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Summary

In this conversation, Stephanie Seferian discusses her journey into minimalism, emphasizing the importance of sustainable living and questioning consumer culture. She shares insights on how minimalism has evolved for her, moving from a focus on decluttering to a broader lifestyle choice that prioritizes environmental consciousness. The discussion also touches on the impact of advertising on consumer behavior, the challenges of maintaining minimalism in a consumer-driven society, and practical tips for setting boundaries around gifts and possessions. In this conversation, Adrienne and Stephanie Seferian explore the principles of minimalism, conscious consumerism, and intentional living, particularly in the context of parenting and family life. They discuss the importance of rethinking traditional celebrations, such as birthdays, to focus on experiences rather than material gifts. Stephanie shares practical steps for embracing minimalism, emphasizing the need to align purchases with personal values and wellness. The discussion also touches on the challenges of parenting in a consumer-driven society and the importance of fostering resilience and self-reliance in children.

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Read the Transcript:

Adrienne (00:00)
Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. I have Stephanie here with me from Sustainable Minimalists and I am so excited to talk about minimalism today. So Steph, take it away. Who are you? What do you do? How did you get into minimalism?

Stephanie Seferian (00:12)
Well, first of all, Adrienne, thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here. My name is Stephanie Seferian. I am the host of the Six Years and Running Sustainable Minimalist podcast. I am the author of a book by the same name, Sustainable Minimalism.

I’m a mother of two, my husband and two daughters and cat and dog and bees. live just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. And I found minimalism, well, let me back up and say I was never a minimalist prior to having children. Frankly, I was your average run of the mill consumer. I was a full-time teacher.
I bought clothes to fit the profession. I went to the mall on weekends as a pastime. I wouldn’t say I was like a shopaholic or anything, but I shopped because that’s what everybody else in their 20s was doing as a female. I never really considered consumerist culture and its impacts on health, well-being, and the environment. I never thought about any of that, but that all really changed once I had my first daughter now 11 years ago. I was home with a newborn and she had an amazing closet full of clothes. When I say it was a fashionista’s dream, that was her closet. She was the first grandchild for both sides of the family. She had frilly dresses galore. She had, she had it all. And guess what? She wore none of it. She wore zip up onesies all day long. And then she soiled them and she put on another zip up onesie. And so I just had a moment of feeling, you know, not only overwhelmed because I had to like keep an infant alive. Like I never knew how to do that. Nobody told me how to do that. But I felt overwhelmed also because the very like small amounts of free time that I did have was spent organizing her stuff. Like not only her closet full of high fashion, but also her gear, her toys, her this, her that. And we were living in an 850 square foot apartment and there just wasn’t room for all this stuff. And so I thought to myself, know, less is more. Like less stuff means more time for me to spend with my baby, more free time for me to catch up on sleep. All this stuff that is marketed to parents is, you know, like flashing lights, like it’s a distraction, it’s red herrings. So that’s a really long way of saying, and please ask me like extra questions, but that’s a really long way of saying once I became a mom, really honed in on the consequences associated with consumer culture.

Adrienne (02:58)
Right, right, right. Well, I mean, that’s, feel like once we have kids, so many things start to come into play and we start to question things. But, but that, that is unique. Cause I think a lot of parents don’t go through that questioning experience. I think for a lot of parents that just continues on. You continue to buy more toys and more clothes and they get older and you continue to get them bikes and rollerblades and you know, outfits and all of that stuff. So it is interesting and unique. I think minimalism is a building movement. But what, what do you see minimalism as? Like, I think some people just see it as it’s decluttering, or it’s just buying containers to organize my things. So what do you see it as? what do you, what does minimalism not to you?

Stephanie Seferian (03:43)
Well, I’ll be honest and say my definition of minimalism has changed radically over the last 11 years. At first, minimalism for me was all about stuff, like reducing stuff for greater wellbeing. And then it morphed into reducing the extras. So extra calendar stuff and obligations. And simultaneous to that was my foray into environmentalism. Minimalism meant having a smaller footprint on the planet. And it still means that. That’s just a fact. It is what it is. But these days, minimalism for me, my definition that I’m going back and forth with now is minimalism is a lifestyle, is a less is more lifestyle by which we question everything. Everything for our own well-being, our own betterment. And I just come back an awful lot to consumerist culture here in the United States. is pushed down our throats from birth, essentially. And it’s certainly padding the pockets of the billionaires. It’s certainly great for them when we two-day ship this, that, and the other thing to our homes.

But I really question whether it’s best for me and people like me long term.

Adrienne (05:04)
Right. Okay. Well, and what’s the sustainable part of it? Because that’s honestly what drew me to your page to begin with, because there are so many minimalism pages out there. But then I saw those two words together and I was like, yeah, of course. That’s so imperative to this movement. So how did you, I guess, get into that particular niche of making it sustainable?

Stephanie Seferian (05:25)
Yeah, so I’ll say, I’ll back up to when I was decluttering my daughter’s closet 11 years ago of all her fashion items. And I’ll just say that, you know, it was a journey of finding myself and my voice and a lot of the minimalists around those times, the big names were talking about, just declutter for yourself, for your peace of mind, for you know, clarity and I needed peace of mind and clarity, frankly, but getting rid of perfectly good stuff and putting it in the trash can only to go back to the store or back to your favorite online site and buy more stuff to re-clutter your space. Like that didn’t, that didn’t fit with me. because there’s an underlying issue and I’ll just lay it out that when we’re taking finite resources from our planet to manufacture stuff that we never needed in the first place, that’s creating an unstable planet for my daughter and your children to inherit. And I feel like at least 11 years ago, and frankly, I’ll be completely honest, still today, the minimalist conversations are really leaving that out. They’re talking about minimalism as self-care. They’re talking about minimalism as a great way to reduce your mental load. And yes, minimalism does all that. But the number one most important reason we should all be buying and consuming less is because buying and consuming stuff that we don’t need is harming our one true planet.

Adrienne (06:40)
Our only one. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, no, I, I love that. And really, it ties into on my podcast, when I talk about unschooling, I talk about how everything is connected. And so same with this, like it’s connected to climate justice, it’s connected to capitalism, it’s connected to consumerism, it’s connected to environmentalism, right? Like all of these systems, you then realize, we have to be aware of how much it is affecting just globally everything, right? From fast fashion to even greenwashing. Like I have such a problem with marketing eco-friendly products, which is great. But if all you’re doing is throwing away all the plastic and then buying steel or glass or bamboo or whatever, particularly like steel takes so much energy to create and so you’ll have parents just like rebuying all this stuff instead of either using what they already have and just sticking with that because it’s always better to just not buy instead of buying more even if it’s eco friendly and so I do feel like that’s such a big part of the conversation that’s missing as well as it’s not just about buying green or buying local or buying sustainable, but also not buying, like also not going out and just filling our houses with stuff, even if they’re eco-friendly. The tariff thing issue that’s going on between Canada and the States right now, I see so many Canadians being like, okay, buy local, support local, buy local, which just floods again, more consumerism. So I get the buy local, I totally get that. And I think that’s great if we’re purchasing something to purchase more sustainable and local and Canadian. But that doesn’t mean go out and start buying a bunch of things that you don’t need and just advancing consumerism in general. So I feel like that often is left out of the conversation, as you said.

Stephanie Seferian (09:05)
Yes, I would love to jump in there if I can. Yeah, it’s like we have been conditioned from birth to buy. And so whenever we feel a little bit of discontent or whenever we have a problem or whenever there’s a trade war or, you know, insert problem, our first go to is to buy something and maybe we buy slightly better or slightly more consciously but regardless unless we are consciously pushing back on what we have been trained to do which is buy first we’re still consumers we’re still buying and so it’s kind of hard to tell people you know at the end of the day it’s not about buying better it’s about not buying

Adrienne (09:28)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Seferian (09:49)
period. Don’t buy stuff. Use what you’ve got. We all have homes full of junk in 2025. Use what you’ve got. And then when you absolutely have to buy, then and only then is the opportunity to buy better. But people just skip the non-buying altogether and just go straight to, you know, buying better. But what even is that these days in a greenwashed, you know, buying culture in which everything’s better.

Adrienne (10:19)
That’s right. Everything’s organic. Everything’s eco-friendly. Everything’s sustainable. Yes, that’s right. It’s just labels put on every, I don’t even think that that industry is very heavily regulated.

Stephanie Seferian (10:22)
Anything could be clean.

Adrienne (10:38)
I wanted to talk about the post that you did a couple of days ago where you said, stop letting people sell you new insecurities. So can you go into that for a second? Cause I love it so much.

Stephanie Seferian (10:47)
I just have, you know, I’ll back up and say I love to look at advertising and media with a critical eye. It’s like a little past time of mine. And what I’ve noticed is that advertisements love to make us feel bad about ourselves by selling us problems. So either we have too many wrinkles or I mean, I’m almost 41. I have too many gray hairs or my body shape is the incorrect shape. or, you know, label it. Yeah, it really is endless. So they insert an insecurity, problem that makes us feel bad about ourselves. And then they insert the singular solution, which of course is their product. And then, you know, if we on the consumer end don’t insert the pause. It seems so clear like, we’ve got this problem and there’s this product to fix it and we just buy. And again, it’s never been easier to buy in the history of commerce. And so I think that we really need to start questioning the advertisements that we’re seeing every day. it’s that’s not easy. I mean, there’s very explicit advertisements, commercials, billboards. I mean, you name it. But advertising in 2025 is very subversive. We’ve got influencer marketing. They’re just basically advertisers for hire. Like if we’re being honest, we also have to confront our culture, which loves to prioritize competition. And when there’s a competition, there’s winners and there’s losers. And the losers obviously want to feel better about themselves. Again, insert a product. And so I just, I just think at the end of the day, all of us need to question the insertion of products as easy breezy solutions to all our problems. Because again, at least here in America, we love, we love a quick solution. But if the quick solution is solving a problem that never existed in the first place, then we’re just wasting money unnecessarily.

Adrienne (13:03)
Mm hmm. No, and what comes up for me when you say that is like, it’s that pause that distraction, those dopamine hits because our culture runs on this capitalist idea of like non stop productivity and rest is bad. It’s a reward you have to earn rest or rest is lazy, like all of this programming around hustle culture and go go go and it starts young, it starts really young with kids and parents who want their kids to be, you know, super athletes or want them to get top grades in school and push them with an insane amount of pressure, in my opinion, from a very, very young age to wear the coolest clothes and be the most popular and be the best at sports. Like everything is about competition and it’s about comparing and it’s about consuming once again. And our society is not set up for pauses. It’s not set up for people to rest. It’s not set up to give us any time, any amount of leisure to really step back and be like, what am I doing? Why, why am I buying this? Why do I need this? Why do I have my kids signed up for a million things? Why is my calendar so full? It’s set up to keep us going and going and going and on this hamster wheel, which I realize wasn’t a question, but just a thought that came to mind.

Stephanie Seferian (14:27)
You’re so right and I’ll say as somebody who’s stepped off the hamster wheel only slightly, the hamster wheel has a pull to it. I mean I live in a lovely community but it is a community in which kids are starting soccer at age two because the parents have the plan of their kids getting full scholarships to colleges because of their soccer prowess. so I say a lot of the time on my own show, you know, we shouldn’t be keeping up with the Joneses, but not keeping up with the Joneses is really darn hard when the Joneses are all doing, 99 Joneses are doing one thing and I’m the only one over here, like doing my own thing.

Adrienne (14:55)
Yeah, well, so how do you address that? Because I think, least when I first started talking about minimalism back in the day, because in my early days of homeschooling, I was like, Okay, I’m gonna have all of the things I’m gonna have the wooden Montessori toys, and I’m gonna have the perfect playroom set up. And I was like, obsessed with this Pinterest idea. And I became a homeschooling influencer very early on with people sending me nonstop products. And there was a point at which I was like, what is happening? Like my whole calendar revolves around one, marketing and exploiting my kids, which I don’t do anymore. And I like feel sick to my stomach about, but I did at the time. And two, my whole, our whole life is based around photo shoots and meeting deadlines for this company and yeah, okay, this product is coming in, I owe them five videos and four photos and da da da da. And it was all stuff that my kids like loved ish, right? It was new toys, new clothes, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, I had this huge epiphany where I realized that our life really revolved around brand marketing and building these other businesses off of my and my kids’ labor. And I was like, what, what are we doing? What is happening? And again, like you said, I was spending all my time like organizing my kids’ toys or buying yet another organizational system to fit all the toys or setting it up so that it was cute and organized or getting the right baskets and the right drawers and the right like whatever it is as you know, which is a huge market, right? Like which is is so counterintuitive and so hypocritical that like the minimalism market is like a billion dollar industry because it’s people just buying like matching beige containers and glass pantry containers and whatever it is. But my god, where is I going with this Stephanie?

Stephanie Seferian (16:44)
You know, for me, at the beginning, minimalism was about aesthetics. I thought that if I had the matching baskets and like the cutesy lanterns for the table or whatever it was that was being sold at that time, I would have inner peace, right? Because I thought that if I could, you know, parenting’s really hard. If I could control my external environment, the internal peace that I was seeking would just arrive. And short term, sure. Short term, yeah, having a pristine home did make me feel better. But long term, that’s not how it works. Right. And so these days, minimalism for me is mismatched, you know, kitschy, sometimes gaudy stuff like mismatched plates. Sure. Why not? Because if we’re talking about sustainable minimalism, is my passion, sustainable minimalism is about keeping stuff out of landfill. So if I’m gonna keep this plate on the landfill, that means I’m gonna use it. is it, know, house beautiful worthy? No, but it feels more right to me, I guess, at the end of the day.

Adrienne (18:08)
Mm-hmm. Totally. Which, yeah. So I was reading about Marie Kondo, and she, as we know, has her tidying up books and everything. But after she had kids, her view on minimalism completely changed. Because originally, she was like, it’s really easy to just stay tidy and be a minimalist. But she said, “My home is messy, but the way I’m spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage in my life. Up until now, I was a professional tidier. So I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times. I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is spending time with my children at home”. And so I just wanted to throw that in there also, because I think like everything else, we go, okay, I’m going to embrace minimalism. And now minimalism is going to take over my life. And then I forget why I’m doing it in the first place. And then I get all caught up in the system and buying organizational kits and doing these challenges on, on Instagram or Facebook. And, and for her, what I loved about that was she was like, you know what, it was my job before to be a tidier. That was my entire job, my entire responsibility, my entire focus. Now I have kids and now I’m realizing what is more important to me. And it’s not that my home is tidy all the time, it’s that I’m spending time with them, which I feel like is at the core of minimalism. It’s really looking at what the essentials are in our life and questioning, as you said, and getting back to what we value.

Stephanie Seferian (19:50)
I mean, I’m totally on board with that quote. I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily like a Marie Kondo fan, and that’s a whole another topic. But if minimalism is not providing more free time for you to do what you love with the people that you love, then it’s not for you. Like minimalism should free up your time. Minimalism should make your life easier and more more peaceful and so if it’s not doing that if you’re if it if it’s making you more hyper attuned to the mess or the lack of baskets or the you know whatever then then that’s then that’s not minimalism.

Adrienne (20:16)
Mm-hmm.

How do you approach? Because I know people really struggle with two things, but I’ll bring up one first. How do they set boundaries with either their kids or extended relatives as far as gifts go and donations and gift bags at birthday parties or whatever it is? Because I think that like you said, if all the Joneses, if we were all doing the same thing, it would be fine. But because we’re so unconventional living this way, and we’re always going against the grain and swimming upstream with the Joneses, how do we balance that, that need to make boundaries and setting boundaries and maintaining boundaries? I think people worry about that a lot when it comes to embracing minimalism.

Stephanie Seferian (21:17)
Yeah, so it’s so interesting. I’ve probably done hundreds of interviews and I always get this question. I guess I’ll start with birthday parties first because my, so March is the month for birthday parties. Both my daughters were born in March. I guess I’ll say, we’ll start here and then we can talk about grandparents. But with regard to birthday parties, my daughters, they are now eight and 11 and they have, you know, their family gives freely. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But their friends parties are always, please no gifts on the invitation. Like they don’t need more gifts and they certainly don’t need more impersonal gifts from people who frankly don’t know them and don’t know their interests very well. Like they don’t need, they don’t need any of that. So I have always written on the invitation, please your presence is the present gifts. And then in terms of goodie bags, I always give, you know, it’s usually a gift card. The gift card, well, let me back up. This year was gift cards to our local ice cream shop. $5 gift card. So no like bag of plastic junk. Previously, when they were much younger, I on the party invitation, I asked everybody to bring a used children’s book. So like a children’s book that was well loved that their child, know, great age appropriate, but they were just done with and then wrapped. So they wrapped it and they brought it and I put them all in a basket. And then when the children left, they chose a, chose a book, wrapped book present to them that they didn’t bring and that was also a huge hit. So like we can do goodie bags without the junk. We really can. We just have to like put three minutes worth of thought into it. Ask me another question and I’ll give you. And with regard to birthdays, right? Like, what is the goal? Like, let’s back up and ask, what is the goal of having a birthday party for a child? The goal for 99 % of us, I think, is to make our children feel loved. And when did presence become synonymous with love? I mean, can’t we show love in another way? Can’t we show love without the thing. I mean, I think we can. I mean, that’s a, again, a gamble that I’m taking. And so far it’s paid off. My children are eight and 11 and we’re going to continue on with it. But with regard to gifts from, you know, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, I will say that it does help that I have made it my life’s work to propagate a message of conscious consumerism, my in-laws are really great. My own parents, my sister, you know, they’re great about gifting with intention. So my sister will give a fun day. She’ll take them somewhere. Or my in-laws will, they live in New York. My oldest daughter is really big into theater. For her birthday, they gave her so no gifts, no stuff to open. They bought her and them a ticket to go see Wicked on Broadway, which she’s super into. So experience it. Like they can still give, right? Because they want to give, they want to show their love through a gift. They can still do that, but they don’t have to do it with the cheap plastic junk and the excess. Usually we go all in on quantity. Why not instead go all in on quality like a ticket to a Broadway show is really expensive. Again, not quantity, but really good quality a great experience. Yeah.

Adrienne (25:13)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. And memory. Yeah, for sure. I love that. And I love how you tie it in to capitalism. Honestly, this whole time we’ve been talking so much of what you said, I look at through the lens of unschooling, because all we do is question the status quo and question why we’re doing things and use unschooling as a pause and a way to take a step back and think about what we value and what we’re doing. But what do you wish people understood about minimalism and about your cause?

Stephanie Seferian (26:15)
I guess I would say number one minimalist living is really at the end of the day, just consuming less or consuming more consciously instead of having a whim and like going to Amazon and fulfilling the whim. It’s stopping and pausing and thinking, okay, like, do I really need to fulfill this through a purchase? Or can I, you know, do it through another means? Can I ask a friend? Can I reach out to my buy nothing group? Can I do without? Can I repurpose? That’s what minimalism really is at the end of the day. I would say hopping off the consumerist bandwagon is a really great means for getting back a bit of personal agency and it’s a great means for finding some new hobbies. Through this journey, my husband and I have started keeping bees because that sounded interesting. I started sewing. I started a garden. I started sourdough bread making. I mean, you name it, I’ve tried it because when we’re not buying to satisfy our needs, we’re actually teaching ourselves how to satisfy our needs on our own. And I actually find that to be much more satisfying and is in the teaching. gosh, canning, canning is like my big love these days. I grow the food and then I can it and then I eat it in the winter and then I smile. Like these are things that 15 years ago I would ever even consider. So actually, you know, as I’m talking, I’m thinking about how minimalism is a gateway into so many other lifestyles. It’s all connected. It’s all so anti-capitalist and scary to the economic forces that are currently running our lives, but that’s what makes them so exciting and so powerful.

Adrienne (28:10)

Mm hmm. Which really like the anti capitalist world runs on that community building, that hobby building, the self reliance building, right? It’s farming, it’s growing our own food, it’s bartering with people and trading our services. It’s relying on ourselves and each other instead of relying on this big factory wheel that is capitalism.

Right. And squeezing every last drop out of all of us, out of the land, out of the water, out of our oceans, out of animals, out of humans. And it’s unsustainable. Like capitalism, if it works, will just end everything because it never, there’s never an end. There’s never a finish to capitalism. just keeps going and going and going. And it operates under the presumption.

that resources are endless instead of finite, right? And so if we keep heading down that road, there’s not gonna be anything left. And so I love that this is what I do with unschooling and obviously what you do with minimalism at home, but it’s getting a chance to show our kids to one, be resilient and do things like raise bees and grow honey or can or bake bread or whatever it is and two to rely on each other and network that way and trade you know eggs for honey or whatever it is. Or looking in that not by group or trading with people or you know donating or whatever and I also wanted to bring up the stats on donating are like horrifically absurd that 84 % of what gets donated just ends up on the coastlines of Africa or in landfills anyway. And so it is such a fallacy that we think, I’m just going to gather all up all the stuff up and take it to the donation center. And it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind that makes us feel really good because we donated and we gave to charity. And actually it’s really just ending up in landfills.

Stephanie Seferian (30:16)
accurate. I mean a lot of us think we’re doing something altruistic by giving our discards. It’s not altruistic, it’s just passing the problem onto oftentimes a developing country.

Adrienne (30:56)
Okay, Stephanie, I also wanted to ask you about some easy switches that maybe people are getting into minimalism for the first time. But what are some like beginner ways beginner switches we can make in our homes?

Stephanie Seferian (31:18)
Yeah, I like this question and I would say look at categories. Does your child have three different sets of blocks? So they have a magnetic set, they have a Duplo or a Lego, they have a wooden set. Let’s just be honest with ourselves and say that a building block is a building block and maybe they don’t need six sets of blocks. Maybe we can reduce them to just your child’s favorites. I would start there. Like, so look at categories for your children’s stuff, but also look at categories in your own life, in your own home. How many spatulas do you have? And conversely, how many spatulas do you need? Wooden spoons, mugs. I mean, we are taught, I mean, at least here in America, I don’t know if it’s the same in Canada, but at least here in America, we are just taught to amass more and more and more. So instead of thinking about quantity, let’s instead look at quality. So instead of keeping six sets of blocks and 12 spatulas, let’s keep two sets of blocks and two spatulas. I think that’s plenty. And let’s not keep the plastic spatulas either because they have low heat resistance and high toxicity. So let’s keep the silicone ones. And let’s pare down that way. Let’s pare down smart because when you have less and you don’t have to shove the door shut because you have too much stuff, that’s going to provide immediate wellness for you. I would say at least it did for me. I would also say on a bigger picture level, like let’s just go back to wants versus needs like asking ourselves. Is this a want or is this a need? think again here in America, we’ve just so forgotten about asking ourselves. Everything’s a need these days. we see this up Amazon swipe two day shipping done. Like our payment information is saved. Like let’s just buy it. Like we do not need to own everything. Like let’s start questioning that again. If we’re going on a camping trip once this summer. Do we really need to buy an $800 tent or can we just borrow our neighbors? Like, especially if we don’t even know if we like camping, like why would we buy a tent? Why would we buy a cooking stove? Like, let’s just be smart about it. We do not need to own everything. And then I guess my third recommendation here would start to hit on the comparison piece. Like a lot of people buy stuff and I used to be one of them frankly. We buy stuff to fit in. We buy stuff to compete with others and this is like all based in our biology. It’s evolutionary, evolutionarily advantageous to us to amass stuff to fit in with the herd. But it’s 2025 and the stuff is abundant. So I think it’s high time we start asking ourselves like, we buying, insert the thing, the boat, the this, the that, are we buying this to fit in or are we buying this because it’s genuinely aligned with our values, values being the key? I’m not sure that a lot of us are in the habit of asking ourselves that question prior to buying.

Adrienne (38:05)
We’re not encouraged to question or encouraged, right, to be conscious and be intentional. We’re kind of built society, our society, capitalist society runs on people not thinking and not questioning and just going to work and like making money for the economy and just keeping our heads down and and going home and living for the weekend and staying financially strapped because we’re in debt that

keeps the wheel of capitalism running very well.

Stephanie Seferian (38:44)
It It does.

Adrienne (38:45)
I wanted to finish with how do you talk to your kids about it? Have they ever pushed back on it? Have they are they ever? What about the line between like, these are my things, mom, and you don’t get to take away my things or do you have those discussions going on in your home? Like how do you get your kids on board or have they always been and just because that’s how you’ve it sounded like you embraced that quite early on. But what about I guess for parents who are who are going into it now and they’ve had a lifetime of having a lot of stuff.

Stephanie Seferian (39:16)

Yeah, good. That’s a great question. So I’ll say, you know, I

don’t take away my children’s stuff. I would never do that. I think that’s more harmful than beneficial. I’d also say though that we have lived a less, it’s more lifestyle since they were children. So they don’t know different. They know when they go to their friend’s house and they see friends living differently. And that’s, I would say where the main source of tension lies is they’ll go to a friend’s house or they’ll be with a friend who has this that or the other thing. It’s 99 out of 100 times a piece of technology that we’re not giving our children. And there’s pushback there. There absolutely is but I do not view my job as a mother as being their friend. I view being a parent as being a parent. And sometimes being a parent means saying no. I find, at least in where I live, there’s a real reluctance to say no to children. I don’t know where that’s come from, but I’m not on board. I am a parent and I will say no if I’m in charge. And I do not think that giving young children technology, specifically smartphones, is smart. And so we will not be doing it. I mean, that’s a hard choice. I am a wait until eighth parent, perhaps even longer. Let’s be honest. But the research abounds with regard to the negative wellness impacts with regard to technology on developing brains. And so yeah, I’ll have those top those conversations, especially with my rising sixth grader. She is so mad at me. But again, my job is not to be her friend. My job is to be her parents. And so it comes with the territory.

Adrienne (41:15)
it’s hard to go against mainstream, totally, which again, is why we go back to well, why am I doing this? And I always think it is my job to protect the peace in our home. Right? And like physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and if that’s toxic relationships, that could be a toxic relationship with social media that could be a physical, physical toxic relationship with someone in like friendships or family, whatever that could be like, it is our job to keep our kids safe, not sheltered, but safe. And if part of that is these, you know, over consumption and capitalism and consumerism being toxic lifestyles, it’s my job to protect my family from that and our home from that and my wellbeing from that and their wellbeing from that. I, yeah, I love that we ended there. Okay, you have a podcast, you have a book. I will link those in the show notes. Thank you so, so much for being here. Is there anything you wanted to share at the end for like, I just wish that this message got across to parents. I wish people understood this.

Stephanie Seferian (42:23)
Yeah, that’s such a great ending. guess I would say, like, don’t be afraid by minimalism. Like, minimalism has gotten this, like, super fancy spin, especially through Marie Kondo, who we talked about earlier in the past, you know, 10 years, but minimalism has been happening for centuries. I mean, it’s the pillar of many societies. It’s just these Western societies who have glorified maximalism. However, such glorification really does come at the expense sometimes of our own wellness. so minimalism is not this radical new thing. Minimalism has been around for a while. It will likely make your life simpler, better, freer to do the things that you want to do and need to do for your own health and wellness. And that’s my final word. Thank you for letting me have it.

Adrienne (42:55)

Mm-hmm.

I love it. I love it so much. Thank you so much, Stephanie. We’ll chat soon.

Stephanie Seferian (43:25)
Thank you.