After getting rid of the vast majority of my things several weeks ago, I’m becoming much more aware of the things I have left, what I do with my time, and how I spend my money. What got me thinking about this is coffee.
Coffee
It seems that most of the minimalists I read have given up on coffee completely, and 
perhaps one day I will as well. But as it stands now, I love coffee. I drink my coffee sans sugar, with cream. I had sugar in my coffee until December when I made my first huge paradigm shift – low carb. Now it’s August, eight months later, and I’ve decided to try to give up cream for the month.
Minimalism
This is a result of my newfound minimalism not because I’m against drinking cream, but it’s me becoming more conscious of each of my actions. More specifically, it occurred to me that I drink coffee with cream simply because I drink coffee with cream. Always have.
Today is the second of August, and I’m a week into my experiment because I ran out of cream last week, so I started early. But I knew on day two that the cream was most likely a thing of the past. Now a week later I’m pretty convinced. I still enjoy my coffee, even with no cream. So in eight months my coffee has transformed from the ‘necessities’ of cream and sugar, to, “I’ll take it black.”
What are you hanging on to?
This all reminded me of a story that Zig Zigler told about a man who’s new wife cut the ends off of a ham before she cooked it. Stop me if you’ve heard it. So the new husband asked her why she cut the ends of the ham off and she said it’s because that’s how her mother did it and that’s how it’s done. So he decided to clear up this mystery and ask his new mother-in-law why she did it. The answer: because that’s how HER mother did it. Well, determined to find an answer to this, they called grandma to find out why she cut the ends of the ham off before she cooked it. Her reply, “because my roaster was too small to fit the whole ham.”
So there you have it. Stop cutting the ends off of your ham unless you have a reason.
Just the beginning
The cream in my coffee is just the latest thing that I’m aware of that I’ve consciously changed. The way I figure it, every aspect of life is potentially on the chopping block. A brief history of major changes since December goes like this: diet (low-carb, eat local), bottled water (I stopped drinking it, watch Tapped [and on streaming Netflix]), minimalist footwear for running, minimalism (getting rid of 2/3 of my stuff), Zero Waste (or the journey beginning toward Zero Waste), ongoing attempt to simplify everything.
What do you needlessly spend time on that you could be using to change yourself, your family, your world, for the better?
What do you needlessly spend money on that you could be using to do real, important things?
Coffee image by Ballistik Coffee Boy on Flickr.
