We have a 5-month old daughter. She is amazing and we love her.
But she owns too much stuff.
I thought I knew what we were in for, in terms of how much stuff we were going to accumulate when she was born, but boy was I wrong. Over the course of five months, our daughter has accumulated more clothing, toys, gadgets & gizmos than Laura and I combined.
Over the course of five months, Laura and I have also realized something important:
Babies Don’t Need So Much Stuff!
Our daughter is so simple. She is happy because we take care of her, not because she owns 40 sleepers.
Now, I understand that for the sanity of the parent, you should have some spare clothing because there’s pee & poo involved, and blah blah, I’ll spare you the details. And yes, it’s cute to have pretty dresses or funky overalls, however, a baby certainly does not need as much clothing as you think! I know from experience now.
The same goes for toys & other miscellaneous baby items.
Babies Are Good Business
The baby industry is booming. Why? Because people have babies all the time. There are always babies, and there will always be more babies. Big businesses know this, and they know how to get your money if you have one (or more). This is because not only do they take advantage of our excessive consumer mindset (“I want that new thing because it’s shinier than my older one!”) but they can play the safety card because it’s our precious baby we’re talking about here (“Buy this mattress because it’s safer than the other identical mattress that’s half the price!”).
We’re very spoiled, excessive, and entitled here in our Western Society and it’s easy to think we need to buy all of the things we are told to buy when it comes to our babies. However, it’s really not the case, and babies don’t need as much as we think.
Moving Out & Ridding the Excess
We are currently in the process of moving out of our place and for the first time, we’ve had to face the monstrosity of excess that we’ve accumulated for our baby. Because we’ve been embracing minimalism a lot more lately, we simple cannot accept how much stuff we own for our baby.
Let me just give you a brief insight as to how we’ve embraced minimalism:
There is a single dresser in our apartment.
I do not own a dresser, nor do I store my clothing in a dresser. I can proudly say that all of the clothing I own can easily fit into a large backpack.
Laura does not own a dresser, nor does she store her clothing in a dresser. She has significantly less clothing than the average female.
The dresser is exclusively for all of Ayla’s clothing.
Eliminate, Eliminate, Eliminate!
After taking everything out of Ayla’s dresser, we were surprised to see in the heaps of excess, that most of the clothing was never used, will never be used, or is either too small for Ayla now.
We decided we had to do something about it. It’s definitely a process, but we’re making good progress—donating, selling and trashing much of the excess.
It’s liberating! And I challenge you to go through your baby’s dressers, rooms, closets, or whatever, and eliminate, eliminate, eliminate!