Holy crow – This is my 100th published post on Hello Brownlow! I’ve come so far from my Pinterest fail worthy DIYs and hodge-podge recipes to writing about my passions. Our frugal minimalism journey has become what I am passionate about. Living as a minimalist, and a frugal one at that, allows us to live a stress-free life.
I’ve rounded up my top five posts of all time. What’s on deck? Loads of minimalism and saving money! It’s great to see the difference in results on my blog from my lack luster posts to the ones where I write with passion. Do I make money from my blog yet? Not really. In 2019, I hope to further monetize my blog with amazing content that you all will love.
18 Things We Won’t Buy in 2019
This is by FAR my most popular post. It’s a lot of minimalism and pinch of saving money and frugality. I list out the things that we will not purchase this year because they don’t let us move forward with our minimalist lifestyle and will save us money in the long run.
We also have a goal of consuming less in 2019. This means less processed and unhealthy food, less chemicals, less fast fashion… just buying and consuming less.
4 Tips to Help You Declutter in 2019
So many people are unsure of where to start when it comes to decluttering their home. I wrote this post to share some of what helped us start the process and continue the process. It includes a free printable to keep you on track and share the process with your family.
Decluttering has released so much anxiety from my life. The less stuff that I have, the less stress and anxiety fills me. After our son was born I felt energized to minimize the amount of things we had in our family home. With our whole family on board, it has made our minimalist lifestyle so much easier.
How I Eliminated Over Half of My Wardrobe
Clothes are the easiest item to purchase and often we accumulate much more than we need. In a world filled with fast fashion that we wear once, I had indeed accumulated a lot. I started going through my clothes three weeks after our son was born. Post-partum wardrobes are a complicated already and what I was wearing over and over again was only a small portion of my closet.
I’m so glad that I rid myself of over half of my clothes. It has cut down my time getting ready in the morning and given me more room in my closet and dresser. I also do less laundry, hooray!
DIY Dish Detergent Tabs
I finally shared with you my number one, all time favorite cleaning hack and DIY: Dish Detergent Tabs! This DIY has saved us the most money every month compared to my DIY Swiffer Duster and my “all natural” surface cleaner (although it is super cheap, I just wasn’t convinced that it was actually cleaning anything).
2017 began our journey into using, buying, and living on less. Part of it is an environmental issue for me. The other half is just not spending money. As a life long spender (see proof here) I always thought that I would have to work really hard to be able to afford everything I wanted, no, I needed. Once I got over the “need” to have everything that came with lifestyle creep, we realized that life is so much cheaper than everyone is letting on. Thus, the tide of DIYs washed over us and we rid ourselves of the unwanted in our home.
Why I Constantly Declutter and Why It Needs to Stop
Because there is too much. If you remember, in 2017 we decluttered and got rid of a TON of stuff. Like, fill an U-Haul ton of stuff. I thought, wow this is great! We’ll never have to do this again! WRONG. It’s as if we hadn’t been working on our minimalist and frugal lifestyle for over a year. We still have junk. We still have cluttered drawers. So what gives? Why do we have so much stuff and what can we do to minimize the incoming flow of things?
I learned that I was still buying items that I didn’t necessarily need. In order to stop decluttering, I need to stop buying things and bringing things into my home.
