or the tiny house community. All these movements have a similar goal: redirecting our attention away from things and toward a thoughtful and more intentional way of living. Small living, similarly, is the mindset I personally use to best describe the path my little family is on. I don’t know who coined the phrase “small living”, but I like using it to describe where we are at and where we hope to go. I’m going to share a bit of our story — the experiences that led us to desire to adopt a simpler, more intentional lifestyle; how those practices have evolved over the last few years; and our hopes for how we’ll keep this mindset as our family grows.
I have lived in apartments my whole adult life, and most of it has been with my husband (other than college dorms and a brief period before we got married). We got married during college, lived off campus for one year, then moved into the on-campus married housing. Our apartment was a two bedroom with a basement storage area, and we filled it (seemingly unintentionally) with lots of stuff. We were in that apartment for about a year and a half and the accumulation of things was rather insidious.
In May of 2015 I graduated from nursing school and we moved to Miami, Florida. My husband was starting graduate school and we were starting over in a new state. By necessity, we packed everything we could fit into our 99’ Honda Accord and drove it to our new home. We sold most our furniture, but I remember looking at all the stuff we still had sitting our apartment after packing and starting to just throw things in the dumpster. It was an overwhelming, scary and freeing experience to be liberated from all the stuff I thought I needed, “just in case”. Looking back, I realize that the overpacking of that apartment came from a place of scarcity. We were broke, newlywed, college students. We kept everything we thought we might need to use because that’s what you do when you know you couldn’t afford to buy it again. That was my mindset at this time, but it would slowly evolve over the years following.
The first apartment we lived in after moving to Miami was a junior one bedroom we paid $1500/month for. It was a downsize from our two-bedroom, midwest college abode. We were gifted a mattress, bought a couch for $80 off craigslist, and a couple cheaper pieces of furniture to fill the space. Two years later we moved again, this time to a 400 sq. foot junior one bedroom on Miami Beach. It was tiny — but we could walk to the beach and paid only $900/month. I would say this was the first time I felt a huge shift in my mindset.
For the first time, I found myself less stressed about money and more fulfilled from my walks to the beach on my days off. After all, we had an extra $600/month in our pockets. I realized that for me, it wasn’t having a lot of stuff that made me happy. It was the day to day experiences I had living on the beach (most of which were free) that gave me greater fulfillment. Part way through the year I started travel nursing full-time and my husband started his clinical rotations for school. We ended up living out of our suitcases and our apartment sat empty for several months. When we came back after 8 months, the things behind had little meaning for us because we’d spent so much time living without them.
In May of 2018, my husband graduated. We decided to donate nearly everything we owned yet again and packed up our car for a second move across the country —this time, to San Francisco. We moved into a one bedroom apartment in a centrally located neighborhood. After a wild year of traveling we put down our roots and got full-time (staff) jobs. By this point in our life, a one bedroom apartment felt like a mansion! But looking back on our experiences of collecting and purging belongings, we decided we wanted to do things differently this time around.
If you visited our home at any point over the last 3 years, you would know that we have taken time and intention to fill it. Each piece of furniture, rug, decor item was thoughtfully agreed upon together before bringing into our home. Truthfully, our apartment was pretty bare to start out with, but it was necessary because it takes time to thoughtfully purchase. I wouldn’t have expected myself to live this way when I was younger. Like I said before, when you operate out of a mindset of scarcity, it is harder to let things go. But when you recognize that belongings do not define your happiness or success, it becomes easier to live with less. We learned that along the way from downsizing to just a suitcase, then slowly and thoughtfully rebuilding our life to reflect our beliefs we’ve built along the way.
Small living has benefitted us in more ways that just mental freedom from clutter. It has enabled us do things like pay off over $200,000 student loan debt in the last few years, save an emergency fund, and pay off our car. This summer we plan to finish paying off the last of our student loan debt and finally be debt free. We are reaching our goals by being intentional with paying off debt and prioritizing the things in life that are most important to us (like travel and experiences). This mindset of small living keeps us accountable and helps us fight the temptation to allow our standard of living to increase with our income. It is a challenge to live below our means sometimes, but as we practice doing so, we know we are working to secure our family's financial future and have more freedom to do the things we love to do!
Small living or minimalism can and should look different for everyone. It does’t mean that you need to move into a tiny home or a small apartment. After all, our situations are individual and unique. Someone living in a suburban area might operate differently than someone in an urban environment, or a single person to live the same lifestyle we do as a couple with one child. Only you can define what a simpler, more intentional lifestyle of consumption looks like for your own situation. Small living is so much more than just where you live. It is also important to realize the “why” for changing your lifestyle. Our goals have changed with each new seasons life, but generally our “why” has stayed the same.
We feel called to live “small” and below our means to:
secure our family’s financial future
practice sustainable and responsible consumption
prioritize experiences over things
Our story and small living practice is still evolving, especially as we have recently welcomed our first child into our lives and moved into a larger apartment. We’ll keep sharing what we are practicing and learning along the way. We know it will continue to change, but we hope to keep these core values as a guide moving forward.
What does small living mean to you?!