Jasmine for Miles

I try to revisit a couple of books on minimalism every year. Rereading a book or two, or all of them, in this category will generally help me renew my purpose. I haven't reviewed a book since grad school, which I left in 2016 to advance my career in IT. Having had this blog for over a year now (despite not posting for a while after changing jobs) I feel it's time to finally actually review some of the books that helped me become the minimalist I am today. Review 1: New Minimalism: Decluttering and Design for Sustainable, Intentional Living ISBN: 978-1-63217-132-0 Authors: Cary Telander Fortin & Kyle Louise Quilici I'll be honest and say I don't remember when I bought this book, only that I bought it with the intention of using it to help me design my house around minimalist tendencies. Rereading it this year, it felt more suited to those new to minimalism. It's absolutely great for helping you find a jumping-off point from which you can dive into minimalism. It ...

Sometimes it can be hard to determine whether an item should be kept, donated, or sold. During your decluttering efforts, you might form a "Maybe" pile of items you think you might want to keep, but would donate or sell if they don't fit you (like clothes) or don't fit your space (like furniture). Donating items takes little time--simply box or bag up items and drop them off at a donation center. Selling items to recupe some money, however, can take valuable time and effort best spent on something more important. I want to keep this post short, sweet, and to the point for those who try to sell items after decluttering. Ask yourself: What is your time worth? It might help to reframe the attempted sale of items in terms of how much your time is worth, whether to yourself or your employer. Then weigh the cost in time of selling those items against how much you can get back for them. This is a very cold and transactional view of items, but that's kind of the point. Y...

It seems that in the first few months of every year since I embarked on a minimalist path that I pick up a book or two on minimalism that got or kept me going. I give the books another read-through and reflect on how far I've come. So far this year, I've only picked up one to re-read, and I found that it was much more geared toward me as a budding minimalist and not as an established minimalist. All the same, it still proved to have some value in getting me to reflect on why I became a minimalist in the first place. It reminded me of how I felt before I committed to minimalism--I knew I had too much stuff. I had unclear visions for myself except for one: I wanted to be a less stressed person, and to become that person I would need space to relax. That space at the time was filled with clutterful stuff. My time spent reflecting, and talking to friends about minimalism, gave me the motivation to come back here and put together a loose guided prompt for people new to minimalism wh...