As I look out of our window this week, I see a sprawling blue sky and a sparkling ocean view. The whales come up and say “hi” on a daily basis.  This is life in paradise.  During a pandemic, during a lockdown, I couldn’t have chosen a better place to temporarily reside.  I have to remind myself that I did choose this place.  I did choose this life.  I am deeply thankful for our passive income that helps us afford the flexibility of time and place. 

Our family has been on the road for about two months now and are planning on traveling for another few months. We just extended our most recent stay for another 15 days.  In this pandemic, it is easy to blend the days with nights. Without any day job obligation, we can be where we want to be to get through the hardest part. Thank you, passive income! 

When we travel for an extended amount of time, we are forced to pack light.  Before we departed on our journey, I constrained down the belongings of myself and my two young children into one carry-on bag.  Even though I was a little apprehensive that this would be enough, packing light has been a wonderful experience.  I have found that we did not need more items than that.  Even though there are many travel tips to share, I think the more important conversation is how this minimalistic lifestyle has helped my mindset, attitude and outlook far more than I thought it would.

The Joy of a Single Carry-on

In order to fit everything belonging to three of us into one carry-on bag, we had to make some difficult choices and commit to minimalism.  It was a great experiment that I went through after watching the Netflix Documentary: Minimalism.  The whole point was “less is more.”  Every object we own should bring us joy.  It is similar to Marie Kondo’s philosophy that each item that you own should spark joy.  

In our case, we modified the concept to be that each item is essential to have on our trip. Assuming we would not be able to do laundry for 10 days at a time, we mixed and matched 10 days worth of outfits for each of us and fit into our carry-on. 

Because our carry-on bag was full, it became a no-brainer to refrain from purchasing anything unless we absolutely had to have it.  This was fantastic, because it supported our decision against acquiring additional material items. 

It also made it easier to decide what to keep.  If a pair of pants was worn, we tossed it out.  If we noticed we weren’t using a particular article of clothing, we left it behind. 

A magical thing happened through this work!  We started traveling lighter and lighter. And I started noticing how often I use the items I choose to keep.  It’s like every item had a job or assignment.

The Joy of Finding Time

When we check in to a new place, instead of it being cluttered like our home can be, it is actually very functional and pleasingly empty. 

I am able to easily find my belongings, and those of my children, since all of my things fit into one drawer.  The power that I didn’t realize is how much headspace it gives to me.  I’m starting to measure the time saved due to adopting the minimalism approach.  Since I love crunching numbers and like to quantify circumstances, here is a mathematical way to measure the benefit. 

1. Daily time saved to find a misplaced item: 10 min x 3 items/day = 30 min/day

2. Daily time saved to make decisions on what to wear for my children: 10 min/day

3. Time saved cleaning up: 30 mins/day (I hardly clean up after my kids now since there is no clutter to clean.) 

4. Time saved folding 30 days of laundry vs. 10 days of laundry: 1 hour/month

• 30 days of laundry: 0.5 min/item x 180 items (pants, underwear, top) + 30 mins procrastination = 120 mins (2 Hours? Really?!) 

• 10 days of laundry (some items used more than once): 0.5 min/article x 40 articles x 3 times a month = 60 mins

Adding this all together is about 72 mins/day of time saved. That is 1.5 day in a month and 18 hours a year! 

The Joy of Clearing the Mind

Not only has minimalism saved a tremendous amount of time, but most importantly head space. I would say it has easily saved me 10 decision points a day between what to wear, whether to do laundry today, if I want to buy something, etc. 

Due to the limited amount of toys that we could bring, we focused more on spending valuable time with each other with outdoor activities.  As a result, my daughter learned how to swim on this trip.  My kids are more resourceful and creative, because they cannot just rely on toys to provide entertainment.  They need to think outside of the toy box. 

The minimalist practice continued into my business thinking.  I found myself making better time choices and decisions on priorities.  I mean, who am I kidding?  When the view from your window looks like the one I have right now, you start thinking hard about how you can spend way more time outside with the people you are traveling with. 

The Joy of the Future

So I set a goal for myself for when I am back home.  I am going to work on decluttering our house and get it down to the minimal amount of items that I hold.  If we can live months on the road with what we have in one carry-on, I am sure, we can live with a fraction of what we have at home. 

I encourage everyone to try to experiment living only with 20 items for a week to find your own headspace.