5 Reasons to Raise Your Kids in a Minimalist Home

One question I often get as a minimalist mom goes like this: aren’t your kids deprived growing up in a minimalist home?

The question comes in the way of Instagram comments: “How can you live with kids and less stuff? Mine would be so sad with fewer toys.”

Or well-meaning friends: “Aren’t your kids growing up feeling like they’re missing out?”

Early on in my minimalist journey, to be honest, the questions used to make me feel uneasy. Was jettisoning excess possessions and shifting our family’s focus away from stuff prudent? We thought this lifestyle shift toward minimalism would offer our four kids a simple, slower-paced, more meaningful childhood. What if we were actually restricting them in a way we’d later regret?

Five years into minimalist living, I can now answer these prolific, why-raise-your-kid-in-a-minimalist home questions unfazed. And my answer never includes the word regret. 

While raising your kids in a minimalist home is countercultural—only a quarter of Americans aspire to live this way—it’s one of the best gifts you can give them.

Here are five reasons to raise your kids in a minimalist home:

1. You break the cycle of excessive consumerism in your family 

Raising kids in a minimalist home breaks the generational cycle of excessive consumerism. Constantly buy our kids more stuff (think toys), conditions one response: more. We likely do this because it was done to us growing up—it’s what we know as normal. We equate lots of toys with a good childhood. 

But our buying behaviors are often byproducts of living in our consumerist culture. The post WW II toy explosion with the mass production of plastic, coupled with modern marketing, have spawned childhoods defined by stuff.

The United States now has 3% of the world’s children and 40% of the world’s toys. The average American child, at any given age, has between 70 and 100 toys—and some have as many as 200.

But when we raise kids always wanting more stuff, they become adults who constantly want more stuff, perpetuating the cycle of consumption.

Raising kids in a minimalist home breaks the generational cycle of excessive consumerism by teaching them we need much less than we think to be happy.

2. You teach your kids they are more than consumers

Our modern educational systems often view human beings ultimately as beings who are made for stuff. Many schools prime children to be life-long consumers. 

Speaker Brian Schieber said, “Here’s a cursory vision of American education: we’re teaching our children stuff, so that they can go do stuff, so that they can achieve and acquire stuff. As if the whole point of life is to be this cog in a consumerist machine. And the goal of [your] life is to achieve material things.”

Raising your kids in a minimalist home challenges this message. It teaches kids that the end goal in life isn’t to accumulate bigger, newer possessions. And, more importantly, it shows them that people are more than consumers.

As a Christian, I want our kids to know their identity is “a child of God” and always will be. Raising your children in a minimalist home helps them realize their identity and self-worth is not found in any external thing they can possess.

3. You make space for more experiences

Raising your kids in a minimalist home, with less stuff, makes space for more experiences. In our home, thanks to the money we’ve saved from no longer purchasing random stuff (after pulling ourselves out of $40,000 in consumer debt)—and thanks to the ease of packing when you own less—we’re realizing our dream of family travel. Our goal is to visit all 50 states in the next 10 years. (My husband and I turn 40 this year, and will be 50 in 10 years, so we’re calling this our 50 states-by-age 50 tour.) 

We started #50by50 last week with a trip to Hawaii. Our kids swam with dolphins (thanks to an amazing experience with Dolphin Quest), collected lava rocks, rode salty waves, snorkeled with sea turtles, and also spotted humpbacks on the horizon. In my opinion, those experiences far outweigh any toy we could have purchased for them.

In the words of Alexander Sattler, raising our kids in a minimalist home shows them the value of “owning a little and seeing the world” rather than “owning the world and seeing a little.”

4. You teach your kids generosity

Raising your kids in a minimalist home instills in them the value of generosity. Minimalism involves continually questioning the items you own and letting them go if they are no longer needed or loved. 

Our kids donate their own possessions. They decide when it’s time to “give something to a child who doesn’t have a toy.” This teaches them to hold onto what they own lightly and that our possessions can help others in need.

Thanks to minimalism, we’ve also been able to give to causes we’re passionate about. We model this to our children. This teaches them that, in the words of Mother Teresa, when we live more simply, we give others the chance to simply live.

5. You normalize not living like everyone else

Children raised in a minimalist home soon realize they aren’t living like everyone else. They have fewer toys, likely fewer outfit options, and may live in a smaller home than their friends. When they realize life is good without all this extra stuff, they begin to understand that it’s okay not to live like everyone else.

Kids learn to think for themselves early on. This can also lead to resisting peer pressure in adolescence and societal pressure in adulthood.

Internalizing the message that the good life can’t be bought, and more stuff doesn’t equal more happiness, gives kids freedom to grow into the authentic, intentional adults they’re called to become.

In Conclusion

Raising your kids in a minimalist home will leave them far from deprived. In my experience, a minimalist lifestyle fosters family unity through shared experiences, promotes independent thinking in children, and instills values like generosity and a strong sense of self. 

Bottom line: your home environment and the values you model within your home have a ripple effect on your kids and who they’re becoming.

Raising your kids in a minimalist home will allow them to step outside of our consumer culture, observe its influence, and ultimately, more fully and freely enjoy this one life they’ve been given. 

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Julia Ubbenga is a freelance journalist whose teachings on minimalism, simplicity, and intentional living have reached thousands of people worldwide through her blog. Julia also practices what she preaches in her Kansas City home. She resides with her husband, two extremely lively young daughters, three-year-old son, and baby girl. You can also find her on Facebook.

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