Yonderosa and the Art of Having Less
The question isn't “Where will I put my stuff?” it’s “Why do I have so much of it?”
As I mentioned last week, I recently moved up to a little cabin in the forest. My partner, a much better writer than I, quickly dubbed my home way over yonder in the pines: “Yonderosa.”
My square footage is basically cut in half, and I now live in a place with no closets. No mudroom. No built-in storage. Very few “shove-it-here-and-deal-with-it-later” zones, aside from a couple of sheds.
My kids used to have roughly 500 square feet of indoor play space. Now they have an 80-square-foot loft tucked under the eaves. It’s adorable. And it forces a level of intentionality I’ve managed to avoid for most of my adult life.
Ever since the move, everyone keeps asking me the same questions:
“What about the stuff in your mudroom?”
“Where are you going to put all your shoes?”
“What about your closet?”
And here’s the thing:
I have a lot of stuff.
A LOT of stuff.
My inclination a few years ago would’ve started shoving it into boxes so I could “figure it out later.” In fact, that’s what everyone expects me to do now. But having both houses through December gives me a strange kind of luxury: I don’t have to bring anything over unless I really want it here. So I’m trying—actively—to resist the gravitational pull of autopilot accumulation.
This month, I’m making decisions one object at a time. What comes into the cabin? What stays behind? What gets donated? What gets tossed? And what, honestly, was I carrying around out of pure habit rather than actual usefulness?
During the time I was under contract on this house, planning out my move, I consumed a lot of content around minimalist principles, decluttering. Surrounding yourself with items that spark joy. Building a functional space for the things I love to do: cook, read, write, hike, build, fix, think.
This video came across my algorithm as I was planning:
It’s about toys, yes, but it’s actually about attention, overwhelm, and how too much stuff steals time from kids and parents alike. If you have children and are overwhelmed by the STUFF, I’d highly recommend it.
There’s an idea in the video that hit me hard:
When kids have less, they still play. They often play more. And everyone spends less time cleaning up. But when their lives are full of more and more toys, the focus shifts from play to accumulation.
That was the click for me.
I realized I don’t need more storage.
I need fewer things.
When space shrinks, clarity expands
Yonderosa forces the question:
If something doesn’t have a place, should it even come inside?
A smaller, more intentional home is pushing me toward something I’ve intellectually believed for years but practically avoided: my stuff should serve my life, not the other way around.
As I stand in this new house with its limited corners and its nonexistent closet space, I’m asking:
Do I really need five down jackets?
What books are important in their lives?
Which toys can I use to populate their play loft and actually spark their imaginations?
If everything I own requires managing, what does that really cost me?
Choosing intentionally, in real time
This isn’t me telling the triumphant story of how I decluttered my life.
That post doesn’t exist yet.
This is me documenting the process mid-stream:
Some things are easy to let go of: duplicates, broken items, the charger for my iPhone 5.
Some things surprise me: I’m keeping less for nostalgic reasons than I expected, and far more for functional ones.
I don’t yet have a dedicated office here, but I hope to build one in the next few years, so I’m putting away some momentos from my office into bins in the shed until there’s a space for them.
It is overwhelming and often leads me to want to just take a nap instead. But, I have a garage sale scheduled for 18 days from now, and, in 21 days, I will no longer have my old home, so I must keep going.
I’m deciding this month, not years later, what actually deserves a place in this smaller life I’m trying to build.
A new metric for enough
The more I sit among the pines, the more I understand the core insight of that video:
When we have less, we still play. We still live. We still create. But we spend way less time maintaining and managing.
I want that.
I want a home where the default state isn’t clutter.
Where my kids see their toys and play with them, not drown in them.
Where I don’t waste half my Saturday putting things “away”—a word that, in a no-closet cabin, becomes hilariously loaded.
So this week and next—I’m choosing what comes through the door.
Not what I can fit, but what I want to live with.
cool