“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”- Simon Sinek

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Beginning this journey of minimalism all started when a good friend of mine told me repeatedly that many aspects of my life were consumed with “too much.” What do I mean by too much? Well, for starters… in the past I have been known to over consume sweets/junk food (pizza just happens to be my go-to food). Target has been my store of choice, so convenient and filled with deals and “must haves.” And don’t even get me started on my social media/phone binging… Hours, upon hours of just scrolling up/down, like here & there … Yes, as your reading this you are probably thinking ya I’m guilty of this too but it can’t be that bad right?

Well, actually yes… It can be “that bad” if it you allow it to creep in little by little each day, till truthfully it begins to over-consume your life.

To give a bit a background more as to who I am, (for those that just happened to stumble upon my page). My name is Jasmine and I am a 25 year old single mom in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. I love my family & my daughter, I am blessed with an incredible job, and I  have been a christian for almost 4 years now. Life has definitely thrown me a few curve balls here and there, but truthfully God has not given me more than I can bear.. But yet in 2016 I felt like I was suffocating, that there was more to life that I could be doing with the time and resources that I possessed. During October 2016 I was finally fed up and fueled with a giant motivation to finally begin a healthier way of living (both physically and spiritually speaking). I would not call myself obese, but I was definitely not happy with the weight/health that I was at. Especially from coming from a fairly athletic background; being a full-time mom/full-time employee was finally taking a toll on my body that I just couldn’t take anymore

You see in scripture, the bible states your body is a temple (1 Corinthians 6). However, at every church event/potluck/ etc. that I would attend, I would basically overindulge in anything that I could get my hands on and then I would allow the guilt of over eating to succumb my emotions and just say “well, there’s always tomorrow” …

“Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that. (James 4:13-15).” 

So even though I whole heartedly convinced myself that tomorrow was the opportunity to do/begin change, I would procrastinate and prolong that change even longer. When clearly as James stated, tomorrow is not guaranteed. Only through the will of God will tomorrow even occur.

My same friend that said I “consume too much” (remember her cause she’s a pesky one I tell ya) is the same friend that told me try this thing called Whole 30.. so with Whole 30 I began in November 2016. I lost a total of 8 lbs., while achieving a greater physical being back & spiritual health (I’ll be posting a separate post about my whole 30 Journey at a later time.) Fast forward to now, January 2017. Somewhat in shape (yes, I binged in December), but still wondering what to do about what I can possibly do in the new year to grow in the goals and relationships I wanted to develop. Which is when I came across the documentary “Minimalism” it gives a story of two guys Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, amongst many others on how they radically transformed their life to consume less. Definitely recommend for you to watch it if you have not already done so. Upon, watching this documentary I’m thinking heck yes I can so do this, i’m ready to own like 5 things to my name, live in a tiny home, and never work ever again. ..

If you haven’t already noticed by now, I am a bit of an extremist and so when my head gets to thinking like this I do two things: First, I pray and second I get advice. I prayed to God asking him if this was truly a realistic lifestyle for myself and my daughter. I mean I’m still living at home with my parents and 5 animals… yes you read that correctly 5 animals. how on earth could i possibly do this? I mean my health and fitness was one thing, but my stuff? Yikes, a bit extreme even for my tastes. But being that I’m only 25 years old and in 90k debt from credit cards, car payments, and student loans in addition to working 40+ hours a week, I was beginning to see that maybe this extremist living is possibly what i needed to get rid of the unnecessary junk, debt, so that I can finally whole-heardtly fill myself with what was needed which is God.

I finally cleared my room today, a process that I procrastinated with almost 3 hours of social media binging. During my clearing out process many of the items I found in my room I was shocked to see I had multiple sets of the same items: shirts, tank tops, jeans. Multiple, multiple pairs. I began to ask myself how and why? How did I allow myself to become so consumed with meaningless items and why did I even begin to do so in the first place. You see, variety is wonderful/beautiful thing. It allows us as human beings to express our uniqueness in a way that is hard to express otherwise. But what happens is that these items begin to not just represent variety/uniqueness but it begins to take more.  It comes to the point that it doesn’t just merely take space in our closets, it begins to take space in other areas too: time with friends, family, but more importantly  our time with God. And thats exactly what each item reminded me of as I began to store them away in my bins. Each item slowly had something that only God could fill…

Today was the first of many steps in reducing this clutter and growing in what I believe is the dream that God is growing inside of me. All of my “extra” items I will be placing on a brief hold for the next 3 months… upon 3 months if there were any items that I did use I’ll be keeping or if did not use it i’ll exchange them out or just simply put it in storage forever. I’ll be selling a small portion of my clothes while donating the rest to local women’s shelters or others that are in need. I hope you continue with me on my journey on becoming minimalist !