Edging Toward Minimalism

This past week, I dug my old bead box out of a craft bin and up-cycled some turquoise beads I’ve had for twenty years into a new necklace that’s bringing me a lot of joy. 

I did take a little trip to the bead store in downtown Asheville where I first fell in love with beading and had a nostalgic walk around the store, spending only $4.50 on some filler beads I needed to complete my project. 

It feels so good to wear this necklace - simultaneously appreciating these gorgeous green/blue beads, the feeling of literally wearing rocks around my neck anchoring me into the earthly realms, something about it connecting me back to a more original version of me, and the fact that I didn’t just go out and buy a new necklace for the photo shoot I did on Friday. This all makes it mean more to me in a way I can’t quite explain. 

I crafted instead of consumed. 

I’ve been minimizing. I hadn’t begun to play with the word “minimalist” until now, but I’m starting to like it. 

My son moved out ten months ago. At first, I left his room exactly like it was, expecting him to come home. When I realized he wasn’t, I packed all of his things and had them moved to his father’s house. 

I’ve gotten the intuition during this time to “go through everything.” I first did this in the fall of last year, then again, then again. When I realized my son wasn’t coming home, I also realized what a shrine to him our apartment was. My entire life centered around being his mother, even the reason we lived in this apartment was because it was across the street from his old school. 

I allowed myself to begin thinking about how I would decorate if I weren’t being “mom” and what I’d truly want to surround myself with. This created an ongoing process of reevaluation around “stuff” and I have since donated a carload of supplies to my friend’s summer camp, going through every bin, drawer, and storage container and every day, it seems that I realize how I could pair down a little bit more. 

For some reason, I can’t seem to remove his ceramic cat toothbrush holder and toothbrush from the bathroom. Every time I try, I freeze about it. So that little relic remains. 

All of this was exacerbated when I thought I was moving into a tiny house. I still may. Plans are on hold so we will see if I do end up living in a tiny home, but when the opportunity first came to me, it felt like the perfect mid-life, empty nest adventure. I’d finish my memoir, build out my streams of income, and completely go down to the very basics because nothing else would fit. That actually felt amazing to me - the only thing I didn’t want to have to say goodbye to was my houseplants. 

My bathroom has less than half the jars and bottles it used to. I have one glorious local herbal face serum instead of bottles upon bottles of store-bought creams and moisturizers. One shampoo. One deodorant. Two shades of nail polish. 

My kitchen is simplified. Herbs in jars. Only the supplements I actually use. Back to sprouting my own sprouts and cooking batches of really simple food. Today in Trader Joe’s, which I went to after the local farmer’s market, the cashier asked if I’d found everything I needed and when I said yes, he said, “Just the basics then.” I told him I was feeling really good being a little minimalist lately. He smiled and said, “Me too.” 

It’s easy to get caught up in wanting more. It would take a long time to explain, but after the loss of my first child at age nineteen, I just wanted the chance to be a mother again. I started nesting then and making a home even before my son was born. It was so important to me that he have a comfortable home. That didn’t necessarily involve a lot of excess consumption, but it did mean that the fridge was always stocked and he had what he needed. 

Yes, I’ve since gone through the cupboards and pantry, and now I buy food with a consideration that’s a cross between a delicious zero-waste menu for a perimenopausal woman and having a solid stash of calorically-dense food on hand because the state of the world is questionable.  

What I know about the decades I spent being stressed about mothering, homemaking, and finances, is that you actually consume more when you’re fearing that you won’t be safe or have enough. I consumed more food then, and bought extra this and that more compulsively. 

With time, deep nervous system regulation, and years of self-examination at the link between trauma and consumption, I currently feel much safer, more regulated, satisfied and deeply content with less. 

I love going to the library instead of buying another book on Amazon. I love that every office supply I use now fits into my desk drawers instead of sprawled out on five different surfaces. I love that I’ve lost ten pounds by decreasing cortisol and eating in alignment with my body. I couldn’t slow down or get quiet enough to hear this before in the same way, and with a busier life and mind, I just consumed more than I needed to and found satisfaction more difficult to secure. And please don’t get me wrong - I was already being pretty conscious about these things. These were the quiet underlayers, and life has gotten quiet enough for me to hear them. 

Minimizing isn’t about restriction. I don’t feel restricted calorically, in the clothes I wear, or the things I have. I feel more satisfied with conscious choices about the things that I do choose to have. I also don’t feel as restricted financially. For a long time, I felt constricted, but not consciously minimal. That's different. When the money came in, I’d catch up on what I’d been restricted from buying prior to that, fueling a period of consumption, and then back to forced constriction.  

What I notice is that most folks in the modern world spend to the parameters of what we/they have. The world encourages a constantly consumptive approach - earn more, consume more. This fuels the modern economy as people work in order to have more. I'm stepping off that train, more than I already had.

This month, I’ll make more money than I made in the first half of last year. And something has changed inside of me. The money will all have a job, but its job won't be consumption. I’m planning how to manage it, move it, honor it. I’m creating more of a financial ecosystem and less of a physically consumptive one. 

And similar to my new/old turquoise necklace, that simplicity feels deeply, deeply satisfying. 

NOTES: 

The first code of Heartland is Consumption - getting clear on our relationship with it and getting free of the energetics of it. We will be traveling through this theme in the live events April -June 2026. Sign up at www.sarahpoet.com/events

Journal prompts: 

1. What is your current relationship to consumption in the following areas - money, food, stuff, social media, television, other people’s opinions, sex & relationships? 

2. What do you consume when you are dissatisfied with an aspect of your life? What are your consumption habits? 

3. If you have a lot of living space, do you fill it? How often do you take stock of what you have? Is it time to do that now? 

4. How long do you wait between wanting something and purchasing it? What do you notice about that pattern? 

5. If you think, “I don’t have enough” or some variation of that thought, what happens if you slow down, pause, breathe, and ask yourself if that’s really true?

6. Where does consumer culture have you gripped? Do you work more just to consume more? How does that feel?

I'm Sarah Poet and I work to empower and protect women's resources and sovereignty - both inside and out. You can learn more about working with me 1:1 at this link:

https://www.sarahpoet.com/womens-coaching

There's a beauty in simplicity, is there not?