Thoughtful Minimalists

Our family has been busy lately.  I've been preparing for our move and for Zack to come home to us.  It's a similar process of going room to room so it was easy to do it at the same time.  I know that I've mentioned before that we are anti-stuff.  I've recently come to realize that we share many of the same beliefs as minimalists.  And so we are minimalists...something that I never thought I would label myself as growing up being a pack-rat!  However, it does fit us.  We really do think long and hard before bringing in something new to our house...sometimes it's a long painful process thinking it over.  (It took us over one calendar year to finally decide to get an iPad!)  Do we need it? Does it serve the purpose we want it to?  Does it go along with our family philosophy?  And truthfully almost all of the time we decide against it.  Noah is at the age now where he sees things or hears his friends talking about an item and he expresses interest in owning said item.  Almost all of the time it's a gentle no and an explanation about how we have enough.  We don't need more.  We need to play with the items we have and enjoy what we have.  And sometimes it's an item that comes under consideration and is stored away for a possible gift from Santa.  It's not that we mind him playing with the toys it's just not something we are comfortable owning in our house.

One of the many things we've been able to shelter our kids from the American culture is the more, more, more mentality.  More is better in America.  But more isn't better.  Our children have never seen a long toy aisle in Wal-Mart or Toys R Us.  They've seen the small toy aisles at the NEX our out in town which is nothing to compared to the average length of aisles in America.  Will they see toy aisles in America?  I'm sure that it can't be avoided even though we most likely wouldn't buy any of the toys anyway.  And I am sure that they will be tempted and point out this and that.  And once again we will have the conversation gently telling them that they have enough.  We don't need more and more to make us happy.  Noah has seen toy commercials as a baby but he hasn't seen any in years.  Yes, our kids have not been exposed to toy commercials.  We cancelled our cable television a while ago and we only get the free Armed Forces Network(AFN) channels.  I can thank AFN for their cheesy public service announcements instead of exposing our children to advertising designed to make them go running to mom and dad saying, "I NEED.....".  We don't watch much television anyway though.  We do watch movies or episodes from certain television series off an external hard drive though.  And so we will not be buying cable when we move to Nevada.  We will not spend the money for the channels when we don't watch them.  That money can be utilized elsewhere.  And it also has the added benefit of being able to monitor the influences that come into our home.

I'd like to point out that it isn't like our children aren't given toys or things they like or enjoy.  They do...but to a point.  Just like anything that comes into the house it is a thoughtful process.  They do have a few toys that I wouldn't mind setting by the curb free for a taker but they enjoy them.  I try to meet them somewhere along the spectrum and so they stay...(for now)!

Caraline recently played with Barbies owned by friends at the pool or their houses.  And I see that she enjoys playing with them...brushing their hair...suckering in an unsuspecting soul to change their clothes for her every few minutes.  The Barbie or no Barbie has been on my mind for a while now...thinking it over because the time was coming.  And I'm still thankful that Christmas is still off in the future that we have more time to come to come to a firm conclusion on whether or not Barbie will be added into the toys at the Gogel house.