Then Everything Changed

My initial idea of minimalism was extreme.

I was in the pursuit of having lesser things. I did not want any clutter. Our apartment should only be bathed with neutral colors like those images found in the magazine and Pinterest. I want our house to be picture-perfect.

Thinking about it now it was so unreasonable. And because of the irrationality of my logic and the pursuit for perfection, our apartment was then devoid of character and individuality.

This thinking overflowed to other areas of my life including that of my son’s.

I really had believed that buying him toys equated to more clutter so I ended up not buying him toys that often. Most of his toys are gifts from relatives, family friends and my husband. But then when he was almost 30 months old, I noticed that he had been spending more time in front of the TV watching YouTube. It also did not help that the whole world is currently in the middle of a pandemic and is forced to go into lockdown since usually experiences in the outside world beat any other toys that you can have. This bothered me so much that I became so fixated on finding a way to divert his attention away from the television. There is so much for him to do, learn and explore even inside the home.

And then it hit me, maybe I have it all wrong.

Maybe it is me who brought this upon him.

Maybe clutter is fine. Maybe toys are fine. Maybe I can still practice minimalism without having to declutter endlessly until we only have the bare necessities.

So I started from there looking for toys that are timeless. Toys that he still can play 3 years from now, 8 years from now. And through my incessant reading of blogs and articles about classic and timeless toys I came across this phrase that always stood-out - open-ended play.

And from that single phrase, everything changed. A whole universe of things and inspiration about child-rearing opened to me. I also want my son to have a beautiful and lovely childhood.

I am no expert. I am still learning. I am also growing as a parent and individual alongside Kimi and I think that’s what make this so fun and worthwhile. And with this, I am sharing here with you our journey.