Ready to become more productive?

When you hear the word minimalism what comes to your mind?

Do you think of a bare house without any decor or character? Do you think strict rules of not being able to buy or own anything? Or do you think of giving away all your possessions to live in a tiny home?

Well, let me tell you that minimalism isn’t any of that. I mean yes it can look like that for some people but the majority of people who choose a minimalist lifestyle do so for this one main reason – to live in a way that is not too overwhelming or beyond their capacity.

Most of us do not live minimally. And it’s not just with the number of things we own. We take on too many projects, say yes to too many invites, and cave to too much marketing. The fact of the matter is that we let our lives control us instead of us controlling our lives.

WATCH HERE

In today’s episode, I’m chatting with my friend Camie Wilke as she shares her journey with minimalism as a work-from-home businesswoman who has plans to grow her family through adoption. She shares what led to her decision to become a minimalist and how she was able to get her sentimental husband on board. She also shares her dreams of continuing her minimal lifestyle when she becomes a mom. I hope our conversation inspires you to explore the idea of minimalism a little further.

Now before we dive into our conversation, I want to know how your daily resets are going. Are you finding the mindset of simple daily resets to be helpful in managing the mess in your home?

I’d love to hear how it’s going for you so please leave a comment and let me know. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then scroll down to download my daily reset checklist.

Pin it and save for later ↑

This post may contain affiliate links in which case I earn a commission. You can read my full disclosure policy is here.

LISTEN HERE

How Minimalism Increases Productivity in My Home and Business with Camie Wilke

Get to Know Camie

Camie, tell us a little about yourself and your interests.

I am a wife and soon-to-be mom through adoption.

I am a wife and soon-to-be mom through adoption, which I’m sure I will get into a little bit here in the episode. I live in Nebraska and a small town and it’s everything you think of when you think of Nebraska. There is a cornfield and cattle field less than a mile from our house. It is definitely the classic Nebraska town.

I am an online faith-based business coach, and I help the mama who wants to have an online coaching business. She wants to be able to make money during her kids’ nap time and she loves the Lord. I help her do that by utilizing Instagram as one of her tools.

How She Became a Minimalist

Can you share with us how you became a minimalist if that’s what you call yourself?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I did not grow up as a minimalist. My parents weren’t hoarders, that’s such an extreme word, but when you look at my childhood home, it wasn’t a minimal home. It didn’t look like my home now. My childhood home was beautiful, and organized and things were put away but it wasn’t a minimalist lifestyle.

After I graduated college, I married my prince charming two weeks later, and we went on a honeymoon. It was a really big high point in our life. It was from one good thing to another good thing to another. Graduating college to the wedding day to vacation, and then we stepped off the plane back into Nebraska and life hit hard.

We couldn’t afford anything.

All of a sudden, we were newlyweds and a very much in love couple that was broke. We did not have very much money coming in. My husband had a phenomenal job and he was carrying 99% of our financial load. I wasn’t making that much money because I didn’t get the job that I thought I was going to get out of college. I thought I was going to go and have this big, elaborate career, and the doors just kept shutting. We were living paycheck to paycheck.

So I feel like I stumbled into minimalism simply by the fact that we didn’t have money to buy anything. Only the bare essentials. We just didn’t have the money to buy things.

Choosing Minimalism even when we could afford stuff.

As time went on and our income grew, we were able to buy a home. We moved out of our little itty-bitty apartment. My mom came over, and my mom and I are on the same page when it comes to purging. We quickly weeded through things. She really helped me decide what to keep and helped me organize everything.

My dad and my husband are the opposite and wanted to keep everything so thankfully she was there to help.

I intentionally decided to keep our home minimal when we moved here and make it our lifestyle. We quickly realized that once we unpacked all of our stuff there was still a whole bunch of space left over.

Fill up the space or just get what we need?

So we had two options. We could either buy things that we didn’t necessarily need to fill the space or we could just continue buying the things that we did need. We’re no longer living paycheck to paycheck so our choice for minimalism isn’t coming from a place of scarcity, but I love feeling like I can walk into my home and breathe. Not to mention, it’s so much easier to keep things clean.

So, that’s really how we fell into minimalism but then we intentionally decided to stick with the lifestyle even when we could afford to buy more.

Struggles with Minimalism

What are some struggles that you have encountered with minimalism?

I don’t know if I would say it’s a struggle but something that we really try to intentionally keep in check is as our income has grown, not just buying things just for the sake of we can afford it now. We couldn’t afford all of this then but we can afford it now.

Questions we ask before we buy.

My husband and I have a lot of open conversations around this, and we ask ourselves if we’re going to invest in this thing or if we’re going to buy this thing, what’s our why? Do we need this thing? Is this something we have prayed about? Have we asked the Lord for wisdom on this? Does this fit into the larger goals that we have for life?

If it does, amazing, then let’s buy it, and let’s do it joyfully and with thankfulness. But if we don’t need it, then why are we wanting it? What are we trying to fill? What’s the void? Are we bored? Do we need to get more creative with how we plan things or fun activities? Why do we feel we need to buy the thing that we didn’t actually really need?

Buying Experiences instead of Things

Simultaneously, there are things that my husband and I really love to splurge on. One of those things is vacations, which you don’t buy a vacation and put it in your house. So, whenever we go to think about making a purchase, whether it’s clothes or furniture, whatever it is, is this thing a need and is this going to add to our life? Or is this going to take away from the thing that we really want to spend our time, energy, and finances on, which is experiences?

So, that’s not really a struggle but it’s definitely something that we have encountered in our journey.

Getting My Husband on Board with Minimalism

Do you and your husband still clash on saving things or is he on board?

Great question. So I would say that it has improved so much over the years.

I remember this hilarious story. In our apartment, because we had no money, we were very intentional about making our meals, and we really limited how much we ate out. Lucas would always take his food to work, and because of that, we had all this Tupperware.

We were getting ready to move out, and we had just decided to make the switch from plastic Tupperware to glass Tupperware. One day, I was looking in our hot mess Tupperware cupboard and thinking, “Oh, no! This is not coming to my new home. We’re gonna purge this plastic.”

Well, I knew that this would trigger Lucas, and not in a really big, dramatic way but I knew it would create anxiety in him. So being the overly bold wife that I am, I got myself this big ole trash bag, and I started just chucking it in and filling up the whole trash bag.

I knew he was coming home because I could see his little GPS moving toward the apartment. I knew I had to hightail it out the back door, run across the parking lot and throw it in the dumpster before he noticed.

I Got caught Purging!

I started out and all of a sudden, I see his truck, and he sees me with this bag, which I was like, “Just think it’s trash, honey, just think it’s trash.”

He’s like, “What is that,” and I just didn’t have it in me to lie. So I just didn’t say anything. Of course, he discovered what I was doing, and he was taken aback that I would have the audacity to toss away our Tupperware even though we had just bought new Tupperware.

So our relationship with minimalism has evolved a lot since then to where it doesn’t create deep anxiety in him anymore. But to be fair, since then, we’ve also downsized even more to where the things that we have in our house now, are the things that we need, and they are the things that we use. I’m not purging nearly as much anymore because we have already done the purging.

We’re very careful about the things that we’re bringing into the home so we don’t have as frequent of conversations around, “Hey, I think we could do without this.”

No more Scarcity mindset

But when we do, he is much more open to the idea because we are no longer in a scarcity mindset, which I think is where perhaps why he was hanging on to so much in the first place. It doesn’t trigger a survival instinct anymore.

The Lord has been faithful to provide so much for us, and we really want to be good stewards of our finances, which in turn leads us to be really good stewards of the things that we have in our home.

Pin it and save for later ↑

How Minimalism Helps Me Be Productive in my Home Business

How do you feel your minimalist lifestyle helps your productivity in your home business?

Because I work from home, it is so important that my home is conducive to my mind functioning really well. Specifically, we have a home where it’s an open floor plan so when you step through the front door, you can see the entire house.

If I’m standing at the front door and there is a mess happening in the kitchen, even though I’m in the living room, I can see it. I can see the dining room a little bit from my office. It’s all very open.

I need it to be functioning and it’s so much easier for me to pick things up and to keep things managed when there’s not that much to do. I can deep clean my entire house in under three hours because it’s very minimal.

Chaos Checkpoints

What are your checkpoints when you know that it’s time to have a reset?

I have daily resets and then I have weekly resets. The times in which things would get messier than normal are when we have company, if we have back-to-back activities or for hosting somebody. Those are the times when I notice that there is more mess.

My non-negotiable reset is my nightly reset which has to be done before I go to bed no matter how late it is. I know that if I do this 15-minute reset, I’m going to feel so much better in the morning.

Pin it ↑

Jesus was a Minimalist

Do you have any final thoughts on minimalism and encouragement for those who, are overwhelmed and want to start downsizing and living a simpler life?

So I have heard people talk about how Jesus was a minimalist. I had never really thought about that before. Well, by golly, he was!

He had probably a pack, and then he walked from town to town to town with the shoes on his feet and the clothes on his back. He was not worried about what He was going to eat or what He was going to drink. He wasn’t worried about what He was going to wear.

Matthew 6 verses 25 through 34 really speaks to our lives and teaches us to trust that what we need is going to be provided. You know, God doesn’t promise riches, the biggest house or to have all the new fancy stuff, but he does promise that He knows our needs and that He will provide for those needs.

You can be minimal and still impact the world.

When I think about the simple life that Jesus had, and yet he was the most impactful human being that has ever set foot on this planet, I think then, “What do I think that I’m gaining by having all this stuff?”

When I think about the things that Jesus values, He valued relationships, and having conversations, which equates to experiences, being present where your feet are with somebody or present where your feet are in the moment. So instead of filling our homes with stuff, how can we fill our homes with joy, love, laughter, and experiences?

What are you giving up for the stuff?

That’s not to make us feel shameful for buying the occasional decorations or whatever, but it really goes back to asking yourself, “Is this thing that I’m buying do I need it? Why do I want it? Am I filling a void? Or is it helping me become more impactful for the things the Lord created me to do?”

It’s good to ask yourself these questions before buying things because you essentially are giving something else up when you do.

Pin it and save for later ↑

Connect with Camie

How can listeners connect with you more?

I have a podcast and Instagram. Those are my two main platforms. Every week I put out two episodes on my show on Mondays and Thursdays and the show is called The Bibles, Babies and Business podcast.

You can come hang out with me over there. I’m there twice a week with episodes and then you can also hang out with me on Instagram.

I’d love to hear from you!

Are you interested in minimalism? Do you think you could start incorporating some of these minimalist mindsets into your lifestyle to help you with the overwhelm in your home?

You May Also Like

• The Best Digital Calendar Habits for ADHD
• Step #1 to Better Time Management for ADHD Moms
• How a Freeze Creates Better Spending Habits for ADHD
• 5 Simple ADHD Tips – How to Stick with Routines
• How to Make a Decluttering Plan – Basic Steps for ADHD Moms