When you think you need all the things and the dream home to be happy…. then you realize you need to shed the weight of ‘stuff’ and consumerism in order to find yourself and find peace. Renee Benes, of the Unstuffed Podcast, shares some of her story of downsizing, decluttering the closet and what it taught her about herself and her life. 

In this episode, we talk about:

• Renee gave up her dream home to downsize and adopt minimalism


• The process of decluttering the closet, letting go of those clothes that no longer fit your identity or body


• How to navigate an appreciation of fashion with minimalism


• Capsule wardrobes, seasonal clothing, shopping 


• The influence of social media on us and how it impacts approaches to minimalism 

This episode is a portion of our interview, the rest of the interview covers topics such as:

• Death and loss


• Raising kids


• Scarity and abundance 


• And even kid’s bday presents

There is audio and video available for the rest of this fun interview! 

👋🏽 Find Renee at the Unstuffed Podcast and on Instagram 

☕️ Join the Simple Saturdays Email

👯‍♀️ Be part of the Life on Purpose Community 

Full Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

 Welcome to the simple purpose Podcast. Today we have a very unique episode. This is a guest episode, which rarely happens. And the reason you’re hearing it here today is because I have recently started the Patreon the life on purpose community, and I would like to offer guest episodes in that community. So I wanted to make sure and share some of the year so you can meet Renee, who I’m talking with today. And here’s some of her story. Because I enjoy her story. You’ll hear me tell Renee, that I have followed her on Instagram for years. And I was really drawn to her content, because she was talking about the things I was interested in about saving money, but like just the real practical, like discomfort and stuff about saving money and shopping. And she was talking about becoming a minimalist and how it was changing her life. And she was very laid back about it. It wasn’t all curated, tablescapes and rose gold and just do these three things, and your life will be simplified, and it was really relatable. So Renee has a podcast called unstuffed. And she’s also an Instagram I’m gonna make sure to link are in the show notes. What you’re going to hear, hear, hear, hear, what you’re going to hear today is a mini version of a longer episode. There’s actually two more parts to this episode one is an audio podcast, and the other is a video and those will be available on Patreon coming soon. In this episode, though, we’re going to talk about downsizing, Rene’s experience with downsizing our home. We’re going to talk about closets and clothes and how consumerism and social media plays into all of these things about our lives and who we think we are. So I want to just jump right in. I hope you enjoy. Welcome

Shawna Scafe 1:46

to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here.

Renee 1:49

Hi, Shawna. Yeah,

Shawna Scafe 1:51

thanks for having me.

Renee 1:52

I’m excited to sit down and chat. Yeah.

Shawna Scafe 1:53

So I don’t often do well, I rarely ever do guest interviews. But I’ve been following you on Instagram, I was telling you earlier, I found you on Pinterest started following you on Instagram some years back. And when you reached out to me, as I absolutely like I’ve followed you for a while, I’m going to also be sharing some of this content in the Patreon only. So this was just really inspired timing as well, in my opinion, to be doing this interview with you. So aside from that, tell us who you are. What you do you know the basics. Yeah, well, thanks.

Renee 2:27

I’m so glad first of all, that you still like me from the blog? Like thanks for hanging out. But um, yeah, I started my minimalist blog in 2017. After we had just downsized our house. We downsize our house by 2000 finished square feet, and just started practicing minimalism. And I did it in a way of like, hoping to be able to reconnect to myself, I felt like I had kind of gone through life just on autopilot and collected stuff on autopilot. Yeah. So going through the decluttering process for me was an internal and external just all around life transformation.

Shawna Scafe 3:11

Yeah, and I know, I know some of your story from following you over the years, I know that you were in this huge home. And like you said earlier, there was just a lot of things happening all at once. That kind of prompted you to make a decision to downsize. Could you kind of in a nutshell, give me an idea of what that was like at that time.

Renee 3:30

Yeah, it was like, so obnoxious in the sense that I felt like I had I got everything I ever wanted, everything I thought I should ever want. And it couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t happy. Like, everything just felt worse. It almost felt worse because I thought it would feel better and it didn’t you know, and I started to it talk about like how serendipitously I found, self help spiritual author Wayne Dyer. I didn’t know self help was a thing I didn’t read. I didn’t read after high school. But my marriage was struggling. You know, and my husband had been my best friend so to like, not have my best friend around but this roommate kind of person in my house. You know, it was so awful. So I had a friend say, Well, I’ve been going to the library a lot. And I thought, Well, okay, I heard about this, dude, wait, I’ll just go see what his books are. And they were life changing. And I think that’s how things happen. A lot of times those were just brought to the right message that we need. And it started to encourage me to seek more than stuff in my life to seek a deeper, more fulfilled life that wasn’t just reliant on external things or collecting the things we’re told we should want, you know?

Shawna Scafe 4:58

Yeah, I don’t know if this is how you felt at the time. But it’s like we spent a lot of our 20s building up the life people showed us and told us and you know, we’re you go into winners, and this is what you buy, I think maybe you guys call it something different there. But you go in, you buy the things at the store that you think an adult would need. But then you come home and it just fills your home. And maybe it’s actually not really you like, what, what was that contrast, like to notice between, I have all this stuff. But this is actually who I want to be. So it was

Renee 5:30

tough. It was a weird thing that was kind of like, I’m winging it, I hope this helped pave the road for me. But you’re right, like, our parents, you know, we’re born. And we, it’s what we’re supposed to do is listen to our elders, right? They taught us how to eat, they taught us how to walk, they taught us how to wipe our own butt, you know, things that we need. And so then we just kind of keep listening to the messages that were given from teachers and from parents and, you know, go to college, get the house, when are you going to have kids? And a lot of times nobody questions like, oh, but is this actually what I want? Or do I even have an option for these things? And then unfortunately, you know, I think a lot of people already accumulated the things like you said, and that’s where I started to hear a lot of stories from like the minimalists. Who got the climb the ladder at the six figure job, and we’re like, this isn’t, I don’t like this. I don’t want I want to be here. And so I, for me, it started in my closet. And I think you said you find a lot of peace and decluttering your closet as well as like I couldn’t. It’s so difficult to say like, Hey, figure out who you are. Who are you really what do you really want? That’s a big question. So my solution was, well, I’m gonna go on my closet. And I’ll start with the clothes I actually liked the most. So I picked out all the things that I always wanted to wear the most, you know, the, you know, the shirt that you’re like, I always feel cozy in the shirt. I love the way this shirt looks on me. These pants, oh my gosh, they’re my favorite. I picked out all those things. And basically got rid of the rest. Yeah, I kept a few pieces. But the rest was like, Okay, you’re gone.

Shawna Scafe 7:23

Oh, wow.

Renee 7:24

And that was kind of my stepping stone to figure it out. Me.

Shawna Scafe 7:28

That is I think clothing is a great space to start. But you probably hear this often. How do you actually let go of the things that are, you know, maybe I was pregnant, and this fit me then and it won’t fit me right now. Or I used to have a job. And this is what I used to wear? Like, how did you give yourself permission to really let go of the things because we hold on to clothes for like, safety, like a security net? Or, like, I need options? Like, what did you notice going through and letting go of that stu