My wife and I are making steps towards minimalism, mostly motivated by having to move to different cities more often than makes sense given hiring a moving company to move a whole house worth of gear has blown a significant chunk of savings 3 times over the last 6 years now.
Family minimalism is a lot harder I think than individual minimalism. Most minimalist blogs paint a picture of a single male hipster with a macbook couch-surfing between RoR consulting gigs. Family minimalism cannot be that extreme.
Our books and cds were the easiest to get rid of, we both have kindles, and noticed that we never re-read books anyway, and listened to mp3s or streaming radio rather than cds. The hardest bit was thinking about what it represents in financial terms.
I would say keep the musical instruments. A couple of ideas I have seen floating around are the 100 things idea, where each person has 100 things, and if you want to buy something and have 100 things you have to decide what to ditch. I think it is fully acceptable to have a musical instrument as one of your 100 things.
The other idea I like is splitting things into the create or consume categories, and feel better about holding onto things that let you create. Anything related to consumption like a TV for example should be on "consider ditching" list.
As far as cooking goes, well if that is your thing keep it. We ditched ours as we ate too much anyway. We worried that we would spend more money and eat out more, but basically we ended up eating less and losing weight.
For us it has meant outsourcing a lot of stuff. Instead of burning all home movies and photos to blu-ray, we are more selective, and upload stuff to the cloud. We used to have external hard drives and actual servers, now it is just laptops and the cloud.
Overall we are spending about the same. What we save on collecting crap, we spend on services. We are saving on power, and go out more. We spend less time at home, and less time cleaning up.
EDIT: Plus now we only need a much cheaper and smaller flat. Rent is cheaper, but heating is MUCH cheaper.
Your situation doesn't seem that different from mine actually. I'm also married, which does make a big difference in lifestyle.
But I cannot possibly bring myself to throw away books. It's (almost) religious. Books are the foundation of civilized culture. The nazis burnt books and destroyed cultures (the things parents teach you..).
I agree with that aspect, however I dd not throw them away, I gave most of the technical ones away at user groups and conferences, and the novels to a second hand shop.
No I couldn't destroy them either. Also you have to separate the actual material in the book itself, from the dead tree that gets dragged around with it.
When I was honest with myself, it was purely the financial aspect that made getting rid of my books a difficult proposition. I gave away over a thousand euros worth of books. I kept less than 10 that I hadn't read yet, and will give them away once they are read. We kept a lot of my 2 year old daughter's books, as she doesn't have a kindle yet, but we didn't keep all of them.
Classic case of letting sunk costs influence a decision about the future. I think we almost all do this at least some of the time. I have lots of DVDs that I never watch, but I think about the money that was spent on them and it makes it harder to get rid of them, even though that's irrational.
I still wonder if I could have made more money back by spending more effort on selling them. I probably could have, but it would have taken longer. But you get some freedom in return for your capital assets, that is how I rationalize it.
Family minimalism is a lot harder I think than individual minimalism. Most minimalist blogs paint a picture of a single male hipster with a macbook couch-surfing between RoR consulting gigs. Family minimalism cannot be that extreme.
Our books and cds were the easiest to get rid of, we both have kindles, and noticed that we never re-read books anyway, and listened to mp3s or streaming radio rather than cds. The hardest bit was thinking about what it represents in financial terms.
I would say keep the musical instruments. A couple of ideas I have seen floating around are the 100 things idea, where each person has 100 things, and if you want to buy something and have 100 things you have to decide what to ditch. I think it is fully acceptable to have a musical instrument as one of your 100 things.
The other idea I like is splitting things into the create or consume categories, and feel better about holding onto things that let you create. Anything related to consumption like a TV for example should be on "consider ditching" list.
As far as cooking goes, well if that is your thing keep it. We ditched ours as we ate too much anyway. We worried that we would spend more money and eat out more, but basically we ended up eating less and losing weight.
For us it has meant outsourcing a lot of stuff. Instead of burning all home movies and photos to blu-ray, we are more selective, and upload stuff to the cloud. We used to have external hard drives and actual servers, now it is just laptops and the cloud.
Overall we are spending about the same. What we save on collecting crap, we spend on services. We are saving on power, and go out more. We spend less time at home, and less time cleaning up.
EDIT: Plus now we only need a much cheaper and smaller flat. Rent is cheaper, but heating is MUCH cheaper.