Layne - The Minimalist Way: Minimalism Strategies to Declutter Your Life and Make Room for Joy

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and Interior Designer: Merideth Harte

Photo Art Director: Sue Bischofberger

Editor: Melissa Valentine

Production Editor: Andrew Yackira

Photography/Stocksy: Brett Donar p

ISBN: Print 978-1-64152-345-5 | eBook 978-1-64152-346-2

To the incredible community that has rallied around The Life On Purpose Movement. Your stories inspire me every day. Heres to doing life with communityand on purpose.

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I knocked, waited for an answer, knocked again, and then slipped the key into the lock.

As I stepped inside the apartment, something brushed my face, and my hand shot up to push it aside.

Leaves, I thought. Thats right this is Charlies apartment.

I spent most of my twenties managing a large apartment building on the peninsula south of San Francisco. Every year for our annual smoke detector testing, I spent one full day stepping inside 53 different homes. As exhausting as that day was for me, my curious side loved getting a glimpse into how other people lived.

I saw apartments full of knickknacks collected over a lifetime or passed down from generations before. I saw apartments with not a dish on the kitchen counter and others without a clear surface in sight. One apartment was packed with an eclectic mix of mannequins, costume jewelry, and bottles upon bottles of health supplements. (I have no idea why.) AnotherCharlies apartmentaccumulated more houseplants every year I entered, until most of the sunlight had been blocked by stretching green branches and I could barely walk through the living room.

Stepping through these 53 doors each year gave me an intimate glimpse into the many different ways people live.

A QUIET EPIDEMIC

What I observed then, and what I know now, is that too many of us are burdened by our belongings, our commitments, our calendars, and our mental loads. In this state, we cant slow down and enjoy our lives because were too busy managing them. Were afraid, deep down, that well wake up one day and realize that we missed out on the precious years of raising our families or having good healthbecause we devoted so much of our attention to things that didnt ultimately matter. This is the problem I want to help you solve with this book. This is where minimalism steps in. Its not just about our stuffits a way of life.

MY JOURNEY TO A SIMPLER WAY

I didnt know what minimalism was when I first felt called to it. I was knee-deep in midnight baby feedings, wet toddler kisses, and drastic swings from feeling immensely loved and fulfilled to feeling hopelessly tired of being needed and exhausted beyond what I thought possible.

Matching the chaos inside of me was the chaos around me. At the end of one particularly long day, I walked slowly through my apartment, feeling defeated by the mess. Papers, toys, bouncers, sippy cups, blankets, pacifiers, and books littered the surfaces. It looked like the baby and toddler section of Target had blown up in my living room.

It was in the thick of these years that I felt a quiet voice inside nudging me to a simpler way, to a life built around the things that really mattered to methe things that brought me joyand nothing else. I gradually stopped saying yes to every request that was made of me. I started going through our home, evaluating our belongings with a critical eye. I began fiercely protecting our family timeour adventures to the beach, our Saturday hikes, our outings to the local airport to watch the small planes land. It didnt happen all at once, but in a thousand ways, minimalism was changing my life for the better.