A quarter of a century ago, I saw a photo of a minimalist home – and a pair of Moroccan babouches that somehow captured everything I longed for.
Years later, I found those very slippers in Marrakech, and without realizing it, they became the first step toward a slower, simpler, and freer life.
This is the story of how a small dream became a life-changing journey, how we ended up living a nomadic life.
I wrote this post originally in Finnish for my minimalism blog, Minimaattori, on 30/04/2017.
I translated it here so that you can follow our journey – how we became digital nomads and full-time travelers, and then settled living abroad.
From Marrakech to minimalism
A quarter of a century ago, I came across a feature in a Finnish interior design magazine showcasing a stunning minimalist home.
In one of the photos, a pair of beautiful leather slippers caught my eye. The homeowner had bought them in Morocco, actually, two pairs: one white, one light brown. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I wanted a pair; either color would do.
Over the years, I stopped by shops selling Moroccan products all over the world. There were babouches in dozens of colors, models, and patterns.
But I never found those exact ones, the perfect pair I had seen in a magazine.
The first steps of a minimalist slow travel lifestyle
At the end of October 2016, my fiancé’s six-month sabbatical began, and we set off on a long journey. (First Bali, just like every nomad life story begins.)
We worked a bit along the way, too. (As an entrepreneur, I had no choice.)
In March, I did a photo shoot in Marrakech for that very same interior design magazine where I had first seen those lovely babouches back in the early 1990s.
My client asked me to photograph slippers for the shopping section of the article as well.
There were dozens of colors available, including those white and brown ones.
And there they were: the long-dreamed-of, perfectly hued brown babouches.
Finally, they would come home with me!
A week later, the bomb was dropped.
We were in Fès when my fiancé’s employer, the publisher of that same magazine, announced that his 17-year employment had come to an end due to layoffs.
What would we do now?
We decided to stay on the road a couple of weeks longer than originally planned, to think about our future. We took a ferry back to Europe.
We had plans to travel around Spain, but instead, we stayed in Andalusia to sort things out.
Becoming a digital nomad couple
I’ve always said that my degree of minimalism, when it comes to possessions, is defined by this:
I want to own only as much as I could pack up and move to the other side of the world tomorrow if I wished.
But I had never actually reduced my belongings to that small a number, though I had done plenty of calculations on how little I could live with. – You know, those extreme minimalists’ 100-item lists. (Around 80 pieces during our nomadic years, everything included, as you would ask anyway.
I have actually simulated the list on my Amazon associate storefront, if you want to check it.)
I had also never ended up living abroad, even though I’d been traveling for over a decade, roughly half of each year.
When we looked at our finances, it was clear that returning to Helsinki to pay off our mortgage with my fiancé’s unemployment benefits – and our travel debts – would make no sense.
We wouldn’t be able to afford much of anything there, not even travel.
It made more sense to rent out our apartment.
As a photographer, I didn’t have enough work in Helsinki anyway; my projects had long been elsewhere in the world.
Moroccan babouches kicked us into a dream life
So what if…?
What if we didn’t go back?
Plan B began to take shape.
We decided to return to Finland only to rent out our apartment again – it had already been rented out while we were away – and to sell most of our belongings.
Then we could keep traveling together and working together.
Two freelancers in the same field might not be the most financially sensible setup, but honestly, who else could have better opportunities to work location-independently?
Redefining home and dreams
For a moment, I felt little sad.
Had I gotten my slippers too late?
I had imagined wearing them around the house and to the sauna.
Now I would never again pad softly across our lovely housing cooperative’s sauna terrace on a Saturday evening.
Then I realized, the reason that the magazine story had captivated me so deeply all those years ago wasn’t just the slippers, but the home itself.
It was so beautifully minimalist.
Those slippers had come to symbolize the ideal of minimalism I couldn’t yet reach back then.
At that point in my life, I had given up my own dreams under external pressure.
I accepted the idea that a proper home required coffee sets, curtains, and decorative items, even though I had secretly longed to live with just a few boxes of things.
I booked flights to Stockholm for a couple of weeks later.
From there, we slowly drifted across the sea back to Helsinki. Only to visit our old home city.
It seems that those Moroccan babouches really did kick us into a dream life.
*
Those slippers weren’t just a souvenir from Morocco – they were a symbol of everything I wanted:
A slower rhythm, fewer possessions, and a life filled with experiences instead of things.
What began in Marrakech has carried us across continents, reminding that we can achieve what we want, we just need to keep dreaming.
– And that the best journeys often start with the smallest steps.
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P.S. Do you want to know what I carried with me in our nomadic life?
I have listed everything on my *Amazon associate account.
(I’m an Amazon associate, which means I might get a commission if you purchase something via my links.)
