And so it began, albeit in a thoroughly undesigned way.
“In retrospect, and without knowing it at the time, this was
the start of our minimalist journey,” Inga reflects. “Even though
we didn’t know what minimalism was back then, we had
made the decision to put lifestyle and a lower mortgage first.
But that was just the beginning.”
THE MINIMALISM GAME That spark was ignited a few
months later when Mike stumbled across a TED Talk. “There
was this guy, Ryan, who had a packing party,” he says. “He
packed up his entire apartment – clothes, furniture, toiletries,
everything – like he was moving house, and then only took
out items as he needed them. After 21 days, everything still
in boxes he sold or donated – more than 80 per cent of his
possessions – and he had never felt better. So, I came
home one evening and asked Inga if she wanted to play the
minimalism game with me – we’d both find one item on the
first day we wanted to purge. On the second day, we’d find
two items we didn’t want any more. On the third day we’d
find three, and so forth for 30 days.”Fast-forward a month and they were on a roller-coaster
it turns out was only nearing the first crest. “After that, we
decided to go through the whole house and we eventually
purged more than half of our belongings, and we honestly
never felt happier,” Inga says. “When we started the process,
there were things that we ‘thought’ we still needed. Things
like that extra dinner set you’d only use when guests came
over. But once we came back through the house again, we
realised we didn’t need two and we could just use the good
set on a daily basis.” The same goes for almost all household
items, from towels to tongs. “We still have all the basic
necessities, we just don’t have multiples of them,” explains
Inga. The hardest thing to part with? Their record collection.
“This was a hard one to part with as the vinyl had a
connection to our past lives, our past careers,” Mike says.
“Getting rid of that was like saying goodbye to our old
selves – even though that chapter had finished years earlier.
We were still holding on to it by holding on to all this stuff.
Now we just listen to all our music digitally.”
A BRAVE NEW WORLD Most surprisingly, this sudden
bout of object shedding freed them up for escapades they
didn’t even know they wanted. “One evening, Inga suggested
we live in North America for a year. A thought that only
months earlier would have seemed ridiculous, we now
gave considerable consideration because we never had to
think, ‘What are we going to do
with all of our stuff?’” Mike says.
It was an idea that proved
too hard to disregard and the
family set off for 12 months on
the road. “The special sauce
of living with less is the mental
space it generates,” Mike
explains. “While we were travelling we didn’t have TV for six
months and we realised how little we missed it. Apart from
the odd movie, we don’t watch it at home anymore. From
the moment we started on this minimalist journey to now,
we’ve purged almost 80 per cent of our belongings.”
When asked what the other is holding onto they could
probably let go of, they both answer almost immediately.
Inga: “One of the guitars you never play...” Mike: “Some
of those clothes you still never wear...” But the goal isn’t
perfection, just contentment. “You don’t arrive at a point
where everything’s perfect, you’re always tweaking and
learning as you go,” Mike says. “The main thing is we’re more
mindful of the items we bring into our home. If you don’t bring
items into your home that you don’t need, then you don’t
need to purge them later on.”
TOY STORY Of course, doing all of this with a tiny human in
tow isn’t the easiest of tasks. “You can definitely pull out the
parent card and start throwing away whatever toys you don’t
like,” Mike says. “But we all know that isn’t going to go down“Even though we didn’t know what minimalism
was back then, we had made the decision to
put lifestyle and a lower mortgage first”
photographynic gossage@reallivingmag