Several years ago I came across a blog about minimalism (the minimalist mom). At the time, it was an emerging fad and I was intrigued. The more I read, the closer my face got to my computer screen — I could.not.get.enough.

The idea and theory behind minimalism is this: owning less “stuff,” in order to free up more time and money to focus on what you really have passion for. This idea had me reeling – it made so much sense. Owning less and having more time to LIVE. My husband and I devoured blog posts and articles about minimalism and were pretty excited about it for a while. But we were students living a transient life and weren’t even living with all of our possessions at the time — they were in storage!

I knew that we had too much excess lying around. I create an emotional attachment to “things.” As a girl I kept random mementos of vacations, movie stubs, concert programs, you name it. I had souvenirs displayed all over my cluttered room. I thought it was awesome! Looking back, I can’t believe I lived in that clutter — and that my mom didn’t take a match to it! I bought a huge lollipop in Disneyland when I was 7, which then graced my bookshelf for an entire decade! So while the idea of minimalism was exciting to me, in the back of my mind I wondered if I could truly do it.

Could I get rid of most of my possessions and scale back to the necessary items? Could I remove those emotional attachments and rid my life of the clutter? I wasn’t sure.

Early last spring after seeing hundreds of posts on instagram about Marie Kondo’s best-selling book, the minimalist mom