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Episode 2: Millennials on Minimalism
92 Plays2 years ago
Join Sarah and Jaimie as they dive into the new hit trend sweeping millennials by storm; Minimalism. The answer to our consumerism prayers? Or the latest fad that will have you crying at the cash register while you repurchase everything you purged?
Listen in and see where this journey is headed.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Rule Followers Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, friends. Welcome to the Rule Followers podcast. My name is Sarah. I'm Jamie. This is a podcast where we examine commonly held beliefs, life rules, self-imposed and society imposed and deconstruct them, re-examine them and hopefully live a little bit more in the gray.
Exploring Minimalism with Millennials
00:00:20
Speaker
Today's episode is going to be about minimalism.
00:00:23
Speaker
And dare I say, millennials and minimalism. Are you stoked? I'm stoked. Basically, to our rule followers and rule breakers out there, we're actually re-recording this episode because we realized we didn't even talk enough about it.
Origins and Popularity of Minimalism
00:00:42
Speaker
And so we wanted to dive in a little bit deeper. So I'm really excited because
00:00:45
Speaker
In the last month where we, everyone has experienced the holidays, we're all slammed with stuff. Jamie and I have come back together to discuss this and I have so much more to say. So let's dive in with a little bit of a history and then some crazy ass statistics. And then I really want to hear about your experience, Jamie, because I know that you discovered this long before I did. And so I think that's going to be really fascinating to do.
00:01:11
Speaker
It was kind of hard to actually find where minimalism as a lifestyle movement started, but I would say that in the
00:01:20
Speaker
pop culture zeitgeist. We really started hearing about it in 2015 when the documentary came out on Netflix called Minimalism and it was with Justin Malek and Ryan Nicodemus and these two guys have gone on to make several
Minimalism vs Consumerism
00:01:34
Speaker
more documentaries. They have books out, they have a podcast and it's all about this minimalist lifestyle and kind of how they got to that point. I would say that Minimalism as a movement in lifestyle also was really popularized by the Marie Kondo
00:01:50
Speaker
documentaries that came out on Netflix three years later and I remember everyone and their mother was watching it and it got to the point where if you tried to go do donations in our local area Goodwill could not accept anymore because everyone had watched this movie everyone was getting rid of all their shit and the Goodwill and Valley Village or whatever like thrift store center you have near you is just like absolutely not
00:02:12
Speaker
We cannot handle anyone's work. Anyone's like crap. And I feel like there was also a point during the pandemic where we were all locked in our homes where people were like,
00:02:22
Speaker
I'm surrounded by shit that I can't get rid of or like that I can't escape. Like you weren't going to work or you weren't going to the gym, you weren't able to leave your house. So I think we've seen this kind of like pick up more and more over the last few years and with the introduction of lots of algorithms in our social media and kind of creating these fishbowl echo
Jamie's Minimalism Journey
00:02:42
Speaker
chambers. If you start down the path of minimalism, there is so much content out there for you to digest.
00:02:49
Speaker
and just go fully hardcore into it. So I found some really interesting statistics that really blew my mind. And every time I go to clean, I think about these. So the average American home has 300,000 items in it. Holy shit. 300,000 items in your home. Not in my home, but
00:03:14
Speaker
True, true. But like the average American home and then only 17% of Americans would describe themselves as minimalists. So that's I was kind of shocked out felt a little bit higher than what I expected. I would agree with Yeah, that seems high. Yeah, it does seem a little high.
00:03:31
Speaker
So what's interesting is that the average size of the American home has nearly tripled like square footage in the last 50 years. One out of 10 people rent an offsite storage unit and then 25% of people with a two car garage cannot park their cars in their own garage.
Emotional Challenges of Letting Go
00:03:49
Speaker
because of how much stuff they have. So 3.1% of the world's children live in America, and yet we own 40% of all toys consumed globally. Nearly half of Americans don't save any money, and then our homes have more televisions than there are people. That checks out.
00:04:09
Speaker
Isn't that wild? It just blew my mind and like this level of consumerism that it's gotten out of control, minimalism kind of being the antidote to that consumerism that's happening.
00:04:21
Speaker
Now that we've set the stage for how crazy our consumerism is in America, Jamie, I wanna hear how did you find minimalism? What was your experience with it? I think similarly to you and to a lot of people really only discovered minimalism when I saw the documentary from the guys on Netflix and we were living in a tiny studio at that point. I think that studio was probably 435 square feet.
00:04:51
Speaker
And one wall of it was completely taken up by this giant ass cement fireplace. Like, why would you design a studio like that? I don't know. But it was kind of out of necessity a little bit. Yeah, we got into it. We started reading more on it, started watching basically anything we could consume about it. And it's just a type of lifestyle that really appealed to me and Brandon, my husband.
00:05:19
Speaker
So we began by getting rid of books. My husband and I met at a bookstore. He had worked there for probably close to 10 years at that point. Yeah, we started there. We got rid of hundreds of books.
00:05:35
Speaker
Oh, my heart. I know. My heart hurts also thinking about that. Occasionally we will still, this is probably like seven or eight years later, we'll still go looking for things that we let go of. So that's sad. I know. Got rid of clothes, got rid of our TV. That was a big one. So then you had no TVs? No TVs. We had our computers, but no TVs.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, I went down the Marie Kondo stuff, read all about the Swedish... Death cleaning? Death cleaning, yep. As you know, like some of it was really good and freeing and there was more of it that was quite sad in the long run, so it's sort of this like double-edged sword, I guess. Well, what do you feel like, so obviously,
00:06:28
Speaker
both being book nerds. We can mourn and be sad in like the tragedy of getting rid of like these incredible collections.
Techniques for Minimalist Living
00:06:36
Speaker
But outside of that, what do you feel like really changed your perspective on like what you got rid of? Because just for the listeners to know, I am in my own era of purging the shit out of my life.
00:06:49
Speaker
So I'm curious, since you have like this forward experience, like you're much further along the road than me and like hearing, I want to hear how you reflect on it and what you wish you would have done different almost as like a warning for me. So I'm not just like throwing my entire life out into the goodwill.
00:07:05
Speaker
Sure, Marie Kondo talks about this, where you pick up an object and does it bring you joy? Does it have a purpose? That sort of thing. I think that's a good starting point, especially when you kind of start on the minimalism train and maybe just how you and I are both as people, like those sort of, okay, I have this new project, I have this new idea, like I'm just gonna go 100% in.
00:07:26
Speaker
I'm going to get rid of everything I can. Minimalism can be a process. You can take it slowly, which is maybe like my biggest recommendation. If you get rid of it today, get rid of it tomorrow, what is the big difference really? So I don't think minimalism has to be like, okay, today I've decided and tomorrow it's all gone. So I think there's like a method where it's like the time will tell box is what they call it. So it's like, you can put these things in there and you set it aside and time will tell. Like, did you want it? Did you miss it? Did you come back for it?
00:07:56
Speaker
And I've I did that with quite a few things in the last couple months But I would say for the most part as soon as I've put things like in a box I like to do an entire room But what I do is like the subtraction method where I just pull out everything that I don't want things that I know I do not want in the space and I just put them in a box and I'm like, okay I will do the nitty-gritty
00:08:16
Speaker
going through each object later and so like i will have like these staging areas in our house that shit will sit there for a few weeks because sometimes life just gets ahead of you especially with the holidays we just had and i never look for stuff
00:08:29
Speaker
our house was clearly in desperate need of doing this process. And we're still doing it. We have one very, very awful closet to still do. And it has most of Heath and I's memorable objects. So sentimental items. Because I think sentimental is probably going to be the hardest category for me. I don't have any problem with sentimentality, really.
00:08:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah. In case anyone wanted to know, Jamie doesn't have a heart, apparently, and like no objects mean anything to her. So don't send her presents. So when my mom was moving out of the house that they had been in for 40 plus years, all three of us kids had been, you know, pretty much raised in that house. And she was going through my stuff and she's like, don't you want this memory? Don't you want this? Don't you want this? And I'm like,
00:09:21
Speaker
throw it all away. You're like, sorry, mom doesn't mean anything to me. And she's like, what you want to look at this drawing that you did from second grade? Or what about your future children? And I'm like,
Sentimental Items and Minimalism
00:09:36
Speaker
literally, maybe they would want to look at it one time to glance at it and be like, oh, look, my mom drew a penguin or whatever.
00:09:45
Speaker
And then it would be back in the box. And that's just not interesting to me. A million percent. OK, so this was funny. So while I was cleaning out the garage, I have had this bag of dance team t-shirts and sweatshirts from like four or six years. I think it was from like my middle school to high school.
00:10:07
Speaker
And it's like all the t-shirts you get at competitions, at state, at like junior clinics, like all these things. And I kept them because my mom keeps everything. So when I moved out, I had pulled all those out of my wardrobe and put them in this bag. And I was like, OK, one day I am going to make one of those really cool quilts that has all of these t-shirts. And that's going to be like my memory blanket. And first of all, I am 32 years old. I graduated high school 14 years ago.
00:10:36
Speaker
I have not done it. So then when I was cleaning out the garage, I'm like, okay, okay, for reals though, let's pick 12. Let's pick 12. Cause we can do like a four by three pattern. It'll be small and I can do it. And then I was talking about it on my Instagram and several other people who danced with me. They're like, Oh yeah, I meant to do that too. I still have all the t-shirts. And then I was like,
00:10:59
Speaker
you know what's going to happen is I'm going to take the time to finally make this blanket and you know where it's going to go in a fucking closet where I'm never going to look at it because it doesn't match the aesthetic of my home. I'm never going to be like, Oh, Joey, look at this blanket. Like I'm never going to do that.
Influence of Depression-Era Mindset
00:11:18
Speaker
So what's crazy is I just got rid of all of them. I was like, wow, it took me 14 years to be like, we don't need the shit. Congratulations though.
00:11:27
Speaker
Thank you. That's a good thing to let go of. I have so many beautiful memories and having the t-shirts does not change any of that. I will say though, I did keep my Letterman's jacket because that A was expensive as fuck and I think that that's like a really cool sentimental item to keep.
00:11:44
Speaker
Both of us mentioned our parents, right? So I think our parents were obviously the children of most people who had gone through the depression. So this idea of saving and hoarding and what if, and maybe I'll need, I don't know about you, but that has probably been one of the hardest mindsets to get rid of through this process. Sounds like it was pretty easy for you, but I still feel like this little creep at the back of my head being like, but what if you need this one day? Does that still happen for you?
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think that voice does happen. I'm just pretty good at maybe ignoring it. I think I'm pretty good at just being like, well, I can always get another one. Think of my, I mean, my whole mom's side of the family is very much what you're talking about. She's an older mom, so she was born in the 40s. And so, of course, her parents were deep in that.
00:12:38
Speaker
In the Depression, for sure. In the Depression, my mom's whole side of the family will keep clothes until they're threadbare. They'll keep all plastic containers that I could possibly hold anything. They'll, I mean, they keep everything. My aunt and she passed away. They went through her house. She had this giant house in Illinois. They found four closets in her house full of her clothes. Clothes, like some of them with tags on them.
00:13:07
Speaker
But it's just interesting that the mindset is so fear-driven when it comes to maximalist lifestyles. Minimalism is even more so a mindset than it is a lifestyle or an aesthetic.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's more about being minimal about your amount of consumerism and what you're bringing into your space because I think something that really helped me, I was watching a bunch of YouTubes and there's like a ton of people out there who talk about it. And one of the questions that I ask myself every time I'm going through objects is like, do I want to care for this item anymore? Do I want to have to store it, house it, move it, organize it? And a lot of the time, obviously the answer has been
Evaluating Possessions' Value
00:13:47
Speaker
no. And I think that,
00:13:49
Speaker
There's a book that I was going to mention at the end of this episode called building a non-anxious life. And I feel like minimalism ties directly into that because we surround ourselves with so many objects because we're filling a void of anxiety or loneliness. And then we are consumed with all of this stuff. And then obviously consumerism itself is telling us to buy more, better, faster now, because this is what's going to make you happy. Like this hair product, this new TV, this new device, these Oculus glasses,
00:14:16
Speaker
But truly, they're just trying to add to their bottom line, but they're feeding off of this insecurity we have that nothing is ever enough. And I think that minimalism has really made me look at the things in my home and in my life and just ask, is this truly adding value? I think it's all about the value system. What do you place value upon?
00:14:36
Speaker
Tying it to Marie Kondo when she asks you, does this spark joy? So being a book lover, you might have a huge collection that someone might go in and want to get rid of because it's technically objects. But if it's something that brings you joy and your value is there, in the eyes of minimalism, you can be a maximalist book collector because those are the things that bring you joy and that's adding value to your life. But maybe you don't need to have four blenders.
00:15:05
Speaker
in your kitchen. It's that separation and I feel like that does get lost in translation.
Time-Saving Benefits of Minimalism
00:15:12
Speaker
People think you're going to live in a museum if you're a minimalist. Right. I think one of the most valuable things that comes out of minimalism is time, where I was just thinking about if you can get to a point where you're curating your wardrobe,
00:15:27
Speaker
With less clothes, you get less laundry, less organizing, and then also just like less decision making. And all of those things seem like so small in the amount of time they'll save you. Not just with clothes, but with everything. Like that time adds up. Oh, a million percent. And there's there because we're just so inundated with choice.
00:15:50
Speaker
I think that that's exactly what becomes paralyzing because how many times do you walk in your closet and you're like, I have all these clothes and nothing to wear. One really cool tip that I saw, but to think of yourself almost as having like a uniform because like if you ever went to private school or if you had a job that had a uniform, there was no decision making and like that takes one thing off your plate kind of like what Steve Jobs would do is like he had the whole turtleneck vibe.
00:16:14
Speaker
But it was because he was making so many other important choices that this was something he could not be bothered to deal with. And he's like, I just want this to be done every day. I just want it. I don't want to have to think about it. Um, I know that I've been experimenting with like freezer meals for my family and using
00:16:32
Speaker
the method where you basically make an entire month's worth of meals in a single day and it's not like where you cook them and then freeze them because that can like lead to a lot of disgusting mushiness and also a lot of time. But this is like where you cut up all the raw ingredients, you put them in a bag, you freeze them, label them, and then like each day you can do like there's ones you can do for the oven, air fryer, instapot, crock pot.
00:16:56
Speaker
and then it's like dinner's already done like that it's like you can have a running list of what you have in the freezer and then people can just pick what they want and let me tell you that i've been doing it for three months now it is life changing not only in our bills but also in like the amount of time i don't have to spend in the kitchen when
00:17:14
Speaker
I have limited childcare and a lot of work to get done. Oh my god, I'm about to buy those cups. Those exact cups. The cup you were drinking. Yeah.
Spending Wisely vs Frivolously
00:17:25
Speaker
From where? Yeah. Do you love them? I love them. We're literally gonna buy them. Speaking of minimalism.
00:17:35
Speaker
I love your cups and I'm buying them because I hate our current cups because they can like roll over. Like they have this like curved edge on the bottom and with Jojo she just like taps it and it's like done. I digress. Thank you so much. I love them. They're heavy duty and beautiful.
00:17:54
Speaker
Okay. Good, good, good. All right. So interesting thing just happened. So in terms of minimalism and this consumerism that just like lives rent free in our mind. So because of some jobs that opened up for me this quarter, usually January through March is a pretty dead time for wedding photographers. Obviously Jamie knows this because we are both in the wedding industry.
00:18:18
Speaker
So I have my paychecks saved up from like the influx of cash that comes in in the summer. So I have paychecks throughout the year.
00:18:26
Speaker
However, this quarter I was able to work an extra quarter at the college, and then I am doing my paid maternity leave as like the child bonding portion, because I didn't take it right when I actually had JoJo. So in total, this is bringing in somewhere between $17,000 and $20,000 extra this quarter, which is incredible, and it was money we were not accounting for.
00:18:52
Speaker
So knowing that all of our expenses are paid because I've already saved the money for this time, the instant I did the math and realized how much money was coming in, my little brain was like, oh, I could get this. I could get that.
00:19:07
Speaker
I could go do this thing. I could spend it on this. I could buy this thing that I've been wanting. I could get a new laptop. I could get the Contax G2. I could go shopping for myself. I could buy this for Joey. I could start this new house project.
00:19:24
Speaker
It was insane how quickly my brain started racking up all the shit I could just go buy. And I immediately was having this panic attack cause I was like, oh my gosh. Like, cause it's almost like you trick your brain into thinking then you've already spent the money and then you're like, oh my God, where did all this money go? And it just like blew my mind how easy it is to just fall back into that, that mindset of like more better, faster now.
Consumerism and Targeted Marketing
00:19:49
Speaker
Like these are the things that will truly make me happy.
00:19:51
Speaker
When I am happy, like the only things I truly needed was like a new pair of sneakers and then I bought a can of paints. I'm going to paint my office. I think the only other thing I bought was like one thing for Jojo. So it's just like,
00:20:06
Speaker
It just blew my mind. And for those of you out there, like what we decided to end up doing with the money is we are going to pay off a couple of hospital bills and then we're going to take the rest of it and we're going to put it in JoJo's college fund. And then a couple thousand of that will also go into other investments. So ultimately saving the money, which is the responsible thing to do. And like maybe having like one nice date night, but dude, I just could not believe how fast it would be or how easy it would be to burn 20 grand.
00:20:35
Speaker
probably all over the world, but especially in America, we're just constantly bombarded with so much consumerist stuff and on social media now with influencers. I always think of, um, have you seen New Girl? Oh yeah. Have you guys finished it? Yeah. Okay. The episode where Schmidt is, uh, showing the like older gentleman around his office and stuff.
00:21:00
Speaker
And Schmidt has the idea, he's like, micro marketing, we're gonna market to the specific consumer. And whenever that scene happens, I'm like, how old is this? This shit is happening all the time with our algorithms. On all of our social media accounts, every three swipes on TikTok is a sponsored post nowadays. Or eligible for commission, which is basically another version of an ad.
00:21:27
Speaker
And we have a user generated content. So it looks like a regular post, but it is an ad. Right. Because it's, it's, this is like, I don't know how else to say it. It's like normal people, right? It's just like, Oh, my next door neighbor is now selling.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, there's a girl in our photo industry, like locally, who she is, I see her on the ads for use motion app, which is like an AI system to build out your calendar. I see hers on that all the time. And I'm just like, it would trick me to being like, oh, she's using it. And like, I know her cause I follow her and like, I like enjoy her work and her content. Like maybe I should try that, which by the way, it's, uh, I really
00:22:13
Speaker
my calendar is a whole other thing that needs a little bit of a minimalist treatment. But like, I don't understand how with childcare that people can just like make their calendars that minute, like, like the small minutiae gets scheduled. And I'm just like, I
Digital Minimalism: Transition to Kindle
00:22:28
Speaker
can't do that. Like I need just blocks, like block time. What's your story? Oh, well, so you know, I got a Kindle finally.
00:22:36
Speaker
which I've been putting off forever, partly because I hate Amazon. Sorry. And also, there is no judgment here. It is the evil of our time that must be used. And also just because I was always one of those pretentious people that was like, I only read real books.
00:22:57
Speaker
I think what finally did it actually is the last time we recorded this episode, we were talking about minimizing our homes and like getting rid of a certain amount of stuff per day. And so I went back to my books and I took a bunch of, I made probably two grocery bags worth of books that I had bought, mostly on whims, walking the bookstores and never read, never really had the intention of reading to this day.
00:23:24
Speaker
Maybe in the moment, I thought, oh, this will be fun to read. But then just like years have passed. And I'm one of those people that's like, if I don't read something immediately, like it's probably not going to happen. So in thinking that I was like, this is such a waste, a waste, a waste of my money. So that kind of finally triggered me to get a Kindle. And I have completed reading eight books this month.
00:23:51
Speaker
I'm sorry, what? I thought I was cool because I've done like three. Bro, I don't think, I mean, even in my heyday when I was reading like obsessively in high school, I don't think I've ever read eight books in a month. Dude, the Kindle though, does make your fucking reading faster, like so much faster. Yeah, because it makes you competitive. Well, because it's like the percentage. And then it tells you how many minutes you have left in the chapter. Yeah, one mind tells me how many hours I have left in the whole book.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah. You can like, if you click on the corner, it'll change it. So you could see, yeah. So you can see all the different stats. And I just recently bought the ACOTAR series as a set of five. So it tells me how long it's going to take me to read all five books. Oh, damn. And I think I still have like 60 hours left.
00:24:35
Speaker
amazing though but it's incredible right like i swear by that little thing now and i used to be the same way i was like no no no hard copy only yeah but it's so nice because these are books that i probably i wouldn't have bought in paperback or hardback or any like physical copy if i did it would have been a shit ton more money
00:24:59
Speaker
Cause a lot, I think probably at least half of them I've gone through Kindle unlimited, which for your first three months is
Amazon's Book Pricing Strategy
00:25:05
Speaker
free. And then after that is like $12 a month. Yeah. So if you're reading like eight books a month, I mean, yeah, but if you're reading even five or four under Kindle limited, you're still saving money. Oh, so much money. Like I know that Amazon, when you buy books on Amazon, they're already cheaper than like what the publisher puts on the, on the jacket. But do you know why?
00:25:27
Speaker
No, tell me. Book educate me. So what is fascinating about Amazon is that it started in books, selling books online. And the reason it did that and also has kept up this long and has kept books so incredibly cheap is because they know people come to them for books or at least at one point people would come to them for books, but they would leave with a bunch of other stuff in their cart. So it was kind of a target situation.
00:25:56
Speaker
Where you go to Target and you're like, I just need paper towels. But then you have to walk through all the home goods, obviously. The clothing. Be a consumer. Oh, yeah. You don't tell Target what you need. Target tells you. I'm so glad we're minimalist now. We're maximalists in recovery.
Privilege in Minimalism
00:26:20
Speaker
That's probably the truth. Oh, okay. So one thing I did want to talk about before we- Well, you didn't know, you didn't finish it. So like, how are they actually getting the cheap prices on it though? Like how like- The reason they can sell them at the price that they are is because they're buying them at such a quantity higher than any other bookstore can.
00:26:38
Speaker
because they know their marketplace is bigger. So that's the biggest thing. The other thing is they probably aren't as concerned with making a huge margin per book because they know people are going to be buying other things from them when they come to buy that book.
00:26:52
Speaker
They're also taking a huge percentage from people who host their stores on Amazon. That makes a ton of sense. I will say that if I'm ever at a local bookshop, I very much enjoy spending the full amount of money knowing I'm supporting a small bookstore, even if it hurts.
00:27:13
Speaker
You'll notice that a new release will be at 20% off, like Sarah J. Mass's new book is gonna be 20% off at grocery stores, Target, Walmart, like all the places that'll go out. The reason they're doing that is not because they have this like luxury of making, basically when they put 20% off on a book, their margin is maybe a couple of bucks per book, like honestly. But they know, just like Amazon,
00:27:39
Speaker
people are coming into their store to get this new release and the likelihood that they're gonna walk out with other shit is really high. That's why it is important to buy from indie bookstores and small businesses because even though the price, they're not gonna be able to offer you 20% off because
00:27:56
Speaker
They do not have the luxury of only making $2 on a book. You're supporting local people. So one thing we did want to add to the end of this episode is just talking about privilege and minimalism. It's an importance in acknowledging that there is a privilege in being able to say, I can get rid of everything with the idea that I could possibly buy it back if I needed it.
00:28:20
Speaker
or there's privilege in saying, I can get rid of all these clothes because I'm not worried about wearing out something because I can just go buy something else. There's privilege in that.
Practical Tips for Starting Minimalism
00:28:34
Speaker
Minimalism can be more than getting rid of objects like we've talked about. It can be just about clearing a mindset, finding the things in your life that you can.
00:28:44
Speaker
part with and that aren't going to be a bigger stressor on your life. For me it's almost like you kind of like stick your head in this fishbowl and you get really obsessed with this level of thinking and like of course this is the thing that's going to make everyone happy and why doesn't everyone do this and then you take your eyes out of that for like two seconds and look around you and you're like oh because there are people literally running for their lives right now they need to have whatever they can get their hands on.
00:29:08
Speaker
minimalism is nowhere near or should be anywhere near that conversation. And in that privilege, I think it's really important to also think about how can I help someone else? So for me with doing all this purging, it's like specifically baby items. I am trying to find other mamas who need those items. So it's not going to Goodwill. It's not going to be resold for a profit. It's literally just going to go into the hands of a friend and they don't have to pay me. How can you use what is going on in your,
00:29:36
Speaker
mindset to also help someone else. I think that that recognizing that privilege and trying to do something with it I think is the ultimate should be an underlying theme in everything we do in life. Okay, so what is your number one tip for people on how to start on their minimalist journey?
00:29:55
Speaker
I think one easy thing is to just start small, go slow and know that, you know, slow and steady still wins the race. I think that again, there are personality types like ours, where it's just like you get obsessive and like it has to be done now. And that can actually bring you more strife than reward.
00:30:14
Speaker
Do one drawer, do one room, something small, and just see how you feel. Just see how you feel. I feel like that is probably the advice that most minimalists start with. And if you need to start by asking questions, be like, does it spark me joy? Or do I want to keep taking care of it? If it's a no to both those questions, then that's an easy donate right there.
00:30:35
Speaker
Honestly, I feel like you sum that up really well. So the only piece of dice I would have is maybe on the consumer side. And that is just as you're getting rid of stuff, if you're led to buy something, maybe take a beat. Ask yourself, do I really need this? Do I really want this? Is this something that I want to be taken care of? Do I want to clean it up? Do I want to find a place for it in my home? I would start with it right there and change ourselves on the front side as consumers.
00:31:05
Speaker
Amen.
Episode Conclusion
00:31:06
Speaker
All right, guys. Well, that does it for another episode of the Rule Followers podcast. We'd love to hear what you think. So feel free to find us on Instagram at rule.follower. And we'll chat with you over there. We have linked some really good resources for you in the show notes. So do check that out. Make sure you hit follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and we will see you next time.