What does it mean to live more with less? I'm Katie Wells and welcome to the Maximized Minimalist

podcast. If you found yourself caught up in the hamster wheel of modern day motherhood and want to

rewrite the script, congratulations you're in the right place. I'm here to be your guide and help you take

back your motherhood

and achieve a simpler, more joy-filled life. Cheers to being a maximized minimalist. Enjoy the show.

Hey, friend, welcome back. So as we head into the holiday season, I wanted to share this real

life story with you that happened between my son and I, River, who's seven,

just a few months ago. And it's going to help give you some tangible ideas on ways to

help teach your kiddos really about the relationship with stuff, whether it's how to navigate

what to purchase, how to navigate gift giving, and the real purpose behind gift to giving,

which I think is so important to teach and remind

our own selves up as we head into a very consumer heavy driven holiday traditionally for a lot of

people. So very recently, I took a trip back home to Iowa to visit my parents. Now, I do this about

once or twice a year. I live in North Carolina. And this trip was

extra special because I was like, I really want to take my son River, who's again, seven. And I had

never just taken a trip with just him. Usually it's our family of four who go to Iowa. But this one,

it was just a Mommy River trip. And oh my gosh, it was so amazing on a lot of different levels.

And this was at the tail end of the summer. And to kind of paint this picture, he and his brother

are 18 months apart. And all summer, every single day, they were spending like 24-7 together.

And I'm not sure about y'all, like if y'all have kids, but towards the tail end of the

summer, they were so sick of each other. And I was like, I felt like I was just playing like a referee

every five minutes. And I was just like, I was tired of it. They were tired of each other. And so it was

...