I used to like collecting small souvenirs of shot glasses from countries and places I visited. And I used to have a lot of scraps stuff at home. For normal people, that stuff is ‘garbage’. But, if you are a crafter, you will see those ‘garbage’ as ‘treasure’. Only on crafters’ hands, those unused scraps would have their second life. So, I really respect all crafters in this world. They are Mothers to creativity.

Samuel, on the other hand, he likes everything simple. He has no passion for collecting stuff the way I did. He has a more elegant way to collect stuff. I saw his stamp collection. Oh my God! Next time we are in France, I will take some pictures of his stamp collection. He would call my ‘treasure’ as ‘mammoth’. It means “a chunk of compiled stuff sitting on the corner that has no use at all besides providing shelter for the mosquitos“. My ‘mammoth’ collection includes used clothes, kitchen stuff, both female and male mannequins, jewellery beads, and some other accessories and uncountable small items. Those were just for my ‘other-than-skincare’ projects.

Nearly 500 Skincare Ingredients

From raw extracts, plants hydrosols, essential oils, botanical oils, to a group of biotechnology organic ingredients, we have it all. And each of them was all accumulating from one little room in our house, to the first little store we opened in January 2013. We had to move to a bigger store in June 2017. From 12 평 or ‘pyeong’ or 40 square Korean feet to a new workspace of 21 ‘pyeong’ or 69 m2. One of the reasons was our raw ingredients are accumulating not only in numbers but also in size.

I had personally developed my old habit of collecting ‘mammoth’ in skincare ingredients. Samuel, he noticed it. We talked heart to heart. Honestly, I felt guilty to the Earth that I just wasted the natural resources just for the sake of my thirst for knowledge. I studied a lot both about the natural organic and the toxicity ingredients during FridaSkincare’s products formulation tests. My brain screamed whenever I saw those ingredients. Some were left unused. It was all money that was sitting there.

Only Wear 10% of Our Wardrobe 

As having our own business, we simply do not have time to pick for our daily wear. We care less about what we wear as we have more important works needed to get done during the daytime. I sometimes image to have a life outside Korea. Not in France, because the story will be just same as in Korea.

In Indonesia, having some help is a country norm. Either getting free volunteers from the family side to help with the domestic works or simply rent the helpers’ monthly service, like most friends of mine in Indonesia do. In Korea, this is not the case. Besides, it is super expensive with hourly based service between 25-50,000 won per hour, depends on the size of the house.

Having the helper in Korea is not common. So, back to the reality. In Korea, Samuel and I run and manage the house equally. No helpers. Our wardrobe is actually a ‘war-drop’, a malfunction closet, a ‘Mammoth’! If you often see me and Sam wearing the same clothes over and over again, that is because we simply take it from the dry laundry rack. No time for folding or ironing them, so better use them again. Ha! 🙂

Baby Stuff, Baby Gifts, Full Storage

Axelle is having the same story. So far, we haven’t bought anything for her. From clothes, toys, books, even her first stroller was all from gifts. We are just one of the lucky parents. We were happy with the fact that we didn’t have to spend time on shopping baby stuff.

We never enjoy shopping as it is time wasted. If we have to choose, we prefer online shopping. As Axelle is growing up, still we need to hold donating all her stuff to another baby. Because, uhm… we plan to give Axelle a sibling. This is still in planning, so keep it a secret from Axelle! Therefore, we need still to keep all the baby stuff until our next baby project is due. This is an ultimate ‘mammoth’.

At least, our skincare online shop already looks minimalist. Now, from our home to our offline store, we commit to do something about it. Seriously, from Maximalism to Minimalism, here we come~~^^

Image Credits: Maarten Deckers