An Overview of My Main Goals for a Simple Life

I have been eyeing off the minimalist lifestyle for quite some time now. It has always been a "yeah, right!" sort of idea that I never thought would be achievable. Don't get me wrong, we aren't a family of hoarders or anything. We keep a reasonably tidy house. We (try to) limit the amount of toys come into our house. We don't keep mountains of rubbish (unless you count my paperwork, but that's a very long story for a whole other day). But I still spend hours of my time cleaning our house. I still wade through paperwork on my way to bed each night. I still have bedding and computer items fall out of my linen cupboard when I open it.

We own too much stuff. And I have a little problem that I like to call consumer addiction. I will discuss this at a later time, but basically, I'm addicted to shopping. I love the buzz I get from new things. I love looking through the various emails that come through to my inbox with "once in a life time savings", I love looking through the catalogues I find in my letterbox every Tuesday.

What I do hate though, is seeing my bank account balance at the end of my shopping sprees. And I hate trying to find somewhere to put my fantastic new purchases.

So to start my journey to a simpler life I have a few loose goals to get me started. These are by no means SMART goals. I haven't (yet) broken them down into manageable chunks. These are just general goals to get me off in the right direction.

1. To get on top of my consumer addiction.
2. To clear our house of anything that we do not use, or we don't find beautiful.
3. To have less items in our house to clean and maintain.
4. To better our financial position by cutting back on shopping habits (this is greatly tied to goal #1).
5. To teach our children to live a life full of gratitude and helping others

My goals are unique to my family and our lives. I have 2 very young children (my youngest is just 4 months old) and our goals and views for our family are completely different from our next door neighbours, or the older couple across the road. 

The importance of minimalist living, is living the life that you and your family want to. It's about what minimalist living means to you.