Over the next several weeks, new possessions will enter all of our homes at an alarming rate. The new products will come in various forms: electronics, clothes, books, toys, jewelry, gift cards, video games, cookware and so many more items. I don’t know about you, but I’m done accumulating things! To my family and friends, I don’t want anything this year! What I do want is your presence, not your presents! I am starting my New Year’s resolution early; I am going to become a minimalist!

My pastor’s wife Anna, has become a practicing minimalist and I love what she has done. This is my first experience watching a minimalist and to put it simply all she is doing is simplifying her life by getting rid of stuff and living with less. Since I have heard about what Anna is doing, I decided to look into what a minimalist is and it is very interesting. Now there are extremes to minimalism. I am not talking about doing away with my cars and home and just about everything I own. My wife would have something to say about that, and if I want to stay married I will not be becoming a minimalist to the extreme.

My simple explanation about what I am trying to accomplish would be this: I am intentionally trying to live with only the things I need. My wife loves me more than ever now. I am going to start in my closet and get rid of clothes that I never wear. Now this poses a question. Do I throw or donate my clothes or sell them? Some of my clothes that hang in my closet are fairly new clothes that I maybe have worn once or twice. I have clothes that have been in my closet for many years. If I really want to become a minimalist, the answer to that question would be to donate my clothes. If I try and sell them, I’m not really simplifying my life, because it would take so much of my time posting on rummage sites, contacting people, getting the clothes to the people that buy them and I don’t want anything to do with that. So Goodwill here comes my clothes!

The second project is going to clean my work room I have in our basement. My work room consists of many hand tools, construction items, electric chords, many trays of screws, nails, etc. Outside of changing the filter in the furnace which is in the work room, nothing has moved in years! I am not kidding, everything on the workbench hasn’t moved, nothing has been touched. I haven’t had a need to use the tools or construction items that are in that room. So out they go!!!

This will be the start of me being a minimalist! I will keep you updated on how it is going. The idea is to live simple, being a minimalist also means to put down the cell phone and engage with people more. That will be a difficult thing for me to do, but I want to give it a try. My world is lived at a feverish pace, I want to slow down and make life simple. I’m going to decide on what matters the most to me and rid myself of things that don’t really matter.

Here is a quote from Joshua Becker, I follow him on Twitter. “Minimalism slows down life and frees us from this modern hysteria to live faster. It finds freedom to disengage. It seeks to keep only the essentials. It seeks to remove the frivolous and keep the significant. and in doing so, it values the intentional endeavors that add value to life.”

My friend Anna is so happy about what she has done so far, it has become her passion. To have less is the goal. It is a journey for her and I want to embark on this journey as well. Their is so much more about being a minimalist and it is exciting to understand it. In the long run, minimalists will have more time to serve others as well. This is going to be a fun journey to be on and I’m excited!

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” Booker T. Washington