00:06
Hi, this is Katie, and thank you for joining me on the Creating Your Sanctuary podcast, and this is a podcast about creating those little moments and space that support you.

00:19
And today I wanted to talk about feeling at home with less.

00:24
And we experience this about seven, 8 months ago when we moved from the U.S. to the Netherlands and I wasn't sure how it would go.

00:36
We had a kitchen full of items we had collected and built up over 20 years and we had silverware from our wedding.

00:49
We had just gotten a new KitchenAid mixer from the Christmas before we left, and we had, um, so many items in our kitchen to make so many different things.

01:05
And when we decided to move here,

01:09
I came on an early trip by myself to check in and get utilities started and everything like that.

01:17
Um, so that when all 3 of us landed the month after we could get going faster.

01:25
So when I came, I brought a few knives, a couple pots.

01:30
I didn't have any dishes, and so I bought some paper plates, but also borrowed a couple plates from my neighbors.

01:38
And a couple silicone spatulas, and I had ordered a new set of frying pans to be delivered the day.

01:50
I didn't realize it would be the actual day we moved in.

01:53
Um, but they happened to show up that afternoon.

01:56
And I also had my water bottle and I reused some juice bottles from the grocery store.

02:03
So when you are living on your own, I do feel like you can be pretty bare bones. And I really enjoyed the creativity of not having much hair at all.

02:14
It was an empty apartment.

02:15
There wasn't much of anything.

02:19
I had to bring a couple towels in the blanket to sleep on.

02:22
But it's in those moments when you don't have much, you don't have much to care for either.

02:30
So when I would make myself a little dinner, and it was so much easier for me to focus just on my own needs for food and cleaning up.

02:39
that it was almost a mini vacation, but it wasn't because I was also accepting a lot of packages.

02:48
So that we would have the very basics when we all moved in the next month.

02:54
And even when we did, when all 3 of us arrived, and we were getting ready to receive a larger shipment of desks, desk chairs, dishes, we still didn't have a whole lot.

03:12
And it was so refreshing to not have much to just worry about and that, We could reuse what we have in different ways.

03:22
It's not like we needed 5 different spatulas.

03:25
We just needed like one or two, but on the same side of everything.

03:29
There was so much that we let go of before we even got on the plane.

03:35
Fortunately, we found a family in need of many of these things.

03:40
They didn't have furniture.

03:41
They didn't have dishes or things for their kitchen.

03:45
They had to keep themselves safe by moving very quickly.

03:50
And so it felt really like good timing for everyone to be able to transfer all of our items to them.

03:58
But yet there were certain items that we still wanted to bring with us.

04:04
There were certain coffee cups that we wanted to bring with us that were handmade and that we had acquired on trips and special moments and from artists that we greatly admired.

04:14
And I do feel like we have formed our home here with more of just the bare essentials.

04:21
And I feel really proud in that.

04:24
I do feel like you can have one set of sheets per bed, but it's going to make it harder.

04:32
When it's laundry day to try to get everything back on.

04:36
So having a minimum of 2 there was important, but we don't have any more than that.

04:42
We used to have like 5 sets of sheets and you just acquire them over the years, right?

04:48
But it just feels so much better to have the same with like towels.

04:55
You have a set of towels and you rotate them out so that you have time to do the laundry, but the new ones are already up.

05:00
And having a desk that just has my essentials for my business and having dishes that we really love.

05:12
Our old dishes were from our wedding, but they were starting to wear, and we had enjoyed them for a very long time, but we did bring, as I said, our silverware over, and that feels, because they were a really nice set that were from multiple friends and family, it feels really good to have them here. And to have our best knives, a course of knives that we wanted to bring with us.

05:39
And we're really happy to see them every day, you know, to be able to use them. And my husband just sharpened them and they're amazing now.

05:48
They were, um, actually, some of them were specials from a local grocery store who had one of those holiday promotions where you collect points and then you can buy a knife. And we didn't think we were going to do it, but then we realized we had a bunch of points.

06:04
So we got a couple new ones.

06:06
And we're so glad that we have them here.

06:10
We also went through a fiasco of getting a new couch because our old couch, we loved so much.

06:16
I think that would have been one of the main things we would have tried to have gotten here because it was so functional that we could turn it into a bed when we had guests, but it was also so soft, but we knew that it would be very hard to bring that here with us.

06:31
So we did purchase a couch and because we hadn't tried it out in the store, we found, whoa, this was way not our comfort zone, this did not feel like a home for us.

06:44
It did turn into a bed, but we ended up returning it.

06:48
It was the 1st big purchase like that, we ended up returning.

06:51
And then we went to the store, tried out a bunch and we found the one we have now and it feels very much like the one we left.

07:00
Yet it's very different and very updated. In the sense of this is kind of the new home that we have, the new comfort that we have here.

07:11
And there's something to that, that these new blankets that we have here, new pillows, new comfort zones that we've created, does feel, you know, like the new us here. And we don't have to store too much away either because we don't have a lot of space here.

07:33
There's no closets.

07:35
There's like a utility closet.

07:38
We keep most of our linens under the bed.

07:40
It's not like we have tons of space, even though our space is on the larger side, there's just not a lot of storage spaces.

07:49
So it just feels really good to be able to wake up in the morning, to know that we went through an entire garage and shed full of things and lots of closets full of storage boxes, of things that we got rid of.

08:08
And it's, we can wake up in the morning here and no, we don't have to ever go through those again.

08:13
They're gone.

08:14
And that's what makes this place feel so much more like home is because everything is more concentrated into the things that we love.

08:22
And the country that we're in, we're falling in love with too.

08:24
We know we are a creative family.

08:27
And so when we look at things, we can see how we can use them multiple ways.

08:32
Defining what is essential to you is hard.

08:36
And it takes coming up with a set of rules of what your new life is going to be, to look at the items that you have and rule out what you can't bring with you to that new life.

08:48
A big part of it for us was anything that we had to plug in the wall here.

08:54
The plugs are different in the Netherlands from the U.S.

08:58
And so many of those items we could rule out, or we could look at the items that we have, if they were compatible and just find a different plug.

09:08
But when you have those set of rules, you can apply those to many different things of like, maybe there's one hobby that you can't do over here.

09:19
One of the things that we couldn't do here was that my husband couldn't have his 3D printer.

09:25
It just, it was in our garage and it had to be in the garage for him to run it, but there was absolutely no space to have it here.

09:32
And so he did sell it to a friend and that friend is very much enjoying it.

09:37
And we will find a maker space here to enjoy creating things with 3D printers here.

09:45
So, again, getting creative and going, you know what, maybe I don't actually have to have it, but I can find another way to enjoy my hobby.

09:54
So how do you feel at home with less?

09:57
And if you have less already, I would love to hear how that's working out for you.

10:01
Because I think as we have less and less stuff around us, it can actually feel a lot lighter and a lot more expansive in our everyday lives.

10:13
So if you're about to start the process of downsizing and getting rid of a lot of things or if you have been going through that and gently every day, getting rid of things that you just no longer serve you or have space in your home or space in your life, I congratulate you for starting or continuing that journey.

10:32
It's not easy.

10:34
There's a lot of emotions surrounding it.

10:37
And it's going to take time to look at everything that you have.

10:42
Now there may be some instances, especially with some hobbies, that you can look at a full box of things and go, you know what, I don't need anything in that box and that might expedite the whole process for you.

10:55
But a lot of other times, we have to go through some of the minutia to get to where we want to go.

11:02
But each step is bringing you closer and closer to a home that feels good to you, your own sanctuary.

11:10
So, however you're creating your sanctuary right now, it's enough.

11:14
I'll see you next time.