40. Becoming Minimalist: Downsizing for Life with Aaron Owens Mayhew

In episode 40 of the Outdoor Minimalist Podcast, we discuss the process of becoming minimalist. Minimalism is very much an individual journey, but many people will experience overlapping challenges and hurdles along the way.

Although I’ve talked about this in previous episodes to some extent, to share her story and give some practical advice on sustaining a minimalist lifestyle, I had the pleasure of hosting Aaron Owens Mayhew.

Aaron is a registered dietitian and ultralight long-distance backpacker with nearly 20 years of experience as a hiker and nutrition expert. In 2017, she quit her job and began preparing for her first thru-hike.

During this process, Aaron realized how uniquely qualified she was to plan and prepare meals for outdoor athletes and decided to put her skills to the test. That same year, she founded Backcountry Foodie, an online ultralight recipes and meal planning platform.

Since then, Aaron has dedicated her career to helping thousands of hikers enjoy delicious food and improve their performance in the backcountry. She focuses on ultralight, low-volume recipes and meal plans specially formulated for endurance athletes.

Backcountry Foodie

Website: https://backcountryfoodie.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backcountry_foodie/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/backcountryfoodie

YouTube:  @backcountryfoodie  

Plastic Film Recycling: https://www.plasticfilmrecycling.org/

This transcript was edited to remove some filler words and phrases and is not verbatim according to what is spoken in the audio recording.

Meg: So thank you for joining me today, Aaron. I am excited for you to be here and share a little bit more about your minimalist journey. Before we get into all of that, can you just tell us a little bit more about your role in the outdoor industry and some of the activities that you enjoy?

Aaron: The outdoor industry is a huge part of my business—actually, it is a part of my business. I'm a backpacking dietitian. Essentially, I get to backpack and hike for a living. I create recipes and meal plans for backpackers via our online platform at backcountryfoody.com.

Meg: Awesome! Yeah, I'll share the link to that in the episode notes, so if people want to check that out, they can go there. How did you get into that?

Aaron: Good question—by accident, actually. I've been a clinical dietitian for almost 16 years, and it just hit a point. I was getting ready to turn 40, and I got to the point where I had the good job, I had a nice house, I had a nice car, I was in a good relationship—I had everything you're ever supposed to have when you're 40. But I was miserable. So, something needed to change.

I actually decided to up and quit my job. It was a very well-paying, secure job, so my family and friends were like, “Are you nuts? You're turning 40! Why are you putting this thing that's so stable at risk?”

I'd always wanted to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I'd been a backpacker for almost 20 years at that point, so this was kind of my, you know, "I'm just going to check out." And I literally started on my 40th birthday, which is a Saturday. So it'll be five years from now when I started—two days from now.

Meg: Wow!

Aaron: Yeah. So, in preparation for the PCT, being the dietitian—and actually, at the time, I was a long-distance trail runner too, because I was having a hard time gaining weight just running on the weekends—I knew feeding myself every day for five or maybe even six months was going to be a big problem because I didn’t have weight to lose. Some hikers have 30 or 40 pounds they can afford to lose, and that would be okay, but I didn’t.

So, I really started panicking. I'd never made my own food before because I'd only been out three to five days at a time. So I thought, "Well, mountain house is too expensive, it's too big, it's too salty. That’s not going to work."

I started buying a bunch of cookbooks for DIY backpacking meals. And again, being the dietitian, I looked at all the nutrition components of it and thought, "Well, this doesn't have enough protein, it's too heavy, there's too much rice in it..." There were like all these things that I wasn’t happy with.

So, I just started making my own recipes. Little did I know, it would turn into a business five years later, and that's what I do now. So, that’s kind of how it happened.

Meg: Yeah, it is crazy how some of those big life changes happen. Sometimes, they’re just like, "This is what I’m doing now," and I love it. I can't even imagine going back to my old job, but now, that’s what I thought I would retire from.

Aaron: Wow.

Meg: So, is backpacking, would you say, your main outdoor activity?

Aaron: Uh, absolutely. Yeah, my husband wishes I’d change it up a little bit more and do some other things, but it’s just—it’s my way of getting out. It’s my time to tune out too, from all the emails and phone calls and, you know, all those kinds of things.

I literally check out. There’s no Instagram or Facebook when I’m out there. So it’s actually really part of my mental health as well.

Meg: Yeah, that’s what I really like about backpacking too, especially the more remote you get. Then it’s like you’re just so removed from the world. It’s so awesome.

Aaron: Right.

Meg: Oh, yeah. And when we first started connecting, we were talking a lot about meals and food and stuff on the trail, which I think is awesome that you help people with that. But then we kind of shifted gears to talk about other areas of your life that really fit into the outdoor minimalist theme. So, moving into that topic, what does minimalism mean to you personally?

Aaron: For me, it’s really evolved with time, to be honest. So I think I really became more of a minimalist over the last couple of years when I started doing the long-distance backpacking. I’ve done several more trips since the PCT.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish it because I got injured, but I’ve done several other trips since then. And then we also moved into a Sprinter van for two and a half years. So, with time, I just downsized to literally whatever’s on my back. I can live with and be totally comfortable.

And when we were in the van, we lived with whatever fit in 60 square feet—that’s all we had. And I don’t miss anything. So that’s just what my minimalism is. I’m also environmentally friendly, so I’m trying to think more about the garbage that we’re producing.

That’s one of the things that really came to my attention when I was doing my PCT hike—the number of wrappers I was throwing away every day, the number of plastic baggies I was throwing around. So, I’ve since transitioned to doing more compostable things and reusing things. So I think, with time, my minimalism has become more important to me for that reason too.

Meg: Yeah, it is really hard, especially if you're a full-time traveler, but then also a backpacker. It’s hard to cut back on that waste because you’re eating so much packaged food, probably, right?

Aaron: Exactly. And you can’t buy things in bulk because you don’t have room to store it. So everything’s in small packaging just because that’s all the space you have.

Meg: So, would you say that when you moved into the van is kind of when you started downsizing and shifted into that minimalist mindset? Or when did that happen?

Aaron: That’s what I thought when we first started talking about the topic for the episode, but then it just dawned on me a few days ago that I started doing this 20 years ago when I sold everything and bought a boat.

I lived on a 36-foot boat for two years, maybe going on three years. So at the time, minimalism wasn’t just something you thought about. At the time, it was more like a cool adventure. I ended up selling the boat and then going back to collecting stuff—which is what I call it now, just "stuff." So, then really, my current minimalist lifestyle started when we moved into the van two and a half years ago.

Meg: Oh, okay, cool. So you’ve kind of done it twice, in two completely different places in your life?

Aaron: Exactly.

Meg: Yeah, how did that look for you? I mean, you can talk about just the van, or you can talk about both and how they compare, but how did downsizing look in your life?

Aaron: Well, originally, for the boat time, I had really just graduated from graduate school, so I didn’t really own a lot of stuff anyway. So that wasn’t as big of a deal, just selling all my college furniture that really wasn’t sentimental.

You know, I hadn’t collected that many things, so that wasn’t as big a deal. Whereas moving into the van, I had been collecting things for a long time. That had been happening ever since the boat experience.

So when we did decide to move into the van, we had one huge garage sale. I was so embarrassed by the amount of stuff that we had that when we were moving it out into our carport at the house we were renting at the time, I was like, “I haven’t seen this in five years—what is this even?” I

was still holding on to stuff from high school, like, "Why am I holding on to this? It just isn't meaningful for me."

So letting go of those kinds of things was pretty easy. And actually, we downsized four more times after that while we were living in the van. We thought we would live in New Mexico, then we thought we’d live in Colorado, so we had a storage unit in each of those states as we kind of decided where we were going to live.

So each time we were like, “We don’t feel like moving this again,” so that went into the garbage, recycling, or Goodwill. Then we’d go to another store and say, "You know what? We don't feel like moving this again, so this is going to Goodwill.” Now we have only what’s actually in our house right now, which is very, very little.

Meg: So, is that just what was in your van, or did you end up getting a few things? Obviously, probably, but...

Aaron: We're now in the Central Coast of California. When we moved here, I think we had a six by eight little U-Haul trailer behind the van, and it was mostly all of our sports gear—like our skis, bicycles, and those kinds of things that didn’t fit in the van.

We did have kind of a winter selection of things and then a summer selection of things. So depending on the season, that’s what got put into our garage, and the van was underneath the bed. So, that’s all that we really brought with us.

The one sentimental item that Chris was just like, “Why are you carrying this around?” is my grandfather’s rocking chair that he made. That’s the one thing that’s been with me since I was really young. So, that didn’t fit in the van, so we had to have the trailer for the rocking chair so I could bring that with me.

Meg: Yeah, those sentimental items feel like a hard departure, but I mean, obviously, it’s very meaningful.

Aaron: Yeah.

Meg: So, when you were doing that initial downsizing, you said that you had that big yard sale. Did you get rid of all your stuff then, during that process, or did you have to take other steps at all?

Aaron: No, that was the big clean-out of things. We were still kind of attached to stuff, so we didn’t know what the van life situation was going to be like. We weren’t sure if we were going to need this or that because we didn’t know where in the country we were actually going to live.

So, that was just, "I know I had to use this at this time period," and it actually ended up being two Goodwill trips. There was so much stuff that we got rid of, which was really embarrassing when you show up at Goodwill and people are lined up there, like, “Come on, how much stuff are you dropping off?”

Meg: Yeah, I have experienced that with getting rid of things before too—like if I do a big move or something, and you're like, "This is a lot of things, and I don't even know how I got all of this." Right?

Aaron: I mean, it was... I was really embarrassed. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I can't even—like I didn't even know I had this stuff."

Meg: What do you think was the easiest part about downsizing for you?

Aaron: Well, because I've done it before, I've always been kind of a purger with time. So I've always had a personal rule: if I haven't used it in two years, I tend to get rid of it. There was more of the sentimental things, because my mom is very sentimental.

She's always hung onto things from our childhood, and things from her childhood, and that kind of thing. So it was more about getting rid of things like my high school jacket, my high school swim towel—those kinds of things that we don't have children, so I don't really have anyone to pass those things down to.

They probably wouldn't be sentimental to anyone anyway, because they were my high school things. So I would say those were the harder things to get rid of.

Meg: Yeah, that can definitely be tough.

Aaron: Chris, my husband, had never downsized before, so it was really hard for him to let go. I will say now, with him not here, as I got rid of things for him without him knowing—so you didn't know until we got to here in California that I was like, "Oh, by the way, you don't have your tennis shoes anymore. I got rid of those way back when."

Meg: That is difficult, especially if you're doing it with a partner. You might value different things, or they might not want to get rid of so many things. I definitely have experienced that in my partnership. We definitely have different views of minimalism.

Aaron: Oh, for sure. It's a great discussion point.

Meg: I guess now that you have more space available to you... are you living in a house, renting your house?

Aaron: No.

Meg: Okay, nice. How have you maintained that lifestyle? Because I found, when I transitioned from moving into vehicles more often into an actual house, I feel like I always find things—like even if they're used things or people give me things—and I'm just like, "Accumulate, accumulate." So how have you maintained that minimalist lifestyle?

Aaron: It's actually, if somebody were to walk into the house, they'd probably think we're poor college students. We've been here almost... and we still haven't bought the furniture.

So we actually took the house with no other furniture because we don't need a dresser. The only clothes that we have fit in the closet. We didn't need to buy any more clothes because we've been living with the same clothes for two and a half years.

Meg: That's great!

Aaron: And it's a 1,500-square-foot house. It's enormous! So my dog is actually free to roam around all the rooms now, and has four bedrooms, but three of those are offices. We both work from home full-time.

This is actually really nice now, because I do have the space to have a printer, my computer monitors, and things. So I've actually really enjoyed having an actual desk in the house now, whereas in the van, we had to pack up everything every day. We'd share a little table.

Meg: Yeah, I can see how that would be a big change.

Aaron:Now my husband has an office with a desk and chair, but there's no filing cabinets, no lamps, nothing else—just a desk and a chair. The other bedroom is what we call the "foodie lab," which now has probably the most furniture in it, because that's where my freeze dryer is, a table for my dehydrators and ingredients, and other things I do for photo shoots. That's actually where most of the furniture is.

Meg: That's really cool!

Aaron: We don't own a couch. We found that we really only sit down for two hours a day, so I don't need a couch. We sit on the floor for a few hours. And I really have no intention of buying anything else anytime soon. The only thing we really bought when we moved in were kitchen appliances, silverware... because we were eating on our titanium camp bowls and cups and those kinds of things in the van.

Meg: That makes sense!

Aaron: So we actually bought ceramic plates—a set of four. That's it. We bought glassware—like glass bowls—because I was cooking in plastic, and I'm trying not to cook in plastic anymore. So, stainless-steel mixing bowls. But other than that, we haven't bought anything. No pictures for the walls, no lamps. That's it. It's a really empty house, and I don't mind.

Meg: Yeah, I think it really is a personal preference, you know? I mean, I feel like I don't have too many decorations either, but maybe some people really value that ambiance. I don't really know.

Aaron: But one thing I have hung up—I was thinking about decorations—is I really appreciate my niece and nephew. They do artwork for me, so I do have a bunch of kid artwork all over my office walls. But other than that, I haven't bought anything.

Meg: That's so cute! Because you've been in this house now for, say, like six months or something, I think you said. So, like, do you miss anything from that smaller space, like the van? You talked about some things that you really enjoy now, like having an office, but are there things that you miss about having a smaller living space?

Aaron: What's funny is that I feel claustrophobic in the house. It's really weird. I don't like these walls. I really miss being able to sit outside.

We always lived in the wilderness. We always lived on BLM land, national forests, those kinds of things. So, I miss having the openness of being outside and sitting in my camp chair with my laptop on my lap, kind of working there.

That's probably what I miss the most—the calmness of the trees, you know, the birds chirping, and that kind of thing. Versus now, the UPS guy driving by and my dog barking at him or our neighbors being very loud.

So, I actually feel claustrophobic now that I'm in the house. Yeah, so I'm thankful we still have the van. So, actually, I'm doing a hike right now through the Central Coast of California, and I found the perfect place to go hide in the van. I'm gonna start going there—it’s on the top of a ridge that overlooks the ocean.

So, I think on those days when I start feeling claustrophobic again, I'm just going to hop in the van, take my laptop, and work up there for a few days or so.

Meg: That makes a lot of sense though, because really you're not spending a great deal of time inside the van. You're not just stuck inside there. A lot of your living area is outside of the van, right?

Aaron: Yeah, exactly.

Meg: I guess a lot of people try to downsize just in their daily life, especially like spring—we always think of spring cleaning. I always remember my parents downsizing during those times.

So, whether or not someone is just trying to purge their home or maybe they want to move into an RV, a van, a tiny house, whatever it may be, what advice would you give them about approaching that type of experience? Just kind of based on the process that we went through.

Aaron: I think starting the purge early on and just getting rid of little things at a time so you don't feel so overwhelmed. Like we did, when we had the one enormous garage sale because we were moving out two days later, we had to all go!

We got so busy just trying to get the van finished. We built it ourselves, so we were so busy doing all those kinds of things that we hadn't taken the time to purge. So if it's something you're thinking about doing in the future, just start kind of like, you know, get rid of a little bit of things you haven't used and then you just start working your way through it.

So, maybe it doesn't feel so overwhelming when the day does come and you're like, "Okay, we're making this change, and here we go."

Meg: Yeah, that makes sense. It kind of reminds me of an older episode about how to do a waste audit. I feel like it'd be a similar approach—you'd start maybe in your closet, just realize that one weekend, and then maybe you could move to your kitchen and just kind of go through it instead of one giant purge, like I did. Which obviously works if you need to, like, you have that option.

Aaron: Right!

Meg: What about, like, generally sticking to that lifestyle? Because obviously, you enjoy the way that your home is and everything, but do you think that's difficult for more people or other people?

Aaron: I would say this is an unusual lifestyle, to be honest. I think the hardest part is going to be we'd have a place for our family to visit. So we're eventually gonna have to buy another bed, probably a couch—probably, so people have a place to sit down.

Right now, it's really easy for me because I've been living in a backpack for so long. Again, my husband is not as much of a minimalist, so we'll probably pick up a few things because he just appreciates the comforts of things a little more than I do, which is totally fine. But he's also not one to get a bunch of trinkets and all that kind of thing.

You'd actually mentioned something about accepting gifts from people. That's something that I just don't do anymore, which is probably odd. We don't give Christmas presents anymore. I'd rather go visit my family and spend time with them than get stuff.

And then I've done a few interviews and some classes and things, and people are like, "Oh, I want to send you a thank-you gift." I'm like, "You know, just saying thank you is plenty for me. I don't need more stuff, whether it's a sticker or a book or something like that." It's just stuff.

So, I think that's just something that I've kind of transitioned to. Some people probably feel like it's a little weird because it's maybe an unusual lifestyle, but yeah. I think the hardest part is going to be, like, yeah, when we want family to actually start coming to visit us, we are gonna have to buy a few things.

Meg: Yeah, having that guest setup is really nice for that sort of thing. And also, the gifts—I have found them hard because I’m on the same page as you. I don't really want to give or take gifts from other people, but other people in my family really struggle with that concept.

We have a lot of conversations about what we can do instead, and those conversations can be kind of uncomfortable, especially if you’ve talked about it so many times. I really appreciate that you gave me this, but... yeah, it’s a difficult balance.

Aaron: It’s getting easier because I started this just since we've been in the van. My parents understood a little bit more when we were in the van—we didn’t have room to put things, so I’ve continued it on since then.

And again, like I was mentioning earlier, I love my mom dearly, but she collects things. She just doesn’t understand why I don’t want stuff. But it’s a completely different generation. She’s in her 70s now, so it’s just a different mindset.

My sister has children, so they’re always buying toys and things like that. I’m the one aunt that doesn’t buy toys, the aunt that buys crafts or educational things—like a camera for taking pictures or something useful. I don’t like buying plastic toys that they’ll play with for maybe a month or two, and then they end up in the garbage. So, I’m that aunt. I know it’s a different sense of value to their lives, but that’s how I see it.

Meg: Yeah, I guess. Do you have any other types of advice or information that you would want to share with people approaching any type of downsize? I mean, just thinking ahead—do you really need this stuff? How much do you value it?

Aaron: Like, is buying a candle something you really need? Is buying an extra bag to match an outfit necessary? I don’t know. Those kinds of things—are they things you’re going to use over and over again, or is it just a one-time thing? I just have a different thought process around those things.

Meg: Yeah, no, I love that. I think when I think of minimalism, it's really about that core question: Is this necessary? Or, what’s the purpose and intended use of this?

There’s this one zero-waste Instagram person I follow—her name escapes me—but she always has this 30-day rule. It’s like, if you're buying clothes, ask yourself, “Will I wear this 30 times?” And if the answer is no, then don’t buy it. If you only want to wear it once, don’t buy it. I think that approach is really similar to what you’re explaining.

Aaron: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think, environmentally, it's important too. Is this something that’s just going to end up in the garbage within a few months, or even a year? If I do want to use it for a time, can I gift it to somebody else? Can I donate it to Goodwill? So that it continues to get used instead of just ending up in the trash.

Meg: Exactly. It’s all about thinking of the life cycle of things, right? So, did you throw away a lot of items, or did you sell or donate most of it?

Aaron: We sold and donated almost everything. There were very few things we actually had to trash. I think the only thing that ended up in the trash was my letterman jacket—though, I don’t think anybody would appreciate a letterman jacket from 1995. Although we might’ve donated it thinking it could be a good costume for somebody!

Meg: Yeah, I mean, it could be!

Aaron: But there were very few things we had to throw away. I’m also really big on recycling plastic, so I was really careful about things like plastic wrap or storage units. There's actually a website—plasticfilmrecycling.org—that helps you recycle plastic film, which a lot of grocery stores or curbside recycling won’t take. So, I tried to recycle those as much as I could, like the plastic totes that we didn’t take with us.

Meg: That takes a little more planning, but I’ll share a link to that recycling site so people can check it out. It could be useful in their daily lives too.

Aaron: Well, that's what we did. Everything that went to Goodwill was in paper sacks—like grocery sacks that I’d been collecting. I didn’t even put things in garbage bags, because I didn’t want to throw those away either. I was hopeful that at least the paper sacks would be recycled with their cardboard or something.

Meg: Yeah, yeah, so I feel like that was a lot of really useful information, especially for someone who's new to approaching this type of pursuit—even if it's just that they want a little less clutter in their home.

So, if people want to learn more about you—I don't know if you've posted all about your van life journey—or if they want to learn more about Backcountry Foodie, how can they do that?

Aaron: So, if you want to learn more about Backcountry Foodie, you can go to backcountryfoodie.com.

You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook under Backcountry Foodie. We have a YouTube channel where we did a van tour video. If people are interested in how we built it out, we need to do a follow-up video on how life in the van has changed—like how we’ve adjusted things.

It was very different from what we expected, to be honest. We thought we would be on the move all the time, and at first, we were. But then, we slowly started staying put for longer periods of time. So, we do need to do an update on that because it was a very unique experience. I missed it a lot.

Chris Scott, my husband, got to the point where he missed hot showers. Again, as a backpacker, I can be dirty for five days, and I don’t mind. But he kind of hit the point where he needed hot showers, and he missed his job.

We had actually planned on moving into a fifth wheel as a transition and living in campgrounds. But with COVID still affecting things, people were buying a lot of fifth wheels and RVs for travel, and they were non-existent, so we couldn’t get one in time before he started his new job. That’s how we ended up in the house.

Maybe we’ll do that in the future, or just see how it plays out. I think now that he’s gotten a taste of living in a house again, he’s not going back, so that’s why we kept the van. It’s my way of saying, “I need to check out for a few days,” so I just go and hide.

We do take it out on weekends, though—we go to the Heisters now pretty regularly. I mean, we go skiing and those kinds of things, so we haven’t completely gotten rid of the lifestyle. It’s just not the same as it was before.

Meg: Now, I love that you kept the van. I feel like that happens with a lot of people. Now you have a very awesome adventure vehicle, and if you want to drop off for like a month or something, you can.

Aaron: Yeah, and again, it’s cheap. We’re not paying for hotel reservations. I mean, it’s the best—having your clothes with you, a refrigerator, and all the food with us. So, that’s part of it too. I don’t like paying for hotels.

Meg: There are a lot of opportunities for people to test out van life. You can rent vans from people or companies, so if you’re not sure you want to do it, you could always do a week in a van and see if it’s a good option—or maybe you hate it.

Aaron: Well, and I think it’s still relatively popular, so you could sell it too if you were to invest in one. I don’t think it would be hard to sell it, so if it weren’t for you, you wouldn’t feel like you’re really stuck in it.

You can always go back to work, get back in the house, or just do your own lifestyle. But that’s one of my things—I try to encourage people: Take the leap. If it’s something you’re considering, take the leap, because you’ll never know what you’re missing if you never actually try. At least try it and see how it goes.

Meg: Yeah, exactly. Well, very cool. Thank you so much for sharing your story. It’s really interesting to hear from different people's experiences and listen to what they like. I hope that other people gathered some value from it too.

Aaron: Yeah, all right. Thanks for having me.