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What’s Minimalism and Why I’m Turning Into One

Minimalism | Eat Yourself Green

As we packed the last few things we had in our now, empty townhouse. The sense of all we had hold familiar slowly started vanishing. I’ve felt this before, I have moved more then a dozen times since I came to Australia. Plus, when I left Brazil 6 years ago, I left behind all the possible familiarity I have ever known to dive into the unknown and today, home has a different meaning to me.

Maybe I’m getting old, and with age, comes the reality that everything changes and nothing is ever going to be the same. And that, not necessarily is a bad thing.

It may be more difficult to accept the change, to drop everything and go after you get comfortable. I am not on my early 20’s anymore, leaving my family to travel for 6 months and go back. I have now, successfully moved to a new country, with a new language, new culture, new life and now I am wondering why am I leaving all the comfort of a nice house, spacious rooms and all the stuff that I’ve gathered for long 6 years…

Comfort Zone

So after packing, storing, selling and moving all our stuff, I figured I had to get rid of all that was holding me back. And I mean the 6 boxes, 15 bags and some other loose items that we had to carry to our new bedroom (yes, just one bedroom) in way too many car trips.
Why do we keep all of this? How many times have I used that? When are we gonna get all this sorted? I probably had as many questions as item in my boxes. That’s when the idea of becoming minimalist hit me strong and hard. I needed to shift the focus. To change the meaning of worth. To be rather than have.

What’s Minimalism and Why I’m Turning Into One

I started a little research on minimalism and I found a good definition in the blog The Minimalists and they define it like that:

Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around.

So, what does minimalism has to do with health and my blog in general? Well, if you connect the dots, you can see that living a healthy and more sustainable life, has everything to do with minimalism. Like my recipes, I like to keep everything simple, but our society is not exactly that simplistic. When you understand that corporations and governments work around having and selling things, monetising everything, then you realise how unhealthy this cycle can be to ourselves and to our environment. Think about it:

We work, get some money and then we spend on stuff that we actually don’t use for anything or  just use a few times and then we chuck it somewhere that we’ll never find or use again. This works wonders for our capitalist society, we keep the economy going and we end up with that sense that we own a lot (even though you don’t use/need for anything). What is failed in this system though is that we just accumulate things that deep down we don’t need, trying to fill out the blanks we have inside by purchasing more and more. Consumerism has made us shift the focus on what really matters, helping us ‘achieve’ something that will make us feel a little more valued and worthy to society. It’s like that famous quote from Fight Club:

“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”

In all this process of moving houses and now, travelling and selling all we own, I’ve come to realise we don’t need more things. We need better but few things. Things that will last longer and that really matter to me. I could keep going deeper and deeper on what we can learn from letting go of things, so if you want to go understand more about why our society keep pushing it to us, I highly recommend you to watch this:

If you never heard/seen this story before, I recommend you go to her website and have a look at all the amazing information she offers there. It’s eye-opening information free for you to watch and also, take action.

So, with all these changes happening in our lives, I decided to enjoy the momentum and join the movement. I’m making a pledge to myself to be more conscious of my purchases and my impact in the environment and in other people’s lives.  I’m pledging to be more mindful and careful with myself and the things that I own, not splurging on unnecessary things and to reduce my waste and money.

This is something I’m doing for myself and I’ll be working really hard to achieve and maintain. But I think it’s something worth working for. Specially if you are travelling and only have a 50l backpack. But that’s a whole new story…for a whole new post.

I’m happy with this change and excited at what is coming next. I’m and glad to be sharing this all with you. I hope you enjoy the journey.

Becoming Minimalist

Peace and love,

Larissa x

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