Well, this is more like a belated blog-iversary post, but as you know it’s been a busy year for us.

I can’t believe that it has been two years since I started this blog!

So what does “never outgrow your car” mean to me now? Obviously, it isn’t really possible to be a family of five and literally not outgrow your car. It’s more the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.

As we were in the middle of our move this summer, I remember thinking to myself I WISH we could all fit into one car a drive away. I wondered how can someone could be a minimalist yet still keep things that are important to you. As we packed, I looked through everything we had, resisting the urge to get rid of it all, knowing that I would regret it later. I looked at husband’s nutcracker collection that we get out once a year for one month. It takes up four storage bins in the attic. While it might be tempting to get rid of something like Christmas decorations, his mother has given him these nutcrackers, one each year since he was a boy. Is being a minimalist more important than those memories? No.

What does minimalism mean anyway? It means different things to different people. Some people take it to literally mean to have as little as possible. To me it means not keeping our lives too full (of stuff, of activities, of noise) so that we can see, hear and appreciate what is already there. It means keeping all areas of life as simplified as they can be so that there is space…. space to appreciate what is there, to savor things and to not feel rushed through them just so we can be on to the next thing.  The time to notice what is right in front of us or to explore and discover new things.

Maybe “never outgrow your car” is a mantra to help remind me of what I already know, but too easily forget.

Less is more.

The less I have on my schedule, the more I can enjoy what’s already on it.

The less house I have to clean, the more time I can spend doing other things.

The less debt I have, the more resources I have to do the things I truly love.

The less stuff I have, the more special the things I have seem.

I wonder what ‘never outgrow your car’ will mean to me a year from now? We’ll see.

                 ”Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler”

                             Albert Einstein