This is the origin story. How MLMR Travel went from a simple idea to a full commitment.

It began as a simple blog but has grown into so much more. Now MLMR travel is more than a hobby and almost seems like another member of the Schaub Family.

MLMR Travel is a brand. It's our blog, our vlog, and social media.

It took us a while before we even decided to start MLMR Travel and it took us even longer before things got serious.

When we say this site has been a work in progress we mean it. It's been a journey of trying our best and then making improvements as we learn more.

We love how far it has come and excited to see how much further we can go. Learn all about how this whole thing got started and how we officially became MLMR Travel.

***Since this post was written, we have since made even more changes and switched up our site. We are now Mindful Nomadics but still have a love for our journey as MLMR Travel***

Disclosure: Links throughout the Mindful Nomadics site may make us a small commission at no additional cost to you. See our Affiliate Disclosure for more information.

Where it Began

It all began, back in the day, after we finished grad school and set off on our own. We began working as traveling physical therapists and moved from Ohio all the way to New Mexico.

This was the first time it was just the two of us, a young couple enjoying the adventure called life. We were in complete control of leading our lives where we wanted them to be.

Since we were adults now, we could do whatever, whenever. It was up to us to steer our future so we wanted to make sure we were doing it right.

Our goal was simple... make the most of our life. We wanted to find a work-life balance that worked and find time for things that mattered.

In our first few months of working, we discovered a love for the nomad life and a knack for trying to be the best versions of ourselves. We started living a minimalist life, became environmentalists, and lived a healthy lifestyle.

We loved traveling, relocating for our jobs and even more, we loved our vacations. Every new job assignment was a new place to explore and more adventures to go on.

After it became apparent that we are more cut out for the traveling therapy world than the stationary therapy world we decided to live in a travel trailer and become even more mobile.

At some point, it hit us that we live a pretty crazy and unique life that some might be interested in. We both use blogs a lot to find information on the internet and realized we should take a crack at it.

Main Blog

So we started with a free blogging platform and honestly, we can't even remember the name. What we do remember is how horrible it was.

Turns out we couldn't write a blog, at least not well. Plus we weren't consistent at all, maybe doing one post every blue moon.

At some point, Kelsey decided if we're gonna do it, we are gonna do it right. So we decided it was time to take the blog seriously and make it a priority.

We thought of ideas for our niche (which turned out to be a lot of things ) then picked our domain. We decided to go with Bluehost for our hosting and made the simple switch from the free WordPress site.

At first, we figured we should write about everything important to us. (We clearly didn't understand the niche part). Instead of finding our "niche" we created a cluster of what we were.

So it was back to the drawing board. That's when we came up with the idea that we are travelers who embrace adventure while staying minimalist.

Again though, this was hard to describe to people and we realized we STILL struggled with an actual niche. After brainstorming with family we came up with something new... a travel and simplicity blog.

This way travel is still a big part but we can write about our other passion in the form of a "simplicity blog". So, in the end, we're kind of like a travel & lifestyle blog.

Picking the Name

Turns out picking a domain name is way more difficult than it seems. After picking our main writing topics we needed to decide on an actual name that encompassed everything.

Originally, we were thinking of putting minimalist somewhere in the title. We thought this was a good place to start since we are minimalist in everything we do.

We travel light, live light, and always try to follow the "less is more" mindset. But we also wanted to make sure people knew even though we lived a simple minimalist lifestyle we were still living to the fullest.

But traveling is such a big part so we didn't want to leave it out. We clearly had a lot of thoughts on this matter but we were having trouble coming up with one perfect result.

After a lot of back and forth, and a few domain changes along the way we ended up with MLMR Travel.

What Does MLMR Stand for?

What does MLMR even mean? We get asked this a lot. Probably because when you google MLMR not a lot comes up.

It's not our initials and it's not a common thing to say. So what does MLMR stand for? It's an acronym for Minimalist Living Maximum Results.

We didn't start as just saying MLMR, we used to use the whole thing. For some weird reason, Kelsey got it in her head that we needed an alliteration or something along those lines.

The first name of our original blog was Minimalist Living Maximum Results. Kelsey loved the double Ms and Phil was just happy to decide on something.

How it got to MLMR

Turns out Minimalist Living Maximum Results is a tongue twister and exhausting to say/type repeatedly. Both things we never really thought about when picking our name.

When our entire blog got a revamp we knew it was time for a change. We already had so many things with the full Minimalist Living Maximum Results verbiage and we still loved the idea of it.

So whats better than an acronym. Every loves acronyms right? and MLMR was officially born.

When did Travel Come in?

MLMR is nice and all but it doesn't give the reader any insight on what our brand is. That's where the travel came into play.

From the beginning, we knew traveling would be a main focus. We decided to add the travel so people would have a better idea of what we were up to.

It may seem weird that the final product came out the way it did but it works for us. Not only does it get people asking questions but we have yet to see any other blog with a similar name.

Time Frame

In an effort to be as transparent as possible, we want to make one more thing very clear. This whole story of MLMR Travel took place over several YEARS.

It wasn't like in one day we went through this super easy process and BOOM...blog is up and running, no changes needed. Oh no, this has been going on since 2016.

It was a year with the free blog, then several more years working through the ins and outs. The final product you see today didn't take shape until early 2020.

And we're still making changes. When we see something we don't like or learn something new about blogging we go back to the drawing board.

So there you have it, the official story of MLMR Travel. We are so proud of our site and everything it has become.

But more importantly, we are excited about the future and all the potential we see in MLMR Travel.