No Bed, No Problem! Minimalism Extreme

Ditching Furniture for Health, Sustainability & Adventure

In 2015, I quit my 9–5 job, and only 2 years later, I became a digital nomad. I started working online, teaching yoga wherever the possibility opened up, and moved a lot.

With every move, my family and I became more efficient, letting go of more materialistic items. Today, we only need important documents, laptops, phones, tablets, toiletries (no chemicals), and clothes. I still have a few decorations that I like to carry with me, like a small Buddha statue, the chakra flower-woven tapestry, and some orgone pyramids and protection jewelry.

Everything fits into 4 suitcases and 4 backpacks — not so much for a family of 4.

Becoming a minimalist while being a digital nomad was inevitable. Moving becomes very easy when you can move light.

With our current move, Travis, my partner, likes to question everything.

Why are we doing things the way we do them? Is it really necessary to do it the way that everybody does it? What serves our health and what makes us sick?

We love to talk about these things for hours, so we came up with a new idea.

In 2018, when we moved from Amsterdam De Pijp to Amsterdam West, we still bought new furniture from IKEA, but that was the last time that I can remember having bought something new.

We moved from Amsterdam to Vienna in 2019 and had to give away all our furniture for half the price, so we figured it was and is much cleverer and better for the environment to stick to second-hand furniture. So we did.

In the last years, we either rented completely furnished places, like in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2022, or we organized everything ourselves, second-hand. This is how we did it this time in Queensland, Australia. It is more work to do it this way, but at least we don’t have to worry that our little kids damage the rented furniture.

Next, we will move to a little coastal town in New South Wales Australia. We are in the middle of organizing our move at the moment. We already got rid of most of our furniture and thought we would sleep on the mattresses on the floor, as we did this for months in Vienna in 2022 and it was much more comfortable than we expected.

After a few nights on mattresses on the floor, we want to take it a step further and sleep on our sleeping bags (instead of mattresses) on the floor.

We recently watched this YouTube video and got inspired.

Did you know that sleeping on the floor is actually quite healthy for your body? It is basically a pressure point massage for free for the whole night. This opens up blocked fascia and helps with alignment. A lot of humans like to sleep on softer and softer mattresses with age, as they have a hard time lying or sitting on the floor (miss-aligned skeletal structure). A lot of older people cannot even get up from the floor without using their hands or other assistance.

Travis and I are both turning 42 years old this year, 42 in 2024. Funny, right?

We are both quite active and healthy, but we can feel that our bodies are getting older, and we have to put in the effort and energy to keep our human vehicles happy and healthy.

We have the power to stay healthy and fit at a higher age, but we have to do something about it.

Choose your suffering, or the suffering will choose you.

Sleeping on the floor is not just healthier for the human body; it is also much more convenient when moving. All we need this time are our camping sleeping bags that we use instead of mattresses. Our bedroom will be ready in minutes. We might still adapt and get some kind of rug or firm mattress toppers, but we will never need a bed frame again.

I always found beds annoying. You feel every movement, it makes noises when you get up or have sex, and somehow I find it way too soft; my back pain got so much worse in the last years, but now that I have slept on the floor for a couple of nights, it improved massively.

If I had considered sleeping on the floor earlier in my life, it would have saved me some energy and organizing, so why didn’t I?

Society tells us what the norm is, what everybody should do, what everybody needs. People tend to have this strange, confused look on their faces when you come up with lifestyles and ideas that are out of the box.

Remember the movie Fight Club? I love this movie as it shows that having a perfect life, perfect apartment, and perfect furniture, means nothing when it comes to happiness. Inside your mind, you might be screaming, but on the outside, everything looks normal and fine. I know this feeling!

Kids are fantastic at revealing what human nature looks like without interference. I still find it insane that school essentially involves sitting down for 6 hours every day, whereas these little humans need to move. The lack of movement is a significant factor when it comes to our illnesses and sicknesses.

Our two little kids love sleeping on the floor. They are quite excited about the new sleeping arrangement. It is funny how comfortable they look with their sleeping bags. Kids don’t mind hard surfaces.

If all humans would always sleep on the floor and start from early childhood, no old person would have problems getting up from the floor. Back problems would maybe not completely disappear because most of us have to sit for hours every day, but I am sure that back problems would improve. I witnessed it in my own body.

It is time to question all our habits; it is time to question everything in Western society.

Travis and I and our two kids will not just sleep on the floor from now on; we also decided to skip the couch or a normal dinner table. In our new beach apartment, we will adopt more of an Asian living style: floor sitting, sleeping on the floor (later maybe tatami mats). It feels right, and it is definitely the next step for us. We don’t want to not be able to get up from the floor in 30 years. We want to stay fit and active, and we are ready to pay the price for this.

After a quick Google search yesterday evening, we remembered that Steve Jobs lived in a house without furniture too. Steve slept and sat on the floor.

Just because everybody does it, it still might not be the right thing.

Don’t be a sheep; follow your heart and your inner guidance. Trust your inner compass fully. You will be surprised where this path might lead.

Try out new ways, go out of your comfort zone and you will be rewarded.

Feel loved, feel hugged.

Namasté

Alina

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