Letting go of some favs.

As sad as it may sound... one of the steps you have to take if you truly want to live with less is to let go of some of your favs.

Those fancy meals you like to make...the ones that require all the extra ingredients and it ends up being an excellent, but costly meal...you have to let those go.

The salon shampoo and conditioner may have to go.

The manicures and pedicures may be a thing of the past.

The cell phone that does it ALL may say bye-bye.

I know I sound like "Debbie downer" right now and i'm not trying to. But to truly live on less money, and live with less things you simply have to get back to the basics.

I plan my meals now by whats on sale at the store and what I can stock up on. In my recent post on The Bargain Hunting Mommy I wrote about finding an awesome deal on hamburger meat. I stocked up. The past few weeks we haven't had much hamburger meat at all because it wasn't on sale. Now we had chicken. :) But no hamburger. I can't buy something that's not on sale to make a meal. But I CAN buy items that ARE on sale and make a great meal out of those.

I've had to let some things go...shopping has been a favorite of mine since I was but a wee little thing. I never spent much on clothes, but it DOES add up.

This blog, The Minimalistic Matthews, is not meant to go hand in hand with my blog on being a bargain hunting mom, but a LOT of these things do go together. My plan for this blog is to write about HOW to live on less. Less money-yes, but more than that how to just simply enjoy LIFE on less. Without all the fuss. Does that make sense?

Basically it comes down to a MAJOR question. What can you live without?

You have to have a roof over your head, food, beds, a place to sit in your home, a car, clothes...but what about all of the OTHER stuff? What about the junk drawers that literally have nothing but CRAP in there. Can you get rid of that stuff? And the swimsuit drawer(totally guilty here)... I have 11 swimsuits. INSANE.

Minimalism, to me, is about living with less to enjoy life to the fullest. It means getting rid of things in my life that cause me to stress and to NOT enjoy life. It means if the stack of magazines sitting on the shelf make me crazy, then I should chunk them. If I get mad because I can't fit all the towels in the cabinet, I should probably donate a few. If my closet is so full and I only wear HALF the items in there, I should probably have a yard sale.

That's what minimalism is to me. And unfortunately, that DOES require getting rid of some favs...