3 Benefits of Minimalism During Health Issues

Welcome to the Life Tidy. My name is Katherine. For about the past seven or eight weeks I have been having some kind of issue with my neck that has led to dizziness and numbness and severe headaches and chest pains and all kinds of weird symptoms. Vertigo, nausea, all of that. And so for probably about six of those weeks I was really sort of out. I couldn't really function. It was just like all I wanted to do was fall over and it was very hard to just even get up and move around and do stuff. And so I wanted to make a video because I recognized during this time how much the fact that I have been pursuing minimalism and have incorporated minimalism into my life was a benefit to me during this particular season. I am on the road to recovering. I have an MRI in a couple of weeks. You know how these medical things are. I mean if you go in and say you're dizzy they look at your inner ear and they treat you for fluid in the ear. All the stuff that they normally do and it generally takes a little while when it's something weird like this to find what's really going on. I also have had migraines forever but nothing nothing nothing nothing like this. And so I just wanted to talk about three ways that I noticed during this time that minimalism really was a benefit to me during these health issues. So reason number one is I have already sort of decluttered my life of activities and commitments and things like that that are not really priorities to me. They don't add value to me. They don't help me to add value to others. And so my life now is pretty much consisting of that which I really want to be in it. There isn't a lot of extra stuff that I sort of felt obligated to do and so therefore I do or everyone does that so therefore I do. My life is very intentionally focused on the things that are priorities to me. And so when I did have to call and cancel I was not able to go to work at my job. And when I had to call and cancel when I couldn't like lead worship at church or you know whatever the things were they were minimal. I am not the type of person that likes to call and let people down or to say I'm not going to be there or to find somebody to cover my bases. I don't I mean normally if I can at all function I will be there and I will do it. But this left me really sort of unable to do that. But fortunately because my life is has been minimized in terms of activities and commitments and stuff I wasn't like having to do that every single day which would have made me feel like a horrible human. So even though it is what it is I just it really helped me to be able to just have those few contacts and just explain what was going on. And I have a lot of very supportive people in my life both at my job and at the church and on our worship team and my family. And so it worked out. There was a time in my life where I was doing all kinds of things and I would have had to been calling people every other day and I would have felt horrible every other day. It would have created so much anxiety for me to not be able to meet my commitments. And so this was a huge blessing to me. I could concentrate on getting well and taking care of myself and not the anxiety of knowing that I'm letting people down. The second way minimalism was really a benefit to me is I've kind of gotten my daily routines into a place where I probably spend 20 minutes to an hour every day on stuff around the house. Not all at once just here and there but every day I make sure the dishes are done. I make sure I get a lot of laundry done. The garbage is out if it needs it. I sweep. So my house pretty much maintains itself with pretty minimal effort on my part in terms of time because I never am at the place where I have seven loads of laundry stacked to the ceiling or so many dishes in the sink that I'm going to have to load the dishwasher three times to get them all done or wash them all by hand unless we have 20 people over then sometimes that happens. But that I know is coming and that's different. That's not because I just didn't get it done for a week or whatever. So that really helped me because I did have a couple hours every afternoon where I felt like I could get up and move around a little bit and that's when I would take my shower and I would get the dishes done and throw laundry in and get laundry out and I was still able to because the maintenance of my house and my schedule is pretty minimal on a daily basis. I was able to keep up on it and that that made me feel really good. That took off a lot of if I if I would have known there were dishes in the sink that I was not getting done that would have created anxiety. Having that sort of routine in my life really was a benefit to me during these weeks of this health these health issues. The third and final way it was a benefit to me is we actually had scheduled like a year ago we had planned our family vacation and it fell during this time because I have a minimal very minimal wardrobe. Literally I have 22 hangers in my closet and they're not even all full at this point and so packing consisted of literally I mean it's not winter so I didn't have to bring a coat and boots or anything big and bulky and heavy like that. So literally just pretty much everything I own went in my little it's like a like a duffel bag. I can carry it on an airplane it's a small bag. It's pretty much I just put everything in there. I had everything I had all my options when we were there. I didn't have to spend any time deciding what to bring or anything like that so that that was a big benefit because I would not I did not feel like to stand up and at the time that we were packing for the trip and folding things and putting them and choosing it just would have it would have been burdensome to me but as it was I just kind of put them all in my suitcase and was good to go. So I did have to bring a little thing full of medicine because I'm on a few different medications now for like my whole entire life you guys other than like ear infections and things. I have one medication and it's for migraines. I take it at bedtime and now I have have been on and off of all these different ones trying to figure out what's going on and in fact while we were on vacation I figured out that one of one of the medications was actually part of my problem and not part of my solution and so when I was able to stop taking that that's when I noticed sort of a big improvement in the dizziness in particular. So even though I may still have numbness and I still have a headache and I still feel migraine symptoms I can function now because I'm not feeling like I'm just going to fall over so that is a huge blessing. So I just wanted to get on there and share that with you how minimalism is a benefit to everyday life in so many ways and it never occurred to me how much of a benefit it was going to be in a season where my health was an issue. I've never experienced anything like that. I've never had weeks on end where I literally couldn't function like a normal human. It was very difficult but one thing that I did learn from this experience is I have so much more compassion you guys for people that struggle with chronic pain or that have illnesses or medical conditions in which maybe they feel good one day but the next day they're totally wiped out or like I know being in ministry you talk to a lot of people and there's a lot of people that are always talking about what's going on in their body and sometimes you can just think oh my goodness is there nothing going on else going on in your life you just want to tell me all these physical details but now that I've been there where you're so like miserable and can't function that there literally is nothing going on except for what's going on in your body I just feel like I'm going to be so much more empathetic and compassionate in this to people going through these sort of things in the future than I have been. It's just has been a weakness of mine and I guess I'm thankful in a way to have had this experience to open my eyes to the reality that so many people are living in of chronic health conditions. Minimalism is an awesome choice if that's the choice you're making in your life right now for just regular day-to-day life but it is a huge blessing when you're struggling with health issues because it allows you to be free from the clutter and the noise of the schedule and the dishes in the sink to really concentrate on healing and resting and taking care of what you need to take care of during the season where your health is an issue. So go forth from here as I am going to be to live our loosed, intentional, focused, and empowered life tidy.