2020 has been a hard year for everyone. The opportunity and promise I felt as 2020 started was quickly squashed by Covid-19, which prevented me from seeing friends and family, traveling, career advancement, and totally turned my life upside down.

Although I typically work from home, I never felt trapped at home. This year, I felt trapped and the weight of all of the things I had accumulated felt crushing. To the outside and untrained eye, my house probably didn’t seem cluttered or overwhelming, but things quickly piled up and insomnia-induced Amazon orders of products to “fix” problems in my life arrived weekly. The reality though, is that these objects marketed as fixes didn’t actually fix any problem, most were cheaply made products that half-delivered on claims.

Over the summer, I realized that the weight of all the stuff plus the weight of all the unnecessary projects I take on at work, plus the toll of not seeing friends and family and engaging in once enjoyable activities became too much. I didn’t have time to be creative, I could not stay on top of housework, I became depressed about health issues that I couldn’t seem to resolve. These feelings of frustration, hopelessness, and sadness are what drove me to find a solution – which just so happened to be minimalism. After absorbing as much information as I can on the topic, I feel a huge sense of relief in knowing that I am not alone in feeling overwhelmed by life sometimes and minimalism has given me control to stop spending time maintaining things that aren’t useful or valuable to me anymore.

In this blog, I will discuss ways that minimalism has profoundly impacted my life. I am looking forward to sharing my progressive journey to minimalism.