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My Minimalist Story, Part 5: Starting Over: Don’t get me wrong, apartment hunting in a foreign country was an exciting experience—in fact, it’s something we’d always fantasized about on our travels. Unfortunately, however, it marked the end of our blissfully minimalist, hotel life. It had been my long-time dream to live in hotels, with nothing more than a single suitcase; and I was fortunate enough to realize it, for six weeks, while we moved from the US to the UK… {read more}

Minimalist Living: Life Without a TV: For years, my husband and I talked about giving up our TV.… {Read more}

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who’s come over from Zen Habits. It was such an honor to write a guest post for one of my favorite sites!

I’ve been blogging about minimalist living since September 2009, so there’s quite a bit of reading here. Therefore, I thought I’d share some of my favorite posts with you, as a little “Getting Started Guide” to my site.

I moved from the US to the UK a little over a year ago, and sold almost all of my possessions in the process. These posts detail my experience of paring down a houseful of stuff to one duffel bag:

My Minimalist Story, Part 1: A Clean Slate

My Minimalist Story, Part 2: The Great Unraveling

My Minimalist Story, Part 3: My Life in a Duffel Bag

My husband and I downsized from our 1000-square-foot, 3-bedroom house to a 390-square-foot, 1-bedroom apartment.… {Read more}

My Minimalist Story, Part 1: A Clean Slate: I think every minimalist fantasizes about starting over with a clean slate—it seems a heck of a lot easier than the slow (and sometimes painful) process of decluttering the stuff you’ve accumulated over a lifetime. I for one had been decluttering for years, and still seemed nowhere near my goal of living with just the essentials… {read more}

My Minimalist Story, Part 2: The Great Unraveling: Most of us spend our lives in a constant state of accumulation. It all starts when we leave our parents’ homes, and start acquiring the “stuff” to lead independent lives.… {Read more}

Minimalist Travel: What’s in My Suitcase: I received several requests that I list the contents of my carry-on. I’m happy to oblige, as I think we’d all be happier travelers with much less stuff…The list below covers what I pack for a trip of about 10-14 days (the typical length of my overseas travel). However, I’d pack the exact same stuff if I were traveling for 3 months… {read more}

The Top Ten Benefits of Being a Minimalist: A lot of people think being a minimalist is akin to being a monk—living a sort of ascetic lifestyle in which you deprive yourself of “wordly” things simply for the sake of it.… {Read more}

The Minimalist Mailbox: The key to being a minimalist is controlling the stuff that flows into your life. In most cases, this power lies in your hands: you can refrain from shopping, refuse freebies, and ask friends and family to stop giving you gifts. You can, in effect, shut the door on stuff. The problem: in that door lies a mail slot. And through that slot will pour all kinds of useless, unwanted, and uninvited clutter, almost every single day… {read more}

The Minimalist Wardrobe: Choose a Base Color: Once upon a time, the clothes in my closet ran the gamut of colors—I had warm hues, cool hues, neutrals, pastels, jewel tones, etc.… {Read more}

Farewell to My Minimalist House: My husband and I recently sold our three-bedroom, 1920s-era bungalow. As we inconveniently listed it during one of the worst housing markets EVER, it took four months for it to sell… {read more}

Ditch the Prints – Digital Photos are More Fun!: To be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed spending hours looking through someone else’s family photo albums—and I get the feeling I’m not the only one! On the other hand, receiving a snapshot by email always makes me smile… {read more}

Minimalist Living: One In, One Out: One in, one out: it’s a simple rule that works wonders in keeping clutter under control… {read more}

Born Minimalist?… {Read more}

Now that my blog has celebrated a birthday, I can write cool flashback posts on what I was blogging about last year. How fun! :-) I think it’ll be a good way to introduce new readers to some of the topics I’ve covered, and maybe spark some new and interesting discussion.

Here’s what I wrote in my first week of blogging, this time last year:

I Have Freebie Phobia: My thoughts on turning down those little gifts, tchotchkes, and trial sizes companies try to give us. Goodbye, Stuff: My “Dear John” letter for breaking up with my stuff. How to Create a Minimalist Bathroom: Ten ways to create a space that soothes your soul while you brush your teeth.… {Read more}

Today marks one year since I published my first post here. (Wow, how time flies!)

This time last year I had just moved to a new country, and started blogging on a whim – mainly to entertain myself and indulge my passion for minimalist living. I considered it a creative outlet, a way to practice my writing, and never expected to have more than a handful of readers.

The response, however, was incredible. According to my latest statistics, I have over 3,000 RSS subscribers, and received 76,000 unique visitors last month. I can’t tell you how excited I am that so many of you are interested in minimalist living!… {Read more}