December 21, 2022 • 51 mins
Hear about Matt’s new favorite holiday cocktail, and then for our Bestie Episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Meg Nordmann who is the author of “Have Yourself a Minimalist Christmas: Slow Down, Save Money, & Enjoy a More Intentional Holiday”. Being smack in the middle of the holidays, we can often find ourselves wondering where all of our time, and money is running off to- but Meg wants to change that with her approach to minimalism. Her book presents strategies to help us to resist the clever marketing and cultural expectations that this season often brings. We talk about Meg’s own history with consumption, the relatively new history of Santa, how she approaches gift giving with her children, convincing extended family to give fewer gifts, and how she creates a minimalist calendar around the holidays.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joel, how's it going, buddy. I'm doing well, my friend,
But you just told my jobst. On Bestie episodes, I
like to kick things off, to let folks know that
you are in for something different during this episode and
shake things up. I'm all right that So a quick
question for you before we introduce our Bestie episode for today?
Are you a fan of eggnoge? Who isn't? Okay, just
(00:20):
not the crappy stuff. There's a lot of bad eggnog
out there there. There is some crappy stuff for sure.
So the reason I ask is because I've discovered a
new holiday cocktail that has very eggnog like qualities. It's
called a flip flip cocktail. So particularly I've been making uh,
rum flips and it's rum sugar, some cream, but then
(00:41):
an entire egg and you shake it up and it's
at uh what's it called? What's the spice? And eggnog?
Not ginger, not meg, a little bit of nutmeg on
top and make it pretty. It's like a nightcap. Sitting
there on the fire right, you're picking up on the
vibes and putting out there right us for craft beer advice.
But we know cocktails, we know cocktails as well. So
if you're listening and you don't want you're a fan
(01:03):
of eggnog and you don't want to make like an
entire batch of it at home, and also you're thinking, well,
I don't want to go out and have to buy
some look up a rum flip cocktail. It's really easy
to miss put a link to your favorite one in
the show. It's just I think it's like all recipes
or or whatever. I don't know, just the standard. It's
the standard cocktail. But I have been a big fan
(01:24):
of it. The mentioned that one today before we introduced
our interview that we are re airing today, and it
was a conversation that we had with Meg Nordman last
year about having a minimalist Christmas, and we hope that
that is the case for your Christmas this year. I
hope you enjoy this conversation that we had almost basically
a year ago. Yeah, it's kind of like a I mean,
(01:44):
I think it's a last minute reminder to folks to
let them know that you don't have to be scheduled
to the max, you don't have to overspend in order
to have a fun, magical, special Christmas. Oftentimes, uh, you
could borrow from the tenants of minimalism. You don't have
to go like full stark white everything or everything has
to be black, because we're not those guys either. No. Yeah,
(02:05):
we're both wearing plaid flannel shirts today. I always wear plaid,
Matt I wear plati a decent bit. But Meg published
a minimalist Christmas book last year, and so I think
there's a lot of lessons that we need to be
reminded of today. We'll be back here on Friday with
a fresh Friday flight for you. We're just taking a
day off to spend with the family leading up to Christmas.
Here but without further ado, here's that conversation with Meg.
(02:28):
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I'm Matt,
and today we're talking a very minimalist Christmas with Meg Nordman. Yes,
(02:54):
today we have the pleasure of speaking with Meg Nordman,
who is the author of Have Yourself a Minimalist Christmas.
And you know what, the holiday is quickly approaching. We
can often find ourselves just wondering where all of our
time and money is running off to. Right, like Christmas parties,
you're in school events for the kids, the cost of
decorating gifts for family members. The list could go on,
(03:14):
but Meg wants to shift your mindset by walking you
through some of the tenets of minimalism in her book,
and she's going to give us some strategies here to
help us to resist the clever marketing and the cultural
expectations that this season often brings. So Meg Nordman, thank
you for joining us today on the podcast. Thank you,
Matt and Joel. I'm really grateful to be here talking
(03:36):
with you today. Well, we're glad to have you, Meg,
and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.
And I do think, especially in the culture we find
ourselves in, this conversation is an important one, hopefully helpful
for the how to money audience. But before we get
into all that stuff, I want to ask you, Matt
and I we like to drink a beer. We're drinking
a beer right now as we speak, and it's something
(03:58):
that we spend I would say, a lot of money
on while we're trying to save and invest well for
the future. So, yeah, what's that in your life? Do
you have a craft beer equivalent something you find yourself
spending more money on than most people would think is reasonable. Yes,
I definitely do. I'm thirty four and have seen the
effects of all this sun in Florida, and so I
(04:20):
have been splurging way you too much on skincare products
and at the same time I'm hoarding swimsuits. I've gotten
pretty minimalist in all aspects except for the swimsuit department.
So I'm just out in the sun in these swimsuits
and then you know, getting all these UV rays and
then covering myself and hats as well. Well maybe we'll
(04:43):
get to this later on in the episode two. But
you actually live in Florida, like on an island, is
that right? Yeah, Anastasia Island, So you spent a lot
of a lot of time on the beach. It's not
like you live in Nebraska and you just have like
an infatuation with swimwear. Yeah, I mean the swimwear basic.
That's that is my my clothes. So my husband's an
avid surfer and we're a quick bike ride from the beach,
(05:07):
so yeah, it's it's a free thing. We don't have
to spend money. We're constantly entertained, especially having kids. I've
always enjoyed the beach to a certain extent, but the
ability to go to a beach and then just let
the kids essentially just run wild. I now see the
appeal of that, I'm going to the beach when you
have kids. It's like, oh, wow, you've never been, you know,
(05:29):
a quarter mile away from you before, but you are.
And I'm okay with that because the beach it's a
good place to be. I love to let them have
that space because they do. They just run like the
Toddler's little kids, and they just run and run and run,
and they feel like they're so far away. But I
mean it's just a wide open space. We can see them.
We can go jog for him if we need to.
But it is nice to kind of like let them
(05:49):
off the leash in a sense, you know. Yeah, I
love that. Alright, So mag let's talk about minimalism in general,
kind of like what set you down that path in
the first place. Yes, So, I used to be I
guess you could say, like borderline hoarder. I was, you know,
not hoarder to the level of being on a TV
show with the dead rats in my house or anything.
(06:11):
But I've now realized that my parents are a bit
of hoarders and so I just I never saw anyone
declutter anything in my life, and so I never did.
I moved from apartment to apartment, from state to state,
and just kept boxing up all this stuff and never
let go of anything. And at some point my boyfriend
(06:33):
moved in with me, and wait, we have a long
tangled love story. We had a few years break there,
and in that break he'd been surfing around the globe
and became a minimalist and the sense that he just
had a backpack on surfboard and hitchhiked from country to
country to find good surf. And so he came back
and moved in with me and just had like nothing,
(06:54):
you know, He's like five T shirts and two board
shorts and surfboard and the guitar, you know. Yeah, and uh.
And then he had to move into my place, where
I'd never let go of anything since I was a child,
So that was probably a shock to his system. And
so he kind of just led by example, both in
like the financial independence route and wanting to be debt free.
(07:18):
Like never even occurred to me that I could be
debt free or financially independent or not have so much stuff.
So I really give a lot of credit to him
for leading the way there. So, um, I had a
shopoholic problem with clothes and shoes in particular. So I
was briefly out in Albuquerque, New Mexico, doing digital marketing
(07:42):
for tech startups, and we moved to Florida after we
got debt free, and I found Marie Kondo's book The
Magical Art of Tidying Up and read about decluttering for
the first time in my life. That that sounds was
stilly to say that. That That was a lightbulb moment for me.
Was like, Oh, I don't have to keep everything, and
(08:05):
you know in her classic doesn't spark joy question And
so I let go of things and it felt like
a lot. But I did not become a minimalist overnight
at all. Um but I felt like because it was
my first time letting go of things, it felt like
a lot of things were let go. But my god,
we had my SUV pact. We had a huge trailer
(08:28):
just loaded up. It wasn't enough. We had to get
a U haul truck and get his mother in law
to drive behind us. And I still literally left things
on the sidewalk because I couldn't cram it in. That's
and you know that was like my stuff, and um,
we moved into a little seven square foot place here
on the beach and couldn't fit it in. I had,
(08:51):
you know, probably two thousand square group of stuff, and
so I had to declutter a little further. And then
we were living in chaos because I still had crammed
and we had a kid right away. I was like
eight months pregnantly moved and once they start walking, the
toys start moving and they scatter, and I get everywhere
and there's no way to contain it. So it just
(09:13):
was bonkers. And I was spending my life in this
like bent over a position of just picking up and
picking up and picking up, and all I was doing
was massive loads of laundry. The couch was just this mountain,
this never ending mountain to sift through of clothes. You
couldn't sit on it. The dishes were always piled up.
And so there was finally this lightbulb moment as as
(09:34):
I was relearning new shopping habits, because we had this
goal to hit financial independence at a pretty quick right,
so I had to stop buying so much stuff in
the first place. And then that realization of if I
just have less stuff then I have less things to clean,
which means I have more time, and that was really
(09:56):
all I craved. You know, the whole point of financial
independence was time. But I also need to let go
of the stuff because I wanted to be present with
my kid, not cleaning up all day. I wanted to
play with her, and I wanted to write. I've been
wanting to write books forever, but I didn't have time
to sit down and write. And I want to make
art and I want to make music. And so once
I finally had that real light bulb moment and figured
(10:20):
out that asking does it spark joy? It like barely
scratches the surface of what you need to be asking
when you let go of things, um and finding those
deeper questions and really kind of digging into my own
psychology of why I was clutching to so many things
I was able to let go, and they all just
(10:40):
kind of work in tandem, Like the ability to save
money and the ability to let go items. It just
really worked together for me, like everything clicked all at
the same time, and so we definitely became a minimalist household.
You know, We've got like two bowls for adults and
two kid bowls and six spoons, you know, and one
(11:03):
water glass for everyone. Now I do have enough to
sit about six people if I needed to, if we
happen to have family over our guests. It's just kind
of a rare event for us. And all that's tucked
away at a cabinet that's kind of higher up and
hard to reach. But you know, I can't possibly have
an overflowing kitchen when all we have is four bowls
(11:25):
in four cups, you know, like I don't need to
run the dishwasher anymore. And so you know, of course
I applied I applied that to clothes, and UM really
kind of capsule wardrobed everyone. And that was a big
deal for me. Um, As you know from my description,
I used to need like to walk in closets for
my clothes, and now I can see everything within like
(11:48):
a small you know, when you just open up a
closet door, that little window frame, that's it. That's all
I have hanging. And my husband and I share a
small chester drawers together, so we each have like two
drawers for ourselves. And it's just a huge, huge, huge improvement.
And so you know, there's no way I could fill
up our couch full of clothes now. So I gained
(12:09):
my time back and I was able to join in
the orchestra and make music again, and make art and
write a book. We go and hang out on the
beach all the time, and so we were able to
achieve our goals. My husband retired early this past April,
you know, cut our spending down to like seven thousand
dollars a year. It worked. But my problem was, even
(12:33):
despite really seeing all this improvement with our budget and
the improvement with decluttering the rest of the house, Christmas
was a big problem for me. Yeah. So well, let's
I want to camp out for one second on minimalism.
And you said that what began is like this forced
purge kind of turned into a choice and it led
(12:53):
to this like simplified lifestyle, which sounds like it's been
awesome for you for your family. Um, I just want
to know, like you know, before we get into the
Christmas stuff, what tips do you have for our listeners
who are who are saying, okay, Meg just said that
sparking joy that didn't go far enough. You had to
confront like some deeper demons and it was more than
(13:14):
just like tossing things out or and giving them to goodwill. Uh, Like,
how would you suggest people begin this process of minimalism
if they're kind of like just now getting wapped in
the face with the potential idea that they that they
should even consider it. Yeah, I know. One tip I
would suggest that was kind of a mind hack that
helped me was to look at things and say, well,
(13:35):
what is my favorite? Because when I went through my closet,
I had I'm not kidding, probably fifty little black dresses
like perfect fit me well, gorgeous little black cocktail dresses
that I would love to wear. But here I am
in this new season of life. I don't go to events.
I don't have a corporate job. You know, I'm a
(13:58):
mother and we're lucky if we go on two or
three real date nights, you know, like going out to
get cocktails a year. So why do I have fifty
of them? But you know, putting my fingers on them
to go through the decluttering process and asking does this
spark joy? Yes? It does? This dress me excited. It
(14:20):
makes me want to go out and do that thing,
even if I'm not doing that thing exactly. And it's
just that you like all of them, but you don't
need all of them exactly, and we have all these
ways we can nationalize it. Of well, this one is
great for a slightly more conservative one, and this one
costs four hundred dollars. But I go through when I say, okay,
(14:41):
I only get to day nights a year. What is
that very first little black dress that I'm going to
reach for that I know will apply to all situations,
that will always make me feel good, that will always
look great on me. Which one is that going to be?
Most people could do this. You know which dress are
out it? You know, my free you might be a shirt,
(15:02):
but you know, you know which one that is so okay?
That one stays, And then all the rest of those,
even though they all spark joy and I find them
all beautiful, it doesn't matter. I need to let it go.
And so I had to do that to a lot
of things, I mean, as permeated through all aspects of
your life. And so you're seeing the benefits of minimalism
(15:22):
across the board. But you mentioned how it's you know,
like Christmas in particular, it's still a problem for a
lot of folks. And I think we can all find ourselves,
you know, in that whirlwind of holiday gift giving, and
it's essentially become a part of our culture, you know,
like it's just ingrained in us, It's ingrained in the
lives that we live. And so can you talk us
through the evolution of Christmas and consumerism just becoming more
(15:42):
and more entwined. Yeah. So my child's first birthday, I
mean birthday, well that one too, probably, but her first Christmas.
You know, Santa gave her everything a child could need
for the first five years of their life. I mean
I just went overboard. I was just so excited because
as a parent, you get this role, or I feel it.
(16:03):
I had this role that I needed to create magic.
You know, I'm the magic maker, and I remembered, you know,
Christmas Morning feeling magical as a kid. So I was
very excited about this role and I just went overboard.
You know. I got the little stroller pram for the
baby doll, and I got the toy kitchen, and I
(16:23):
got the rocking horse, and I mean just everything. I
mean the picture of Christmas Morning was just ridiculous, and
you know, I was very proud of it in the moment,
but um, there was like nothing left to buy my
kid for the future years and there was no budget set.
There was no discussion about budget. Um, I just just
(16:47):
went ape with it. I had that moment after Christmas
when I kind of realized what I've done, like just
how out of control I've gotten and how much money
I'd spent, and then wanting to declutter almost everything I
just bought, like, oh wow, I just destroyed all of
(17:07):
my efforts here to keep things righted in. I just
went that that toy that created like fifteen minutes of
joy on Christmas morning is now you're like stubbing your
toel on through. Oh I can see now, I'm just
gonna be picking up all these little loose parts over
and over and over again and trying to keep them
in the basket. And they will never stay in the basket. So,
(17:28):
you know, over that next year of like kind of
seeing how much wreckage I had done. Also, I in
my journey to minimalism, I joined a lot of Facebook groups,
you know, for support and tips and everything. And I
started noticing after I came to grips with my own
problem with wrecking myself on Chris and it wasn't just me,
(17:49):
it was also the grandparents and the ants, and the friends.
I mean, I did it and they did it too,
you know, like it was just ridiculous. So being all
these questions of like, well, how do I ask my
mother in law to stop bringing in a truckload of gifts?
Or how do I now go from going overboard every
(18:10):
Christmas and creating this epic you know, amount of gifts
under the tree to a more minimalist approach of justice,
like four or five gifts? Are my kids going to
feel deprived? How are they going to deal with that
big switch? And so everyone's asking these same questions year
after a year, and I'm noticing that in all of
(18:30):
the groups. And that's when it occurred to me. Now
that I've consumed like twenty five books on minimalism and
audio books and the podcasts and stuff, I'm like, oh, no,
one's addressed how even as a practicing minimalist, we're still
falling into this consumerst trap during the holidays. The marketing
still gets to us too. We're not impermeable, do it. Well, Hey,
(18:51):
we've got a bunch more questions make to get to,
including how we actually don't turn off maybe that minimalism
down what it looks like to have a Christmas is
that is less influenced by consumerism. So we'll get to
some more questions about that with you right after this
break where we're back from the break and we're talking
(19:17):
with Meg Norman about having a minimalist Christmas and and Meg,
you know, before the break you're talking about your personal
history with how you kind of fell into the trap
of consuming more around the holidays. Can you talk to
something about the history of just consumerism and commercialism and
and the waters that we find ourselves swimming in. Yeah. Absolutely,
So this was a big help for me. So after
(19:39):
that first year of just going off the deep end,
the next year I felt it creeping up again. And
I don't know what it was, but I ended up googling,
you know, the history of Santa, because I was like,
what is it with this Santa? Like I'm playing Santa,
and I feel like I need to bring in the
whole sleigh full of toys? Um, why, Like what is
(20:00):
Santa's deal? Because it's almost like treated like a religion
in itself, you know, and we all play into this narrative,
the story as a whole society. We all do it together,
and so you know, I get on there and read
about the history, and it relieved so much pressure from
me just to understand this, and I was able to.
(20:24):
I don't completely opt out of it, but I've taken
five steps backwards, like homework, backing up into the bushes
kind of thing. When it comes to the way you
approached the sime, Yeah, yeah, so yeah. So to give
you a quick rundown, you know, you have St. Nicholas.
He's born into a d a d He's a monk
(20:44):
that gave away a lot of his wealth to the
poor and the needy. And he reappears in modern history
in the US anyway in seventeen seventy three because there
were some Dutch immigrants and they were just honoring the
anniversary of his death. And for whatever reason, uh New
York newspaper picks that up and runs a story on it,
(21:06):
and suddenly there's like a renewed interest in this guy St. Nicholas,
and about you know, twenty years later in the eighteen hundreds,
um images of him in little wood cuttings start getting
passed around of him slipping items into stockings, and then
about twenty years later, the stores catch onto these woodcuts
(21:27):
being passed around among families and they start advertising around
that and somehow work him into Christmas shopping. So, I
we're talking eighteen twenties, that's very recent history, you know.
And so twenty years later St. Nicholas starts morphing into
Santa and that poem towards the night before Christmas. It
(21:49):
was written by a preacher and he felt very embarrassed
by it. He just did it for his nieces, just
for fun, and then it got published and he felt like,
oh my gosh, I can't believe. But he was really
embarb and because it wasn't necessarily a religious text, it's
just a mythic. He yeah, he just dreamed up this
image of who this random Santa guy is that had
(22:10):
just started to kind of catch wind in newspapers and
shopping and advertising, and so he really shaped it with
that poem. And then the malls started offering live Santa's
and Macy's, you know, was the first one. And they
have their Thanksgiving parade that starts um in like the
nineteen twenties, and they have their Santa in the back
for the first time. And so Coca Cola and nineteen thirties,
(22:34):
ten years later catches wind of this and so they
start adding Santa to their advertising. So whoever the the
illustrator was for their advertising department really fine tuned what
he's supposed to look like to us now. So yeah,
Coca Cola kind of created our jolly red Santa. This
(22:54):
kind of stuff like really helped me go, oh my gosh,
this is and it continues. So just to give a
really quick rundown, the songs that hit the charts in
four were Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and that
starts this whole narrative around the good list, you know,
the good and the naughty, and then n nine is Rudolph,
(23:15):
nineteen fifty is Frosty, and two thousand five is Elf
on the Shelf. And so I'm kind of seeing this
like this very recent history timeline of like how we
created this story and how it was mostly created for
malls and products big corporations to have like another way
(23:36):
to make more sales in the wintertime. And that relieved
some of that pressure to create this magic. You know,
it's going to be magical no matter what. So I
didn't feel that impulse to buy so much of like,
oh my gosh, this thing is. It's not real. It's
not a religion as I don't have to participate in
(23:57):
this so much. So what it did for me was
I don't ask my kids what do you want for Christmas?
As much because I did that in the beginning. You know,
what do you want? What do you want? Here's the
you know, it's terrible, terrible like approach, having that continual
conversation about what they're looking to give for Christmas. How
how have you changed that conversational dynamic. Yes, so if
(24:20):
you go and meet Santa, don't go sit on his
knee and tell Santa what you want. Like that's just
one of those small things that adds to it, because
all we're asking kids is what do you want? Like
I just got an Amazon catalog in the mail with
toys that has one whole page is just stickers that
say I want this, this one, this one is my favorite.
(24:41):
You know. It's got little arrows and circles and stuff.
And I'm like, wow, we're literally handing these two children
and saying, have at it. Tell me everything you want.
And that is the message instead of hey, this is
a beautiful time of year. I love this season. Let's
go enjoy the snow. Let's go and look at the lights,
drink warm drinks together, you know, like that coziness, like
(25:03):
let's look at the twinkle lights and decorate the tree together,
like that togetherness and that piece and the joy that
we sing about in our carols. But instead we've kind
of shifted it all to what the corporations wanted us
to ask was what do you want? You know? So
I'm just careful not to talk about toys. They will
get toys. It will feel magical and exciting, but I
(25:27):
don't make all of November and December about asking that question.
So anyway, what are your strategies then when it comes
to gift giving, because as a minimalist, it can be
easy to to be like no gifts at all, right,
like the soup Nazi. But for Christmas gifts maybe nothing
for you. And so yeah, what like what what would
(25:48):
you recommend to folks who are saying, yes, you're right, Okay,
I get it. I see the connection between Christmas and consumerism,
and I want to make sure that our household isn't
overdoing it and then my kids aren't becoming like I
want this, I want that machines, which it's so easy
to get to this time of year, like how do
you decide how many gifts gifts you're going to give?
(26:08):
Like what sort of strategies have you emplemented? Yeah, so
you know, first of all, would be budget. Don't be
like me on my first Christmas as a parent and
not have one. So we have a pretty low one
now a hundred bucks for event tickets and two hundred
bucks for both kids combined, and I I get plenty
(26:32):
of things just with that amount. And then I also
kind of loosely do the four gift role. Um. You know,
there's a catchy poem that a lot of minimalists ascribed to,
and it's something you want, something you need, something to wear,
something to read. And I do like that, Like if
you set that up with your kids, that's the expectation,
you know, like now you do get to pick one
(26:54):
thing that you want, you know, and then your parents
probably know best of the thing that you need. And
then you know, you get to your nice new warm
clothes and here's some classic books for you to read.
And so there's these parameters around it, and you know
that's stuff that's not necessarily going to need to be decluttered.
Now I haven't quite yet started reciting that poem. To
(27:17):
my kids. They're still young, but I probably will shift
to it when they get a little bit older if
they need some parameters around it. Right now, I just
kind of keep an ear out to what is that
one thing that they want, and I try to keep
it down to about four to five items. And I
(27:37):
am really mindful and intentional about it, because I'm just
trying to imagine, will I want to declutter this in
a month? Like that is kind of a big question.
I ask myself a lot for birthday presents and Christmas
presents of will this stick around? What is the length
on this? The shelf life? Yeah? Yeah, the shelf life,
(27:58):
because I think how many parts I would think to
you write like a nerf gun with like add I
don't know, I don't want that. I mean when it
comes to our money, I mean, that's oftentimes what we
should be thinking about. We're not only thinking about the
feeling that it's going to give us right now what
we spend. That is certainly something we need to take
into account, but we also are thinking about those longer
term goals and thinking through the impact of those items
on your role as a parent, Like that is something
(28:21):
you definitely need to think through. How many of these
little pieces am I going to have to pick up?
How long with us actually entertain them? And so I
like that for gift rule though, so it's something you want,
something you need, something you wear, and then something you read. Okay,
so a book, okay. I I think about that when
I think about the fact that, like you've heard of
the different love languages, I think there's five of them,
but like gift giving, that is an actual love language.
(28:42):
And and so I think, well, how do you square
that with the fact that there's some folks out there
who really like receiving gifts? But at the same time,
if you're trying to be minimal, you're at odds with
that with that behavior. And I feel like quality over
quantity could be just a good principle to keep in mind.
And if you have somebody like that in your life,
is that right? Oh? Yes, I definitely do. I have
(29:03):
several love language people in my life, and um, it
is kind of funny to be the author of this
book and like pass it to them, and and I
talk about the love languages and how some people truly
do identify with that of gift giving is their love language.
If anyone, UM, listens to the minimalists, they will argue
(29:26):
this point that there is not a fifth love language,
that gift giving cannot be a love language because love
is not transactional. And I do like that, but man,
some people really do feel this way and you can't
reprogram them. So some of the things that I've learned
to help with this is one to drop hints, so
(29:50):
in conversation you don't even have to use fancy words
like minimalism or decluttering. It kind of scares these people,
but just to kind of mention, Like I stood this
the other day um with one of them and said,
you know, I just went through the kids clothes and
I wanted to make, you know, see how many winter
clothes they had and make sure they had everything they
(30:11):
needed for the winter. And they are set, they have plenty,
They have more than enough, and we're good for the
winter because I know this particular person loves to give
an overabundance of clothes, which is a very you know, generous, wonderful,
blessed thing to have in your life, but it it
is um to a level that actually makes my life
(30:33):
feel overwhelming chaotic. So just dropping hints is a good way,
and I have a couple of scripts in my book
where I kind of show examples of what these conversations
look like and how it can kind of organically flow
to let them catch your drift. But in case they don't,
maybe you need to set some limits with your family.
So we've done this a few times with our extend
(30:54):
family and it's great. So and it changes every year
for some reason. You some you think something would dick,
but sometimes it can look like a financial limit. So
you can say, okay, we're not spending over per person,
or fifty dollars or a hundred dollars per person, whatever
feels right for your family, or it is just one
(31:15):
item per person within the family, or maybe it's, um,
we did this one year. We're just exchanging books. Everybody
pick a book, you know, it can be fiction or nonfiction,
and that is all we're giving to one another. And yeah,
that was a really good year. Or I've seen other
people do okay, only the grand kids and no adults,
(31:37):
but whatever those parameters are, just get a conversation going
with your family to start setting some kind of guidelines
and limits, and you'll probably find that there will be
relieved for that too, because otherwise they're like, oh my gosh,
I need to get three things for everybody that you
know them as well. And you're maybe like that pressure
(31:57):
release valve by starting that conversation that says, Hey, you
don't have to live up to these fake expectations that
nobody actually has of you that the movies make it
seem like you need to live up to. And so
so Meg, what do you do, like in the middle
of a Christmas celebration or a holiday celebration when like
there there's like a an expectation that hasn't met or
(32:19):
maybe someone's supersedes that kind of rules that have been
laid out or in a grandparent like goes over board.
You say supersed but what you really mean is they
broke the rule. They broke the ground rules. Yeah, or
if just like maybe maybe this year it was too
late and you didn't establish any ground rules and you're like, man,
they just overdid it. Like how how do you like
get over having a sour pust liff on your face? Um?
(32:42):
Because you know what all these additional toys or all
this additional stuff means for your life and it's not
something that you're looking to, Like, how do you navigate
those kind of relational waters. Yeah. I see that a
lot within the minimalist groups, where people feel like almost
like the person did it on part purpists, like they
project that onto them and that it was vicious and
(33:03):
that they were undermining all of their work. And I
tell them, they're we're minimalist. I told them not to
get us anything, and they did it anyway. They're sabotaging me,
you know. Um, But I have like a whole chapter
talking about that. You just cannot take this attitude with it.
No one is trying to sabotage you. It really is
that you know, love language for them, they feel this way.
(33:26):
They're not seeing your wish lists, are going by your
parameters and your guidelines, And you just have to smile
and give that hug and say thank you and say
I love you, because that is actually all these people
are looking for. They're looking for for that validation of
love and use your manners and but don't let it
(33:48):
get past the living room. You know, I'm serious. You
are the person in control, and you just have to
constantly know that you are in control of what goes
in your house. You have to be a ruthless editor
and curator of your literally, don't let those items leave
the living rooms. What you're saying, I thought you're talking
about like the emotions, but you're talking about the actual objects.
I'm talking about the objects because I you know, I
(34:12):
freaking published a book on this, and I still have
these people giving me way, way, way too much, giving
our family and our kids, and it's wonderful. And but
you know, I get to say, even though this person
gave me a sweater and as a gift, this sweater
does not have to go in my closet. You say goodbye,
(34:33):
you know, Merry Christmas. They go on their way, and
you just immediately start making decisions. You know, that's when
you go to your closet and say, okay, is this
new sweater going to replace an old one? Let's getting
too worn out if so, pull that other one out
right now. Don't don't add add two. And I know
it sounds so horrible and sad to say all loud,
(34:55):
but man, there are so many things that I don't
let get past the living room and got it into
a box, into the trunk and get donated to a
fabulous thrift shop we have here in town that helps
women with domestic abuse escaped that and I find someplace
like that that resonates and makes you feel good so
that you can let go. Because I know a lot
(35:18):
of people do have a problem with saying this was
a gift and therefore I have to keep it. You know,
I used to be that way. I kept every gift
ever given to me. Yeah, what's crazy is that at
the end of a day of exchange of gifts like that.
I mean, to be honest, that's probably the last thing
that most folks want to do, right, I mean, they
just take the item. Folks will leave if you know
they're leaving the house. And so it's gonna take that
(35:38):
extra little push, like you said, to make that decision,
because it's honestly probably gonna be the easiest time to
make that decision before it ends up sitting in your
drawer for weeks or months years. Yeah. So you've talked
about how it is what we can go about buying
fewer gifts. You talked about how we can communicate with
family or friends to maybe buy a fewer items for us.
(35:58):
We're gonna talk next about ways that we can go
about seeking after a minimalist Christmas at home, and also
just how we go about doing that with our time,
with our calendars, and we'll get to both of those
right after this break. All right, we're back from break
(36:20):
still talking with Meg Norman about having a minimalist Christmas.
And Meg, that was just a lot of useful information
when it comes to navigating the holidays with your kids,
with your parents, like for yourself. But I want to
I want to ask you to, like, how does a
minimalist decorate for Christmas? Because when it comes to putting
up lights or I'm guessing you don't, how many like
(36:40):
Christmas blow up decorations in your front yard? Like how
do you handle the decorating? Yes, we don't have any
blow up decorations in the yard, but in my life
in this chapter, it just doesn't work for me. And um,
it did come down to this realization of I my
house is a container, you know, and I only have
(37:04):
so much square footage that I can live in. And
why is my entire I only have two tiny closets.
Why is one entire closet basically devoted to Christmas items
that come out for whopping three or four weeks of
the year, you know, So how much have you downsized
then put up? Oh? So we do a small tree
(37:25):
and I just have to help me with the ornament decluttering.
I just do red and gold and a little clear icicles.
So like coming up coming up with some kind of
color scheme, like some kind of parameter again of like
this is our color scheme. Yeah, And so it really
(37:45):
helped me anyway, helped me to let go of because
I have probably had every trend that has come through
over the past twenty years, because you know, one year,
everyone's doing pink Christmas, you know, and so I go
to hobby lobby and do you know, now it's peppermint Christmas.
We're all doing candy canes and peppermint stuff. You know,
I can yeah Christmas. Yeah. Well, let's talk about time
(38:13):
as well, because I wanted to touch on this because
last year, right because of COVID, like most of our
calendars were you know, sparsely populated, like especially around the holidays,
so like cultivating that manageable pace, it wasn't something we
had to work towards. But now that's actually changed, you know,
as many are getting back to normal life, and so
how do we keep from overwhelming ourselves around the holidays
(38:33):
with just all the different events exactly. I actually just
did this, um thirty minutes before our call. I got
it my calendar, I did. Yeah, And UM I talked
about in my book, I talked about hard plans and
loose plans, because again I go back to that like
first Christmas or two where um, I drug up my
(38:54):
family around too, probably forty five Christmas events in the
span of November, and just we live in a very
arts and cultural kind of place, so there's probably three
holiday events for every year on the calendar that you
could go to that are all awesome, you know. And
I was just like, oh my gosh, we have to
do this, and now we have to go to the
farmers market because they have this. And my poor husband
(39:17):
was just miserable, I mean truly miserable. And I remember
at one point we were in the freezing cold, um
launching the sailboat parade because oh my gosh, we live
on the beach, we have to do this, you know. Yeah,
And he had a work Christmas party that was more
(39:38):
important at the time because he was going to work
and we needed to show face and look good for
the managers or whatever. But I was like, no, this
is going to be a family tradition, So we were
like fighting traffic to do this. Everyone's cold and miserable,
and we don't even get to see the whole thing
because now we have to leave and go to that,
And it made the ride to the Christmas party stressful
(39:58):
and we're late for the par pretty horrible, and so
if you can imagine, it kind of felt like that
like the whole time, and it was just this chaos
and overwhelmed again when I had all these realizations of like,
oh my gosh, I need to edit my calendar the
same way I'm editing my house. So just now I
got out my calendar and I found my hard plans.
(40:19):
My hard plans for me are the Nutcracker Ballet, the
symphony which I'm in, and um, I like to go
to the Christmas Pride, this one particular one. And then
there was one other thing. What was oh the meeting
Santa on the beach. That's a cool thing. So these
are hard plans because they happened one time, and it
(40:43):
has a ticket attached to it or a time slot
attached to it, and so everything has to work around it.
So I put those in pen on my calendar and
then I write out my loose plans. So that's more
like the traditions that I would like ideally like to
be able to fit in. That would be like a
night where we bake cookies and do gingerbread man and
(41:03):
sprinkles and stuff, and maybe watching Charlie Brown Christmas would
be one. Or actually doing hot Coco with real marshmallows
on top. These kind of cozy traditions that I would
like to cultivate in my family. But they don't need
a hard time to them. And what I'm what I'm
trying to do is not cram everything into that last
(41:25):
week so that nothing can be enjoyed. So that way
I get my hard plans down. I can figure out
where the discrepancies are and where there's a particular Saturday
where everything is crammed on that Saturday, and like wo'ldle
it down again, figuring that out now before the madness,
before tickets start to sell out and and before people
(41:48):
start inviting me to things. So that was another big problem.
I had these things I wanted to go to, but
then every day another mom friend would text and say, oh,
so they're doing like pet the Ponies in Elf costumes today,
you know, And I'm like, oh, that sounds fun. Yeah,
you know the next thing, you know, I'm but you know,
now we're exhausted when we can't make it to the
(42:08):
Nutcracker Ballet because I went pet ponies and elf costumes.
So you know, I'm just making that up. But but
you know, I had I have a whole chapter and
there about how to say no gracefully because that's a
really hard thing for people, and so editing that calendar
right now and saying this is what we're doing only
these five things, these are the five loose things I
(42:29):
would like to slowly work in, not cram into the
last week. And that's it. Now I can politely decline
and say no to the twenty five invitations that I
get on Facebook in the next two Yeah, Meg, I
love that. I love that we can, you know, be
more intentional with our time during the holidays and as
well as with our gift giving and just kind of
(42:49):
the barrage of consumerism that hits us in the face
and we kind of just usually resort to the traditions
of our families or what we've kind of gotten accustomed
to doing. If we have our own families now and
we need to rethink those things because it can lead
to one a less less of a busted budget, because
so many people wake up in January and they're like
they get the credit card bill and they're like, dang it,
(43:10):
I didn't realize it went that far off the rails.
And so yeah, I think there's a lot of good
food for thought in this conversation. We really appreciate you
joining us. Where can our listeners find out more about you?
Sure you can find me at Meg Nordman. That's Nordman
with two ends on the end anywhere online mag Nordman
dot com, Meg Nordman on Twitter, Instagram. I just love
(43:32):
to talk about financial independence and freedom from consumerism and
cultural norms and uh, around the holidays, I focus more
on on this on how to simplify during the holidays.
But and you can find my book on Amazon and
through my website. That's right. Well, And of course this
is why we wanted to have you on the show,
because we are all about these things as well. Meg.
(43:54):
We really appreciate you coming on. Thanks again, Thank you
so much, Matt and Joel. All right, Joel, that was
a great conversation we just had with Meg Norman. We
talked about her book, Have Your Have Yourself Minimalist Christmas.
Didn't talk about that, the next being crowsby Buddy. The
fact that minimalist has the same syllables as Mary Little
or something like that. How does the song about it
(44:15):
sounds the same? Don't know what I'm talking about. That
was a smart move on her partner, And everyone demands
more singing from you on the show, I think not,
But I think Meg was able to share a lot
of great takeaways from her book about having a minimal
minimalist Christmas. What was yours? Okay, So I'll say that
there were a lot of good things, and I thought
a lot of the good Christmas specific things were really helpful.
(44:35):
But I thought, when you take a step back, one
of the coolest things that she mentioned was that minimalism
is more than just getting rid of stuff that like
decluttering is going to impact you in all these other ways.
So it's it's like you find that as you start
to purge your house of a bunch of items, you're
kind of dealing with like some psychological some like mental
(44:56):
stuff at the same time some part issues. And I
thought that was like inspiring and it's good to know
that it's not just throwing stuff in a bin and
donating it to goodwill. It's like, no, no, no no, no.
While you're doing this, you're you want to become a
person who is less attached to things, who is less consumeristic.
And I think you made a good point earlier in
(45:16):
our in the conversation with her that it's kind of
the water we swimming that David Foster Wallace style, Uh,
you know, water that we swim in. And it's true.
It's it's hard. You you have to be like incredibly
purposeful and intentional to to kind of not float the
mainstream and go in a different direction. But I think
doing so is going to be a benefit not to
(45:36):
just like the amount of clutter that's in your house,
but the kind of person you're becoming, the kind of
person you're becoming in the amount of money that you
have at the end of the day as well. And
she talked about Marie Condo and how okay, the question
that you know she always has on her show in
her book, does the spark joy? And they talked about how, well, shoot,
I've got a lot of things that spark joy in
my life, and so oftentimes what comes down to is
(45:57):
determining what your parameters are going to be that are
going to dictate your future decisions, right, And this specifically
came out when she was talking about like decorating. She's
She's like, Okay, it's got to be gold or read
right when it comes to the holidays, because that's how
she was like, that's how I'm going to decorate my house.
And she talked about it as well when it comes
to her calendar. You know, she had like these hard plans,
(46:19):
things that she wasn't going to be flexible on. But
I think it comes down to essentially creating rules and
determining how many events am I willing to take on
per weekend, how many events am I going to have
even in one day, and sticking with those rules, Because
when we purge things from our lives, that's kind of
looked taking a reflective look on things that we've almost
already done, right, Like, these are things that have happened
(46:39):
in the past, and we do need to do those
things to kind of get us up to speed where
we currently are. But then moving forward, how do we
keep ourselves from having to have these big purges where
we have to spend all day looking back and determining
what it is we're gonna keep. What it is we're
gonna get rid of, Well, it's rules, it's parameters. Is
having this filter that you run all of your decisions through.
It's like this little decision make making matrix that you've
(47:00):
created in your own head, and that's going to determine
what it is that you you keep around. I feel
like the example that she gave about receiving like that
sweater and immediately making the decision is this a keeper
or is this? Is this a honor? And it's only
a keeper if it's replacing another. Like, I thought that
was brilliant because oftentimes what we do is like, Okay,
I'm gonna say that for later, and we end up
(47:20):
washing it or putting it in the closet, which doesn't
need anything else to go into the closet, and then
it starts getting more hard to navigate. And if you
don't have the rules rules, If you don't have the rules,
every decision becomes harder because you have to figure it
out on a case by case basis. Exactly when you
have rules, it informs pretty immediately you say, well, obviously
this is the rule I live by, and so I'm
not going to violate that, and and you're right, Like,
(47:41):
I'm I appreciate you saying that because I am like
the opposite of a rules person, like an out back
stakhouse very much. No rules, just right is my motto.
And and so but I need more of those rules
in my life too, because I do get overwhelmed sometimes
by the amount of choice. And I like choice, I
like options, and I like novelty. And I am not
a minimalist. I will, I will openly confess, but this
(48:03):
episode talking with Meg does make me want to incorporate
more of those principles in my life, even if becoming uh,
you know, one of the supermintalist people is not really um,
it doesn't sound appealing to me. Yeah, you can still
use some of those same principles just to inform your
living and the decisions that you make so that you
just have a happier life. And again, obviously this is
how the money and so we want you to implement
(48:24):
these rules as well because we think that they can
help you to save more of your money. Yeah, did
you did you hear about Meg's budget for Christmas? It
was like what two hund bucks for gifts? And she says,
I stick. I stick to that, and it was what
a hundred bucks for kid? Yeah? Yeah, per kid? And
so those are the kind of rules too. That's another rule,
and that rule helps you save money, and of course
(48:44):
that's that's ultimately what we want for you exactly. And
when it came to her plans, you know, she was
talking about how those are hard plans, but I feel
like that those would be hard guidelines that determine how
she spends her money when it comes to gifts. But yeah,
I think there's a lot here that you can take
from this conversation and imply it to your life and
think about how it is that you can weave some
of these takeaways into your own life. But Joe, let's
(49:05):
mention the beer that you and I enjoyed on this episode.
This was a fantastic beer. By the way, let the
cart get ahead of the horse a little bit. Let
me share the name of this beer, which was called
Empire of Eternal Nothingness, which is a beer by Burial
out of Asheville, North Carolina. Maybe a metaphor for Christmas
pen Hey maybe so? Man, this was a really big,
(49:25):
flavorful stout. What are your thoughts on it? Um? I
loved it. I really truly loved it. Had some great
chocolate vibes coming through, some of those dark chocolate notes,
but at the same time, it was like it was
just really really dark and beastly. I mean, this was
a mammoth stout, and I'd like a big stout it's not,
especially as we're getting into these colder months. I'm like,
(49:45):
that's perfect. Bring on all the big stouts. So this
one is was just delicious and burial. I don't think
I've had a bad beer from them yet, and they
just seemed to knock it out of the park every time. Yeah,
so I definitely had some of those coconut notes going on,
and I still think that we might have a few
more Almon Joys laying around the house from Halloween as
far as the Halloween candy. But it totally had some
(50:06):
of those chocolate e coconutty vibes going on in this beer. Uh.
It said it was like double DiPT like, which makes
me just picture like candy barget and maybe yeah yeah,
and just like I don't know, double the flavor, but
as well as bourbon vanilla in this beer as well,
and you could totally taste those warming notes that you
would get from just kind of a nice pore of
bourbon neat where it's just kind of nice and warming.
(50:28):
Those are also the kind of flavors that you you
want out of a massive stout like this. I'm glad
you and I got to share this one today on
the show. Seriously would recommend any of Burials beers, but
especially some of these crazy off the wall stouts. But Joel,
that's gonna be it for this episode. Listeners can fund
our show notes up on our website at how the
Money dot com and will make sure to link to
Meg's site as well as her book. That's right, some
(50:49):
good tips in there for making sure your Christmas is
just a little more minimalist than it was in years past.
But that I'll do it for this one. Until next time,
Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.
Joel, how's it going, buddy. I'm doing well, my friend,
But you just told my jobst. On Bestie episodes, I
like to kick things off, to let folks know that
you are in for something different during this episode and
shake things up. I'm all right that So a quick
question for you before we introduce our Bestie episode for today?
Are you a fan of eggnoge? Who isn't? Okay, just
(00:20):
not the crappy stuff. There's a lot of bad eggnog
out there there. There is some crappy stuff for sure.
So the reason I ask is because I've discovered a
new holiday cocktail that has very eggnog like qualities. It's
called a flip flip cocktail. So particularly I've been making uh,
rum flips and it's rum sugar, some cream, but then
(00:41):
an entire egg and you shake it up and it's
at uh what's it called? What's the spice? And eggnog?
Not ginger, not meg, a little bit of nutmeg on
top and make it pretty. It's like a nightcap. Sitting
there on the fire right, you're picking up on the
vibes and putting out there right us for craft beer advice.
But we know cocktails, we know cocktails as well. So
if you're listening and you don't want you're a fan
(01:03):
of eggnog and you don't want to make like an
entire batch of it at home, and also you're thinking, well,
I don't want to go out and have to buy
some look up a rum flip cocktail. It's really easy
to miss put a link to your favorite one in
the show. It's just I think it's like all recipes
or or whatever. I don't know, just the standard. It's
the standard cocktail. But I have been a big fan
(01:24):
of it. The mentioned that one today before we introduced
our interview that we are re airing today, and it
was a conversation that we had with Meg Nordman last
year about having a minimalist Christmas, and we hope that
that is the case for your Christmas this year. I
hope you enjoy this conversation that we had almost basically
a year ago. Yeah, it's kind of like a I mean,
(01:44):
I think it's a last minute reminder to folks to
let them know that you don't have to be scheduled
to the max, you don't have to overspend in order
to have a fun, magical, special Christmas. Oftentimes, uh, you
could borrow from the tenants of minimalism. You don't have
to go like full stark white everything or everything has
to be black, because we're not those guys either. No. Yeah,
(02:05):
we're both wearing plaid flannel shirts today. I always wear plaid,
Matt I wear plati a decent bit. But Meg published
a minimalist Christmas book last year, and so I think
there's a lot of lessons that we need to be
reminded of today. We'll be back here on Friday with
a fresh Friday flight for you. We're just taking a
day off to spend with the family leading up to Christmas.
Here but without further ado, here's that conversation with Meg.
(02:28):
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I'm Matt,
and today we're talking a very minimalist Christmas with Meg Nordman. Yes,
(02:54):
today we have the pleasure of speaking with Meg Nordman,
who is the author of Have Yourself a Minimalist Christmas.
And you know what, the holiday is quickly approaching. We
can often find ourselves just wondering where all of our
time and money is running off to. Right, like Christmas parties,
you're in school events for the kids, the cost of
decorating gifts for family members. The list could go on,
(03:14):
but Meg wants to shift your mindset by walking you
through some of the tenets of minimalism in her book,
and she's going to give us some strategies here to
help us to resist the clever marketing and the cultural
expectations that this season often brings. So Meg Nordman, thank
you for joining us today on the podcast. Thank you,
Matt and Joel. I'm really grateful to be here talking
(03:36):
with you today. Well, we're glad to have you, Meg,
and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.
And I do think, especially in the culture we find
ourselves in, this conversation is an important one, hopefully helpful
for the how to money audience. But before we get
into all that stuff, I want to ask you, Matt
and I we like to drink a beer. We're drinking
a beer right now as we speak, and it's something
(03:58):
that we spend I would say, a lot of money
on while we're trying to save and invest well for
the future. So, yeah, what's that in your life? Do
you have a craft beer equivalent something you find yourself
spending more money on than most people would think is reasonable. Yes,
I definitely do. I'm thirty four and have seen the
effects of all this sun in Florida, and so I
(04:20):
have been splurging way you too much on skincare products
and at the same time I'm hoarding swimsuits. I've gotten
pretty minimalist in all aspects except for the swimsuit department.
So I'm just out in the sun in these swimsuits
and then you know, getting all these UV rays and
then covering myself and hats as well. Well maybe we'll
(04:43):
get to this later on in the episode two. But
you actually live in Florida, like on an island, is
that right? Yeah, Anastasia Island, So you spent a lot
of a lot of time on the beach. It's not
like you live in Nebraska and you just have like
an infatuation with swimwear. Yeah, I mean the swimwear basic.
That's that is my my clothes. So my husband's an
avid surfer and we're a quick bike ride from the beach,
(05:07):
so yeah, it's it's a free thing. We don't have
to spend money. We're constantly entertained, especially having kids. I've
always enjoyed the beach to a certain extent, but the
ability to go to a beach and then just let
the kids essentially just run wild. I now see the
appeal of that, I'm going to the beach when you
have kids. It's like, oh, wow, you've never been, you know,
(05:29):
a quarter mile away from you before, but you are.
And I'm okay with that because the beach it's a
good place to be. I love to let them have
that space because they do. They just run like the
Toddler's little kids, and they just run and run and run,
and they feel like they're so far away. But I
mean it's just a wide open space. We can see them.
We can go jog for him if we need to.
But it is nice to kind of like let them
(05:49):
off the leash in a sense, you know. Yeah, I
love that. Alright, So mag let's talk about minimalism in general,
kind of like what set you down that path in
the first place. Yes, So, I used to be I
guess you could say, like borderline hoarder. I was, you know,
not hoarder to the level of being on a TV
show with the dead rats in my house or anything.
(06:11):
But I've now realized that my parents are a bit
of hoarders and so I just I never saw anyone
declutter anything in my life, and so I never did.
I moved from apartment to apartment, from state to state,
and just kept boxing up all this stuff and never
let go of anything. And at some point my boyfriend
(06:33):
moved in with me, and wait, we have a long
tangled love story. We had a few years break there,
and in that break he'd been surfing around the globe
and became a minimalist and the sense that he just
had a backpack on surfboard and hitchhiked from country to
country to find good surf. And so he came back
and moved in with me and just had like nothing,
(06:54):
you know, He's like five T shirts and two board
shorts and surfboard and the guitar, you know. Yeah, and uh.
And then he had to move into my place, where
I'd never let go of anything since I was a child,
So that was probably a shock to his system. And
so he kind of just led by example, both in
like the financial independence route and wanting to be debt free.
(07:18):
Like never even occurred to me that I could be
debt free or financially independent or not have so much stuff.
So I really give a lot of credit to him
for leading the way there. So, um, I had a
shopoholic problem with clothes and shoes in particular. So I
was briefly out in Albuquerque, New Mexico, doing digital marketing
(07:42):
for tech startups, and we moved to Florida after we
got debt free, and I found Marie Kondo's book The
Magical Art of Tidying Up and read about decluttering for
the first time in my life. That that sounds was
stilly to say that. That That was a lightbulb moment for me.
Was like, Oh, I don't have to keep everything, and
(08:05):
you know in her classic doesn't spark joy question And
so I let go of things and it felt like
a lot. But I did not become a minimalist overnight
at all. Um but I felt like because it was
my first time letting go of things, it felt like
a lot of things were let go. But my god,
we had my SUV pact. We had a huge trailer
(08:28):
just loaded up. It wasn't enough. We had to get
a U haul truck and get his mother in law
to drive behind us. And I still literally left things
on the sidewalk because I couldn't cram it in. That's
and you know that was like my stuff, and um,
we moved into a little seven square foot place here
on the beach and couldn't fit it in. I had,
(08:51):
you know, probably two thousand square group of stuff, and
so I had to declutter a little further. And then
we were living in chaos because I still had crammed
and we had a kid right away. I was like
eight months pregnantly moved and once they start walking, the
toys start moving and they scatter, and I get everywhere
and there's no way to contain it. So it just
(09:13):
was bonkers. And I was spending my life in this
like bent over a position of just picking up and
picking up and picking up, and all I was doing
was massive loads of laundry. The couch was just this mountain,
this never ending mountain to sift through of clothes. You
couldn't sit on it. The dishes were always piled up.
And so there was finally this lightbulb moment as as
(09:34):
I was relearning new shopping habits, because we had this
goal to hit financial independence at a pretty quick right,
so I had to stop buying so much stuff in
the first place. And then that realization of if I
just have less stuff then I have less things to clean,
which means I have more time, and that was really
(09:56):
all I craved. You know, the whole point of financial
independence was time. But I also need to let go
of the stuff because I wanted to be present with
my kid, not cleaning up all day. I wanted to
play with her, and I wanted to write. I've been
wanting to write books forever, but I didn't have time
to sit down and write. And I want to make
art and I want to make music. And so once
I finally had that real light bulb moment and figured
(10:20):
out that asking does it spark joy? It like barely
scratches the surface of what you need to be asking
when you let go of things, um and finding those
deeper questions and really kind of digging into my own
psychology of why I was clutching to so many things
I was able to let go, and they all just
(10:40):
kind of work in tandem, Like the ability to save
money and the ability to let go items. It just
really worked together for me, like everything clicked all at
the same time, and so we definitely became a minimalist household.
You know, We've got like two bowls for adults and
two kid bowls and six spoons, you know, and one
(11:03):
water glass for everyone. Now I do have enough to
sit about six people if I needed to, if we
happen to have family over our guests. It's just kind
of a rare event for us. And all that's tucked
away at a cabinet that's kind of higher up and
hard to reach. But you know, I can't possibly have
an overflowing kitchen when all we have is four bowls
(11:25):
in four cups, you know, like I don't need to
run the dishwasher anymore. And so you know, of course
I applied I applied that to clothes, and UM really
kind of capsule wardrobed everyone. And that was a big
deal for me. Um, As you know from my description,
I used to need like to walk in closets for
my clothes, and now I can see everything within like
(11:48):
a small you know, when you just open up a
closet door, that little window frame, that's it. That's all
I have hanging. And my husband and I share a
small chester drawers together, so we each have like two
drawers for ourselves. And it's just a huge, huge, huge improvement.
And so you know, there's no way I could fill
up our couch full of clothes now. So I gained
(12:09):
my time back and I was able to join in
the orchestra and make music again, and make art and
write a book. We go and hang out on the
beach all the time, and so we were able to
achieve our goals. My husband retired early this past April,
you know, cut our spending down to like seven thousand
dollars a year. It worked. But my problem was, even
(12:33):
despite really seeing all this improvement with our budget and
the improvement with decluttering the rest of the house, Christmas
was a big problem for me. Yeah. So well, let's
I want to camp out for one second on minimalism.
And you said that what began is like this forced
purge kind of turned into a choice and it led
(12:53):
to this like simplified lifestyle, which sounds like it's been
awesome for you for your family. Um, I just want
to know, like you know, before we get into the
Christmas stuff, what tips do you have for our listeners
who are who are saying, okay, Meg just said that
sparking joy that didn't go far enough. You had to
confront like some deeper demons and it was more than
(13:14):
just like tossing things out or and giving them to goodwill. Uh, Like,
how would you suggest people begin this process of minimalism
if they're kind of like just now getting wapped in
the face with the potential idea that they that they
should even consider it. Yeah, I know. One tip I
would suggest that was kind of a mind hack that
helped me was to look at things and say, well,
(13:35):
what is my favorite? Because when I went through my closet,
I had I'm not kidding, probably fifty little black dresses
like perfect fit me well, gorgeous little black cocktail dresses
that I would love to wear. But here I am
in this new season of life. I don't go to events.
I don't have a corporate job. You know, I'm a
(13:58):
mother and we're lucky if we go on two or
three real date nights, you know, like going out to
get cocktails a year. So why do I have fifty
of them? But you know, putting my fingers on them
to go through the decluttering process and asking does this
spark joy? Yes? It does? This dress me excited. It
(14:20):
makes me want to go out and do that thing,
even if I'm not doing that thing exactly. And it's
just that you like all of them, but you don't
need all of them exactly, and we have all these
ways we can nationalize it. Of well, this one is
great for a slightly more conservative one, and this one
costs four hundred dollars. But I go through when I say, okay,
(14:41):
I only get to day nights a year. What is
that very first little black dress that I'm going to
reach for that I know will apply to all situations,
that will always make me feel good, that will always
look great on me. Which one is that going to be?
Most people could do this. You know which dress are
out it? You know, my free you might be a shirt,
(15:02):
but you know, you know which one that is so okay?
That one stays, And then all the rest of those,
even though they all spark joy and I find them
all beautiful, it doesn't matter. I need to let it go.
And so I had to do that to a lot
of things, I mean, as permeated through all aspects of
your life. And so you're seeing the benefits of minimalism
(15:22):
across the board. But you mentioned how it's you know,
like Christmas in particular, it's still a problem for a
lot of folks. And I think we can all find ourselves,
you know, in that whirlwind of holiday gift giving, and
it's essentially become a part of our culture, you know,
like it's just ingrained in us, It's ingrained in the
lives that we live. And so can you talk us
through the evolution of Christmas and consumerism just becoming more
(15:42):
and more entwined. Yeah. So my child's first birthday, I
mean birthday, well that one too, probably, but her first Christmas.
You know, Santa gave her everything a child could need
for the first five years of their life. I mean
I just went overboard. I was just so excited because
as a parent, you get this role, or I feel it.
(16:03):
I had this role that I needed to create magic.
You know, I'm the magic maker, and I remembered, you know,
Christmas Morning feeling magical as a kid. So I was
very excited about this role and I just went overboard.
You know. I got the little stroller pram for the
baby doll, and I got the toy kitchen, and I
(16:23):
got the rocking horse, and I mean just everything. I
mean the picture of Christmas Morning was just ridiculous, and
you know, I was very proud of it in the moment,
but um, there was like nothing left to buy my
kid for the future years and there was no budget set.
There was no discussion about budget. Um, I just just
(16:47):
went ape with it. I had that moment after Christmas
when I kind of realized what I've done, like just
how out of control I've gotten and how much money
I'd spent, and then wanting to declutter almost everything I
just bought, like, oh wow, I just destroyed all of
(17:07):
my efforts here to keep things righted in. I just
went that that toy that created like fifteen minutes of
joy on Christmas morning is now you're like stubbing your
toel on through. Oh I can see now, I'm just
gonna be picking up all these little loose parts over
and over and over again and trying to keep them
in the basket. And they will never stay in the basket. So,
(17:28):
you know, over that next year of like kind of
seeing how much wreckage I had done. Also, I in
my journey to minimalism, I joined a lot of Facebook groups,
you know, for support and tips and everything. And I
started noticing after I came to grips with my own
problem with wrecking myself on Chris and it wasn't just me,
(17:49):
it was also the grandparents and the ants, and the friends.
I mean, I did it and they did it too,
you know, like it was just ridiculous. So being all
these questions of like, well, how do I ask my
mother in law to stop bringing in a truckload of gifts?
Or how do I now go from going overboard every
(18:10):
Christmas and creating this epic you know, amount of gifts
under the tree to a more minimalist approach of justice,
like four or five gifts? Are my kids going to
feel deprived? How are they going to deal with that
big switch? And so everyone's asking these same questions year
after a year, and I'm noticing that in all of
(18:30):
the groups. And that's when it occurred to me. Now
that I've consumed like twenty five books on minimalism and
audio books and the podcasts and stuff, I'm like, oh, no,
one's addressed how even as a practicing minimalist, we're still
falling into this consumerst trap during the holidays. The marketing
still gets to us too. We're not impermeable, do it. Well, Hey,
(18:51):
we've got a bunch more questions make to get to,
including how we actually don't turn off maybe that minimalism
down what it looks like to have a Christmas is
that is less influenced by consumerism. So we'll get to
some more questions about that with you right after this
break where we're back from the break and we're talking
(19:17):
with Meg Norman about having a minimalist Christmas and and Meg,
you know, before the break you're talking about your personal
history with how you kind of fell into the trap
of consuming more around the holidays. Can you talk to
something about the history of just consumerism and commercialism and
and the waters that we find ourselves swimming in. Yeah. Absolutely,
So this was a big help for me. So after
(19:39):
that first year of just going off the deep end,
the next year I felt it creeping up again. And
I don't know what it was, but I ended up googling,
you know, the history of Santa, because I was like,
what is it with this Santa? Like I'm playing Santa,
and I feel like I need to bring in the
whole sleigh full of toys? Um, why, Like what is
(20:00):
Santa's deal? Because it's almost like treated like a religion
in itself, you know, and we all play into this narrative,
the story as a whole society. We all do it together,
and so you know, I get on there and read
about the history, and it relieved so much pressure from
me just to understand this, and I was able to.
(20:24):
I don't completely opt out of it, but I've taken
five steps backwards, like homework, backing up into the bushes
kind of thing. When it comes to the way you
approached the sime, Yeah, yeah, so yeah. So to give
you a quick rundown, you know, you have St. Nicholas.
He's born into a d a d He's a monk
(20:44):
that gave away a lot of his wealth to the
poor and the needy. And he reappears in modern history
in the US anyway in seventeen seventy three because there
were some Dutch immigrants and they were just honoring the
anniversary of his death. And for whatever reason, uh New
York newspaper picks that up and runs a story on it,
(21:06):
and suddenly there's like a renewed interest in this guy St. Nicholas,
and about you know, twenty years later in the eighteen hundreds,
um images of him in little wood cuttings start getting
passed around of him slipping items into stockings, and then
about twenty years later, the stores catch onto these woodcuts
(21:27):
being passed around among families and they start advertising around
that and somehow work him into Christmas shopping. So, I
we're talking eighteen twenties, that's very recent history, you know.
And so twenty years later St. Nicholas starts morphing into
Santa and that poem towards the night before Christmas. It
(21:49):
was written by a preacher and he felt very embarrassed
by it. He just did it for his nieces, just
for fun, and then it got published and he felt like,
oh my gosh, I can't believe. But he was really
embarb and because it wasn't necessarily a religious text, it's
just a mythic. He yeah, he just dreamed up this
image of who this random Santa guy is that had
(22:10):
just started to kind of catch wind in newspapers and
shopping and advertising, and so he really shaped it with
that poem. And then the malls started offering live Santa's
and Macy's, you know, was the first one. And they
have their Thanksgiving parade that starts um in like the
nineteen twenties, and they have their Santa in the back
for the first time. And so Coca Cola and nineteen thirties,
(22:34):
ten years later catches wind of this and so they
start adding Santa to their advertising. So whoever the the
illustrator was for their advertising department really fine tuned what
he's supposed to look like to us now. So yeah,
Coca Cola kind of created our jolly red Santa. This
(22:54):
kind of stuff like really helped me go, oh my gosh,
this is and it continues. So just to give a
really quick rundown, the songs that hit the charts in
four were Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and that
starts this whole narrative around the good list, you know,
the good and the naughty, and then n nine is Rudolph,
(23:15):
nineteen fifty is Frosty, and two thousand five is Elf
on the Shelf. And so I'm kind of seeing this
like this very recent history timeline of like how we
created this story and how it was mostly created for
malls and products big corporations to have like another way
(23:36):
to make more sales in the wintertime. And that relieved
some of that pressure to create this magic. You know,
it's going to be magical no matter what. So I
didn't feel that impulse to buy so much of like,
oh my gosh, this thing is. It's not real. It's
not a religion as I don't have to participate in
(23:57):
this so much. So what it did for me was
I don't ask my kids what do you want for Christmas?
As much because I did that in the beginning. You know,
what do you want? What do you want? Here's the
you know, it's terrible, terrible like approach, having that continual
conversation about what they're looking to give for Christmas. How
how have you changed that conversational dynamic. Yes, so if
(24:20):
you go and meet Santa, don't go sit on his
knee and tell Santa what you want. Like that's just
one of those small things that adds to it, because
all we're asking kids is what do you want? Like
I just got an Amazon catalog in the mail with
toys that has one whole page is just stickers that
say I want this, this one, this one is my favorite.
(24:41):
You know. It's got little arrows and circles and stuff.
And I'm like, wow, we're literally handing these two children
and saying, have at it. Tell me everything you want.
And that is the message instead of hey, this is
a beautiful time of year. I love this season. Let's
go enjoy the snow. Let's go and look at the lights,
drink warm drinks together, you know, like that coziness, like
(25:03):
let's look at the twinkle lights and decorate the tree together,
like that togetherness and that piece and the joy that
we sing about in our carols. But instead we've kind
of shifted it all to what the corporations wanted us
to ask was what do you want? You know? So
I'm just careful not to talk about toys. They will
get toys. It will feel magical and exciting, but I
(25:27):
don't make all of November and December about asking that question.
So anyway, what are your strategies then when it comes
to gift giving, because as a minimalist, it can be
easy to to be like no gifts at all, right,
like the soup Nazi. But for Christmas gifts maybe nothing
for you. And so yeah, what like what what would
(25:48):
you recommend to folks who are saying, yes, you're right, Okay,
I get it. I see the connection between Christmas and consumerism,
and I want to make sure that our household isn't
overdoing it and then my kids aren't becoming like I
want this, I want that machines, which it's so easy
to get to this time of year, like how do
you decide how many gifts gifts you're going to give?
(26:08):
Like what sort of strategies have you emplemented? Yeah, so
you know, first of all, would be budget. Don't be
like me on my first Christmas as a parent and
not have one. So we have a pretty low one
now a hundred bucks for event tickets and two hundred
bucks for both kids combined, and I I get plenty
(26:32):
of things just with that amount. And then I also
kind of loosely do the four gift role. Um. You know,
there's a catchy poem that a lot of minimalists ascribed to,
and it's something you want, something you need, something to wear,
something to read. And I do like that, Like if
you set that up with your kids, that's the expectation,
you know, like now you do get to pick one
(26:54):
thing that you want, you know, and then your parents
probably know best of the thing that you need. And
then you know, you get to your nice new warm
clothes and here's some classic books for you to read.
And so there's these parameters around it, and you know
that's stuff that's not necessarily going to need to be decluttered.
Now I haven't quite yet started reciting that poem. To
(27:17):
my kids. They're still young, but I probably will shift
to it when they get a little bit older if
they need some parameters around it. Right now, I just
kind of keep an ear out to what is that
one thing that they want, and I try to keep
it down to about four to five items. And I
(27:37):
am really mindful and intentional about it, because I'm just
trying to imagine, will I want to declutter this in
a month? Like that is kind of a big question.
I ask myself a lot for birthday presents and Christmas
presents of will this stick around? What is the length
on this? The shelf life? Yeah? Yeah, the shelf life,
(27:58):
because I think how many parts I would think to
you write like a nerf gun with like add I
don't know, I don't want that. I mean when it
comes to our money, I mean, that's oftentimes what we
should be thinking about. We're not only thinking about the
feeling that it's going to give us right now what
we spend. That is certainly something we need to take
into account, but we also are thinking about those longer
term goals and thinking through the impact of those items
on your role as a parent, Like that is something
(28:21):
you definitely need to think through. How many of these
little pieces am I going to have to pick up?
How long with us actually entertain them? And so I
like that for gift rule though, so it's something you want,
something you need, something you wear, and then something you read. Okay,
so a book, okay. I I think about that when
I think about the fact that, like you've heard of
the different love languages, I think there's five of them,
but like gift giving, that is an actual love language.
(28:42):
And and so I think, well, how do you square
that with the fact that there's some folks out there
who really like receiving gifts? But at the same time,
if you're trying to be minimal, you're at odds with
that with that behavior. And I feel like quality over
quantity could be just a good principle to keep in mind.
And if you have somebody like that in your life,
is that right? Oh? Yes, I definitely do. I have
(29:03):
several love language people in my life, and um, it
is kind of funny to be the author of this
book and like pass it to them, and and I
talk about the love languages and how some people truly
do identify with that of gift giving is their love language.
If anyone, UM, listens to the minimalists, they will argue
(29:26):
this point that there is not a fifth love language,
that gift giving cannot be a love language because love
is not transactional. And I do like that, but man,
some people really do feel this way and you can't
reprogram them. So some of the things that I've learned
to help with this is one to drop hints, so
(29:50):
in conversation you don't even have to use fancy words
like minimalism or decluttering. It kind of scares these people,
but just to kind of mention, Like I stood this
the other day um with one of them and said,
you know, I just went through the kids clothes and
I wanted to make, you know, see how many winter
clothes they had and make sure they had everything they
(30:11):
needed for the winter. And they are set, they have plenty,
They have more than enough, and we're good for the
winter because I know this particular person loves to give
an overabundance of clothes, which is a very you know, generous, wonderful,
blessed thing to have in your life, but it it
is um to a level that actually makes my life
(30:33):
feel overwhelming chaotic. So just dropping hints is a good way,
and I have a couple of scripts in my book
where I kind of show examples of what these conversations
look like and how it can kind of organically flow
to let them catch your drift. But in case they don't,
maybe you need to set some limits with your family.
So we've done this a few times with our extend
(30:54):
family and it's great. So and it changes every year
for some reason. You some you think something would dick,
but sometimes it can look like a financial limit. So
you can say, okay, we're not spending over per person,
or fifty dollars or a hundred dollars per person, whatever
feels right for your family, or it is just one
(31:15):
item per person within the family, or maybe it's, um,
we did this one year. We're just exchanging books. Everybody
pick a book, you know, it can be fiction or nonfiction,
and that is all we're giving to one another. And yeah,
that was a really good year. Or I've seen other
people do okay, only the grand kids and no adults,
(31:37):
but whatever those parameters are, just get a conversation going
with your family to start setting some kind of guidelines
and limits, and you'll probably find that there will be
relieved for that too, because otherwise they're like, oh my gosh,
I need to get three things for everybody that you
know them as well. And you're maybe like that pressure
(31:57):
release valve by starting that conversation that says, Hey, you
don't have to live up to these fake expectations that
nobody actually has of you that the movies make it
seem like you need to live up to. And so
so Meg, what do you do, like in the middle
of a Christmas celebration or a holiday celebration when like
there there's like a an expectation that hasn't met or
(32:19):
maybe someone's supersedes that kind of rules that have been
laid out or in a grandparent like goes over board.
You say supersed but what you really mean is they
broke the rule. They broke the ground rules. Yeah, or
if just like maybe maybe this year it was too
late and you didn't establish any ground rules and you're like, man,
they just overdid it. Like how how do you like
get over having a sour pust liff on your face? Um?
(32:42):
Because you know what all these additional toys or all
this additional stuff means for your life and it's not
something that you're looking to, Like, how do you navigate
those kind of relational waters. Yeah. I see that a
lot within the minimalist groups, where people feel like almost
like the person did it on part purpists, like they
project that onto them and that it was vicious and
(33:03):
that they were undermining all of their work. And I
tell them, they're we're minimalist. I told them not to
get us anything, and they did it anyway. They're sabotaging me,
you know. Um, But I have like a whole chapter
talking about that. You just cannot take this attitude with it.
No one is trying to sabotage you. It really is
that you know, love language for them, they feel this way.
(33:26):
They're not seeing your wish lists, are going by your
parameters and your guidelines, And you just have to smile
and give that hug and say thank you and say
I love you, because that is actually all these people
are looking for. They're looking for for that validation of
love and use your manners and but don't let it
(33:48):
get past the living room. You know, I'm serious. You
are the person in control, and you just have to
constantly know that you are in control of what goes
in your house. You have to be a ruthless editor
and curator of your literally, don't let those items leave
the living rooms. What you're saying, I thought you're talking
about like the emotions, but you're talking about the actual objects.
I'm talking about the objects because I you know, I
(34:12):
freaking published a book on this, and I still have
these people giving me way, way, way too much, giving
our family and our kids, and it's wonderful. And but
you know, I get to say, even though this person
gave me a sweater and as a gift, this sweater
does not have to go in my closet. You say goodbye,
(34:33):
you know, Merry Christmas. They go on their way, and
you just immediately start making decisions. You know, that's when
you go to your closet and say, okay, is this
new sweater going to replace an old one? Let's getting
too worn out if so, pull that other one out
right now. Don't don't add add two. And I know
it sounds so horrible and sad to say all loud,
(34:55):
but man, there are so many things that I don't
let get past the living room and got it into
a box, into the trunk and get donated to a
fabulous thrift shop we have here in town that helps
women with domestic abuse escaped that and I find someplace
like that that resonates and makes you feel good so
that you can let go. Because I know a lot
(35:18):
of people do have a problem with saying this was
a gift and therefore I have to keep it. You know,
I used to be that way. I kept every gift
ever given to me. Yeah, what's crazy is that at
the end of a day of exchange of gifts like that.
I mean, to be honest, that's probably the last thing
that most folks want to do, right, I mean, they
just take the item. Folks will leave if you know
they're leaving the house. And so it's gonna take that
(35:38):
extra little push, like you said, to make that decision,
because it's honestly probably gonna be the easiest time to
make that decision before it ends up sitting in your
drawer for weeks or months years. Yeah. So you've talked
about how it is what we can go about buying
fewer gifts. You talked about how we can communicate with
family or friends to maybe buy a fewer items for us.
(35:58):
We're gonna talk next about ways that we can go
about seeking after a minimalist Christmas at home, and also
just how we go about doing that with our time,
with our calendars, and we'll get to both of those
right after this break. All right, we're back from break
(36:20):
still talking with Meg Norman about having a minimalist Christmas.
And Meg, that was just a lot of useful information
when it comes to navigating the holidays with your kids,
with your parents, like for yourself. But I want to
I want to ask you to, like, how does a
minimalist decorate for Christmas? Because when it comes to putting
up lights or I'm guessing you don't, how many like
(36:40):
Christmas blow up decorations in your front yard? Like how
do you handle the decorating? Yes, we don't have any
blow up decorations in the yard, but in my life
in this chapter, it just doesn't work for me. And um,
it did come down to this realization of I my
house is a container, you know, and I only have
(37:04):
so much square footage that I can live in. And
why is my entire I only have two tiny closets.
Why is one entire closet basically devoted to Christmas items
that come out for whopping three or four weeks of
the year, you know, So how much have you downsized
then put up? Oh? So we do a small tree
(37:25):
and I just have to help me with the ornament decluttering.
I just do red and gold and a little clear icicles.
So like coming up coming up with some kind of
color scheme, like some kind of parameter again of like
this is our color scheme. Yeah, And so it really
(37:45):
helped me anyway, helped me to let go of because
I have probably had every trend that has come through
over the past twenty years, because you know, one year,
everyone's doing pink Christmas, you know, and so I go
to hobby lobby and do you know, now it's peppermint Christmas.
We're all doing candy canes and peppermint stuff. You know,
I can yeah Christmas. Yeah. Well, let's talk about time
(38:13):
as well, because I wanted to touch on this because
last year, right because of COVID, like most of our
calendars were you know, sparsely populated, like especially around the holidays,
so like cultivating that manageable pace, it wasn't something we
had to work towards. But now that's actually changed, you know,
as many are getting back to normal life, and so
how do we keep from overwhelming ourselves around the holidays
(38:33):
with just all the different events exactly. I actually just
did this, um thirty minutes before our call. I got
it my calendar, I did. Yeah, And UM I talked
about in my book, I talked about hard plans and
loose plans, because again I go back to that like
first Christmas or two where um, I drug up my
(38:54):
family around too, probably forty five Christmas events in the
span of November, and just we live in a very
arts and cultural kind of place, so there's probably three
holiday events for every year on the calendar that you
could go to that are all awesome, you know. And
I was just like, oh my gosh, we have to
do this, and now we have to go to the
farmers market because they have this. And my poor husband
(39:17):
was just miserable, I mean truly miserable. And I remember
at one point we were in the freezing cold, um
launching the sailboat parade because oh my gosh, we live
on the beach, we have to do this, you know. Yeah,
And he had a work Christmas party that was more
(39:38):
important at the time because he was going to work
and we needed to show face and look good for
the managers or whatever. But I was like, no, this
is going to be a family tradition, So we were
like fighting traffic to do this. Everyone's cold and miserable,
and we don't even get to see the whole thing
because now we have to leave and go to that,
And it made the ride to the Christmas party stressful
(39:58):
and we're late for the par pretty horrible, and so
if you can imagine, it kind of felt like that
like the whole time, and it was just this chaos
and overwhelmed again when I had all these realizations of like,
oh my gosh, I need to edit my calendar the
same way I'm editing my house. So just now I
got out my calendar and I found my hard plans.
(40:19):
My hard plans for me are the Nutcracker Ballet, the
symphony which I'm in, and um, I like to go
to the Christmas Pride, this one particular one. And then
there was one other thing. What was oh the meeting
Santa on the beach. That's a cool thing. So these
are hard plans because they happened one time, and it
(40:43):
has a ticket attached to it or a time slot
attached to it, and so everything has to work around it.
So I put those in pen on my calendar and
then I write out my loose plans. So that's more
like the traditions that I would like ideally like to
be able to fit in. That would be like a
night where we bake cookies and do gingerbread man and
(41:03):
sprinkles and stuff, and maybe watching Charlie Brown Christmas would
be one. Or actually doing hot Coco with real marshmallows
on top. These kind of cozy traditions that I would
like to cultivate in my family. But they don't need
a hard time to them. And what I'm what I'm
trying to do is not cram everything into that last
(41:25):
week so that nothing can be enjoyed. So that way
I get my hard plans down. I can figure out
where the discrepancies are and where there's a particular Saturday
where everything is crammed on that Saturday, and like wo'ldle
it down again, figuring that out now before the madness,
before tickets start to sell out and and before people
(41:48):
start inviting me to things. So that was another big problem.
I had these things I wanted to go to, but
then every day another mom friend would text and say, oh,
so they're doing like pet the Ponies in Elf costumes today,
you know, And I'm like, oh, that sounds fun. Yeah,
you know the next thing, you know, I'm but you know,
now we're exhausted when we can't make it to the
(42:08):
Nutcracker Ballet because I went pet ponies and elf costumes.
So you know, I'm just making that up. But but
you know, I had I have a whole chapter and
there about how to say no gracefully because that's a
really hard thing for people, and so editing that calendar
right now and saying this is what we're doing only
these five things, these are the five loose things I
(42:29):
would like to slowly work in, not cram into the
last week. And that's it. Now I can politely decline
and say no to the twenty five invitations that I
get on Facebook in the next two Yeah, Meg, I
love that. I love that we can, you know, be
more intentional with our time during the holidays and as
well as with our gift giving and just kind of
(42:49):
the barrage of consumerism that hits us in the face
and we kind of just usually resort to the traditions
of our families or what we've kind of gotten accustomed
to doing. If we have our own families now and
we need to rethink those things because it can lead
to one a less less of a busted budget, because
so many people wake up in January and they're like
they get the credit card bill and they're like, dang it,
(43:10):
I didn't realize it went that far off the rails.
And so yeah, I think there's a lot of good
food for thought in this conversation. We really appreciate you
joining us. Where can our listeners find out more about you?
Sure you can find me at Meg Nordman. That's Nordman
with two ends on the end anywhere online mag Nordman
dot com, Meg Nordman on Twitter, Instagram. I just love
(43:32):
to talk about financial independence and freedom from consumerism and
cultural norms and uh, around the holidays, I focus more
on on this on how to simplify during the holidays.
But and you can find my book on Amazon and
through my website. That's right. Well, And of course this
is why we wanted to have you on the show,
because we are all about these things as well. Meg.
(43:54):
We really appreciate you coming on. Thanks again, Thank you
so much, Matt and Joel. All right, Joel, that was
a great conversation we just had with Meg Norman. We
talked about her book, Have Your Have Yourself Minimalist Christmas.
Didn't talk about that, the next being crowsby Buddy. The
fact that minimalist has the same syllables as Mary Little
or something like that. How does the song about it
(44:15):
sounds the same? Don't know what I'm talking about. That
was a smart move on her partner, And everyone demands
more singing from you on the show, I think not,
But I think Meg was able to share a lot
of great takeaways from her book about having a minimal
minimalist Christmas. What was yours? Okay, So I'll say that
there were a lot of good things, and I thought
a lot of the good Christmas specific things were really helpful.
(44:35):
But I thought, when you take a step back, one
of the coolest things that she mentioned was that minimalism
is more than just getting rid of stuff that like
decluttering is going to impact you in all these other ways.
So it's it's like you find that as you start
to purge your house of a bunch of items, you're
kind of dealing with like some psychological some like mental
(44:56):
stuff at the same time some part issues. And I
thought that was like inspiring and it's good to know
that it's not just throwing stuff in a bin and
donating it to goodwill. It's like, no, no, no no, no.
While you're doing this, you're you want to become a
person who is less attached to things, who is less consumeristic.
And I think you made a good point earlier in
(45:16):
our in the conversation with her that it's kind of
the water we swimming that David Foster Wallace style, Uh,
you know, water that we swim in. And it's true.
It's it's hard. You you have to be like incredibly
purposeful and intentional to to kind of not float the
mainstream and go in a different direction. But I think
doing so is going to be a benefit not to
(45:36):
just like the amount of clutter that's in your house,
but the kind of person you're becoming, the kind of
person you're becoming in the amount of money that you
have at the end of the day as well. And
she talked about Marie Condo and how okay, the question
that you know she always has on her show in
her book, does the spark joy? And they talked about how, well, shoot,
I've got a lot of things that spark joy in
my life, and so oftentimes what comes down to is
(45:57):
determining what your parameters are going to be that are
going to dictate your future decisions, right, And this specifically
came out when she was talking about like decorating. She's
She's like, Okay, it's got to be gold or read
right when it comes to the holidays, because that's how
she was like, that's how I'm going to decorate my house.
And she talked about it as well when it comes
to her calendar. You know, she had like these hard plans,
(46:19):
things that she wasn't going to be flexible on. But
I think it comes down to essentially creating rules and
determining how many events am I willing to take on
per weekend, how many events am I going to have
even in one day, and sticking with those rules, Because
when we purge things from our lives, that's kind of
looked taking a reflective look on things that we've almost
already done, right, Like, these are things that have happened
(46:39):
in the past, and we do need to do those
things to kind of get us up to speed where
we currently are. But then moving forward, how do we
keep ourselves from having to have these big purges where
we have to spend all day looking back and determining
what it is we're gonna keep. What it is we're
gonna get rid of, Well, it's rules, it's parameters. Is
having this filter that you run all of your decisions through.
It's like this little decision make making matrix that you've
(47:00):
created in your own head, and that's going to determine
what it is that you you keep around. I feel
like the example that she gave about receiving like that
sweater and immediately making the decision is this a keeper
or is this? Is this a honor? And it's only
a keeper if it's replacing another. Like, I thought that
was brilliant because oftentimes what we do is like, Okay,
I'm gonna say that for later, and we end up
(47:20):
washing it or putting it in the closet, which doesn't
need anything else to go into the closet, and then
it starts getting more hard to navigate. And if you
don't have the rules rules, If you don't have the rules,
every decision becomes harder because you have to figure it
out on a case by case basis. Exactly when you
have rules, it informs pretty immediately you say, well, obviously
this is the rule I live by, and so I'm
not going to violate that, and and you're right, Like,
(47:41):
I'm I appreciate you saying that because I am like
the opposite of a rules person, like an out back
stakhouse very much. No rules, just right is my motto.
And and so but I need more of those rules
in my life too, because I do get overwhelmed sometimes
by the amount of choice. And I like choice, I
like options, and I like novelty. And I am not
a minimalist. I will, I will openly confess, but this
(48:03):
episode talking with Meg does make me want to incorporate
more of those principles in my life, even if becoming uh,
you know, one of the supermintalist people is not really um,
it doesn't sound appealing to me. Yeah, you can still
use some of those same principles just to inform your
living and the decisions that you make so that you
just have a happier life. And again, obviously this is
how the money and so we want you to implement
(48:24):
these rules as well because we think that they can
help you to save more of your money. Yeah, did
you did you hear about Meg's budget for Christmas? It
was like what two hund bucks for gifts? And she says,
I stick. I stick to that, and it was what
a hundred bucks for kid? Yeah? Yeah, per kid? And
so those are the kind of rules too. That's another rule,
and that rule helps you save money, and of course
(48:44):
that's that's ultimately what we want for you exactly. And
when it came to her plans, you know, she was
talking about how those are hard plans, but I feel
like that those would be hard guidelines that determine how
she spends her money when it comes to gifts. But yeah,
I think there's a lot here that you can take
from this conversation and imply it to your life and
think about how it is that you can weave some
of these takeaways into your own life. But Joe, let's
(49:05):
mention the beer that you and I enjoyed on this episode.
This was a fantastic beer. By the way, let the
cart get ahead of the horse a little bit. Let
me share the name of this beer, which was called
Empire of Eternal Nothingness, which is a beer by Burial
out of Asheville, North Carolina. Maybe a metaphor for Christmas
pen Hey maybe so? Man, this was a really big,
(49:25):
flavorful stout. What are your thoughts on it? Um? I
loved it. I really truly loved it. Had some great
chocolate vibes coming through, some of those dark chocolate notes,
but at the same time, it was like it was
just really really dark and beastly. I mean, this was
a mammoth stout, and I'd like a big stout it's not,
especially as we're getting into these colder months. I'm like,
(49:45):
that's perfect. Bring on all the big stouts. So this
one is was just delicious and burial. I don't think
I've had a bad beer from them yet, and they
just seemed to knock it out of the park every time. Yeah,
so I definitely had some of those coconut notes going on,
and I still think that we might have a few
more Almon Joys laying around the house from Halloween as
far as the Halloween candy. But it totally had some
(50:06):
of those chocolate e coconutty vibes going on in this beer. Uh.
It said it was like double DiPT like, which makes
me just picture like candy barget and maybe yeah yeah,
and just like I don't know, double the flavor, but
as well as bourbon vanilla in this beer as well,
and you could totally taste those warming notes that you
would get from just kind of a nice pore of
bourbon neat where it's just kind of nice and warming.
(50:28):
Those are also the kind of flavors that you you
want out of a massive stout like this. I'm glad
you and I got to share this one today on
the show. Seriously would recommend any of Burials beers, but
especially some of these crazy off the wall stouts. But Joel,
that's gonna be it for this episode. Listeners can fund
our show notes up on our website at how the
Money dot com and will make sure to link to
Meg's site as well as her book. That's right, some
(50:49):
good tips in there for making sure your Christmas is
just a little more minimalist than it was in years past.
But that I'll do it for this one. Until next time,
Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.
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