Balance

Developing our own work and projects while keeping afloat; raising children in a thoughtful and creative environment while preparing them for the outside world and all its imperfections; being present and engaged while also thinking about the wider picture; and spending as much time as possible in other countries and cultures while maintaining a familiar and nurturing environment. Living the life we want will be a huge balancing act and we’ve only just started on the path to getting this web of desires and responsibilities right.

We’ve been running our own business for a decade now and when our children came along we were determined to make sure that they were a part of our whole lives. It’s all too easy to see work as a way to pay for life, rather than a major part of your way of life. It’s a familiar pattern: work pays for leisure time, objects become the things you live for, your holiday becomes a way of escaping from your work life and you try and fit time with your children around the huge immovable entity known as your job.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Getting the equilibrium of your life right, making everything work together and getting more out of every moment comes down to minimalism. Minimalism isn’t about just getting rid of things, minimalism is about the whole. Our story is one of a long journey to achieving the perfect balance. No more work/life balance, no more us/kids balance. Just balance.

You achieve the perfect whole by making sure that every part of it is essential. So the first stop for us is to get rid of everything we don’t need, to look at the stuff we bought when we lived without really thinking. But once we’re left with a few essentials we need to understand them. Does everything in our lives have a purpose? Does it make our lives better? How does it contribute to better life experiences rather than being an end in itself? In short, what is our minimal list?

This brings us back to the beginning. The minimal list isn’t just about stuff. It’s about experiences, work, children, play, learning, creativity, business, technology, health, food and travel. In short, life.