Reflection on our minimalism journey so far

We started on this blog somewhere in September 2016 and we managed to garner quite a bit of followers since then (we are currently top of the list in Google search if you type in “minimalist in the city” which we think is quite an achievement as our blog is relatively new). As for the year of 2017, we would like to post more things to showcase that your life could be simple, inexpensive yet extraordinary by living with less. We will also be touching on sustainable living to lessen the effect we have on mother nature, smart personal finance and also engaging in activities or preparing meals that are healthier, inexpensive and definitely comes with more contentment.

This year was quite an eventful year whereby we just moved into our minimalist home and started this blog in the same month. Ally also just started preschool in June 2016 and is now enjoying her daily experience in her preschool. She went to a private preschool within walking distance from our parents place. She also knows all her classmates by name and its quite amazing for a two year old to do that (at least to me).

We also spent a lot of time on weekends at our new home just chilling with family and friends. All our visitors feel really relax and comfortable at our home (they also feel that they were in a Muji cafe).  We also cooked a lot at home nowadays which is inexpensive and healthier as compared to dining in restaurants outside (you could refer to our minimalist cooking post here).

As you all may already know, we have a new found family hobby which is cycling and we did it almost every weekend except on rainy days. We really enjoy this family activity so far and our new task is to get Ally to cycle on her own which is still a big work in progress. She also thoroughly enjoy this activity as evident in the photo where she spotted monkeys along the seaside on Coney Island which is within cycling distance from our home.

We also went for a open air musical event at our Singapore Botanical garden where we picnic there (luckily the weather was great that day and we managed to lay our picnic mat even-though it was packed with 6000 people according to the media). It was a free performance organised by Channel NewsAsia  which presents its first ever outdoor musical event in celebration of Singapore and Japan’s 50 years of friendship this year. “A Beautiful Life Musical Fiesta” gathered over 45 performers between the ages of 7 – 92 years old, to present a series of Japanese musical performances, and brought a touch of Japan to all in Singapore.

The atmosphere was quite electrifying whereby almost all spectators were standing and clapping along with the performers. All three of us were also standing and we had loads of fun eating our home cooked food (courtesy of Kate) and enjoying the musical performance. The most unbelievable segment of the performance was right at the end where grannies (superstar granny idols from a group call KBG84) with an average age of 84 came out to sing and dance. These are the grannies from Kohama Island in Okinawa (the place known for highest life expectancy in the world) where all of them are very physically active and eat healthily. They were astonishingly energetic and definitely does not look like they are in their 80s. Wish we could be as healthy as them when we arrive at that age.

Personally, i think its quite an empowering force to know that you could actually live with less and knowing that the most important things in your life are the people around you rather than stuff that you buy.

We would like to thank all our readers that visited our blog and hope that our experience and thoughts will help you in leading your own minimalism journey with confidence. Wish all of you a great year ahead!