Hello and I hope you are having fun exploring my personal and lifestyle redesign blog, The Minimal Woman. I wanted to give you all a little introduction to myself and the journey that got me to where I am today. This might get a little long, but wanted to give you all some of my background. I will follow this up with some more in-depth blogs about specific items I touch on here in the following weeks.
I grew up in the Los Angeles area and have lived here most of my life. I attended a small liberal arts school and graduated with a B.A in History and minors in Art History and Politics. You might ask what I planned to do with that degree and the answer is simple, the plan all along was to go to law school. I started law school right after college and finished with more in school loans than most people have in mortgage debt and packing on more pounds than I normally carried.
For the next 10 years or so, my debt and my waistline just seemed to grow no matter how hard I thought I was working at it. Sure, there were times when I lost a little weight and paid off a little debt, but really, I was just basically walking in place. Not truly willing to make any sacrifices or make any lasting changes to any habits to redesign my life in the way I kept telling myself I wanted to.
In June of 2017 that all finally changed. I went on a big family vacation and hated that I knew I would be stretching my pocketbook to make it happen. Then I saw pictures of the trip and couldn’t believe how big I had let myself get. THINGS HAD TO CHANGE!
That next week I began making changes. I began reading about minimalism and was totally hooked. I knew this was the path I was going to take. Being a single woman with no children, it has always been my goal to travel as much as possible, but instead of making memories in other counties, I was just collecting more and more goods, till my house was so crowded with all the stuff (most of it still in boxes from when I moved in during the summer of 2016) that I really wasn’t comfortable having people over. I was also collecting more and more pounds and has hit my highest weight ever and now instead of planning a hike with friends or an international white-water rafting trip, I was spending my money on fast food and snacks from the vending machine, knowing I wasn’t healthy enough to take all the adventures I wanted to take.
Over the next year I had started to make small changes, which eventually all started to add up. I had lost enough weight that everyone was commenting on it. But I wasn’t necessarily doing it in a healthy way, yes, I was eating less but I was still eating mostly processed junk food. I had also got stalled on my path to minimize my household. I had done the easy places and rooms, but was stuck on where to start on the bigger areas. In January 2017, I ended up in the emergency room with a life-threatening asthma attack and that was my second wake-up call and I decided to get serious in minimizing my lifestyle and my diet. Over the last couple months, I have taken many steps in that direction and I am determined to continue that path to my goals by becoming my most minimal me. I know that by continuing this journey of redesigning my person and my lifestyle I can become The Minimal Woman I want to be! I also know that anyone reading this can do the same. It is time we become our best by minimizing the rest.
Leave a Reply