It's a minimalist Monday edition of optimal living daily episode 2187 minimum viable home by column right of exile lifestyle calm And I'm just a molic happy Monday This is the award-winning podcast where I read blogs to you with permission from the authors and set simple really Let's keep this intro simple and minimal as we optimize your life Minimum viable home by column right of exile lifestyle calm a new home can at times seem like a vacuous hole That sucks up endless amounts of money and creates mostly excessive amounts of packaging for you to discard There are even more costs and acquisitions than usual when you transition from owning only what you can easily carry on a plane to what you need to Saga fully functioning home, but with every dollar spent to this end with every new acquisition I tense up a little I'm squeamish about these expenditures because I remember how my homes have been in the past I remember the feeling of looking around at all the stuff I purchased each item catalyzing that momentary thrill of having bought something new before becoming just another thing I owned and never used some of those possessions were legitimately practical But most of them were essentially useless for me and my priorities There were expensive decorations that weren't even particularly beautiful furniture that went on sat upon gadgets that remained Unutilized kitchen tools that were forever uncooked with all serving the same function as art but without the art part If you purchase a couch that is beautiful meant to you worth the cost and space required to acquire and keep it in your home Just for his aesthetics, then it's still a worthwhile purchase I've owned many such show pieces that in retrospect weren't carrying their own weight The money in space could have been better spent on other things But were instead wasted on these unsat upon bits of furniture that I owned out of cultural habit homes have couches homes have kitchen tables homes have x y and z This new home of mine was a blank canvas an empty space. I could fill with whatever the It only seemed natural having lived the way I've lived for so long to stick to the essentials But what are the essentials for me? How can I know what I'll need living this kind of lifestyle in this kind of space if seven years have passed since I've last experienced something similar Since I've last purchased furniture paid electric bills received my mail at a given address with any regularity There's a term in the tech world that I found myself thinking about a lot lately minimum viable product or MVP The idea behind an MVP is that if you're building an app for a smartphone You build the most minimal streamlined strip down version of the app You possibly can because you don't know what you don't know yet It may be that you shovel tons of time and money into the thing making it beautiful and complete only to discover There's something fundamentally wrong with it after you've expended all that time and effort and money Building MVP first allows you to make sure that core functionality works and works well Before you add any gloss and before you invest too much time or resources on it I've been thinking my home in the same way I didn't know what I wanted in the home, but I didn't know what I'd need to do the work I enjoy doing I decided to start there I have my lights and tripods and such to produce my YouTube show and have my microphone for my podcast I knew I'd need a desk and a chair and ideally another more comfortable chair where I could lounge for long periods This would ideally be a rocking chair because in my mind if there's a heaven It's filled with all the books in the world and a rocking chair where I can sit while I read them I wanted to make learning to cook a key component of my lifestyle here So I purchased a cast iron combo cooker a decent chef's knife and a cutting board I'd also need a bed and a few bed related accoutrements and that's it I mean aside from consumables like toilet paper and soap and trash bags, but for the rest even other seemingly Infrastructural items. I wanted to make sure I actually needed them first before making any further purchases I wanted to make sure I was buying things I would use no more couches for the sake of couches No more gadgets because I have room to store them I bought my bed and a mattress a few pillows duvet and some sheets a simple desk a simple chair a kick rocking chair It's heavenly.
I set up my lights and tripod There's a corner my living room that's dedicated to shooting videos the corner that would normally contain a couch and coffee table I think from there I decided to use the space and the things I bought before purchasing anything else to use the minimum viable home before deciding what to Change what's missing what to add by living here and seeing what I need as I go about my day I can slowly fill my home with exactly the things I'll use and appreciate and nothing else I can keep this place practical and functional without succumbing to clutter I can determine what I actually need rather than what I theoretically need based on the idea of an Artypical home that may or may not fulfill my specific needs a minimum viable home and MVH is a place you live experience try out Before filling with stuff then as you need things very intentionally and slowly you acquire them It's a bit like a packing party in reverse instead of packing up what you've already got and pulling out things as you need them You avoid buying them in the first place matting to your home only when you find yourself needing something and not before as Result this is obviously not something you can easily do if you're already moved in and huddled amongst your things in a well-stocked house or apartment But if and when you do have the opportunity to move into a new space consider starting from scratch or near scratch So they can build something you shaped from the foundation Hour the specifics of each home will be different of course since we all have different needs That's the case with minimalism in general focusing on the vital stuff and assuming this superfluous is the case with incremental Intentional home making as well for many of us the results will be something that looks less like a catalog clipping of a home And more like a physical embodiment of what each of us as an individual thinks is important You just listen to the post titled minimum viable home by column right of exile lifestyle calm They get a call in I can definitely relate to this as I mentioned in a somewhat recent episode I moved a couple of times over the last year Which kind of forced me to do that packing party that he referenced in this article today If you're not familiar a packing party is what the minimalists wrote about I also read that article way back in the day Basically, you're packing up everything you have then only unpacking stuff you need It's pretty extreme I doubt the average person would do this just to do it unless they were completely fed up But when you're moving you really are forced into it And this is where procrastination can kind of be on your side because you slowly unpack whatever you need and the rest ends up staying in boxes Proving that we actually didn't need all of the stuff to begin with and I say procrastination is kind of on your side in this case Because the downside is that while that stuff stays in boxes We tend to keep it that way instead of donating or selling it It just stays there I'm guilty of this myself. There always seems to be other things that need to get done sooner But it's important to think about I really do believe if we all curated a bit more second Yes to that item that we added to our cart caught ourselves before making the impulse purchase Not only would we have more money saved but less clutter fewer things to take care of less stress likely more happiness So definitely consider it today have a happy start to your week Thank you for being here with me and listening every day and I'll be back tomorrow where you're optimal life. Oh wait