When I read posts like these, I can't help but wonder if minimalistic people go around feeling smug and superior all the time. If you think and talk a lot about how great your minimalistic life is, then you're probably suffering from what some call spiritual materialism.
No, I don't. I've accepted that people are really different. Another minimalist/buddhist thing I try to do is not to judge other people, but just try to understand them and feel compassion.
That's great. My comment above was not directed specifically at your post, but more generally because I've read a lot of similar posts.
I find not judging people almost impossible. Isn't judging people, things and events what makes me an intelligent creature? What do you (or Buddhists) think of accepting oneself as a judgmental person?
It is extremely hard. I am very bad at it. However, once you get better at it you'll notice how you can accept people for who they are. This then helps understanding them, and (almost?) everybody has an interesting story to tell, which you wouldn't have heard otherwise.
There is an alternative explanation for the pro-minimalistic posts: maybe reducing your stuff actually has the benefits the posts speak about? In this case it would be natural to share it so that other people can benefit too.
That's true, hence the probabilistic tone in my comment. I know from personal experience that reducing stuff can simplify your life and make you feel better. But so can having more stuff, just like the author found by getting a Kindle!
Was replacing his book collection with a Kindle an example of "less stuff" or "more stuff"? I don't think it's either. It's an alternative, and in this case, it felt like "less stuff" to him. That was in line with his goal and it worked.
People who do something that changes their lives for the better usually enjoy letting other people know how they can try to do the same thing. It's exciting for the person who succeeded, so they want to show others "the way." It may come off as elitist, but I think it's just excitement.
While the idea of minimalism really appeals to me, its practice does not. After moving at about once a year for the last 10 years, I have had many rounds of culling needless stuff (although I could do another round).
But there are so many things I would not throw away because I need and use them every day: books, cds, musical instruments, cooking gear, all kinds of tools, wires, parts, etc. for tinkering.
This adds up to what I own, and yes, it is quite a lot (moving requires the biggest truck I can get with a normal license). For the books and cds I could go to a library, for the tools to a hackerspace, for my food to a restaurant... The instruments, well, that'd be hard.
It seems to me that such a life would be more expensive and require more organisation. In short, it would be far less enjoyable for me.
Yes, there is definitely a tension between pleasure and minimalism. I miss my guitar too. I miss cooking a little bit, but the restaurants in Berlin are very good and low prices. However, after this I might consider a furnished apartment, as long as I don't have to own the stuff myself.
The point I'm trying to make in my article is that minimalism makes me happier, but I'm not sure whether this will always be true. Too minimalistic and I will probably become less happy. Also, doing it for a long time might also get old. We'll see, so far I like it.
I'm actually trying to have more fun. Traveling, eating out, having more quality time with people. However, I understand why you think his but I can't identify with it (yet?).
Yes, there is definitely a tension between pleasure and minimalism.
However paradoxical, minimalism can be also an be attachment. As Buddhists would say, take the middle road.
Taking cooking as an example: food touches on the outer world (think of everything involved in a simple crop, from the farmer to the sun) and the inner world (physically and mentally). Preparing food is very good for exercising awareness and appreciating life, why would one sacrifice that?
I think you're already less happy, because you've succumbed to minimalism. You miss your guitar, you miss cooking, because a bunch of blog posts and a book convinced you to throw out your pots and pans.
My wife and I are making steps towards minimalism, mostly motivated by having to move to different cities more often than makes sense given hiring a moving company to move a whole house worth of gear has blown a significant chunk of savings 3 times over the last 6 years now.
Family minimalism is a lot harder I think than individual minimalism. Most minimalist blogs paint a picture of a single male hipster with a macbook couch-surfing between RoR consulting gigs. Family minimalism cannot be that extreme.
Our books and cds were the easiest to get rid of, we both have kindles, and noticed that we never re-read books anyway, and listened to mp3s or streaming radio rather than cds. The hardest bit was thinking about what it represents in financial terms.
I would say keep the musical instruments. A couple of ideas I have seen floating around are the 100 things idea, where each person has 100 things, and if you want to buy something and have 100 things you have to decide what to ditch. I think it is fully acceptable to have a musical instrument as one of your 100 things.
The other idea I like is splitting things into the create or consume categories, and feel better about holding onto things that let you create. Anything related to consumption like a TV for example should be on "consider ditching" list.
As far as cooking goes, well if that is your thing keep it. We ditched ours as we ate too much anyway. We worried that we would spend more money and eat out more, but basically we ended up eating less and losing weight.
For us it has meant outsourcing a lot of stuff. Instead of burning all home movies and photos to blu-ray, we are more selective, and upload stuff to the cloud. We used to have external hard drives and actual servers, now it is just laptops and the cloud.
Overall we are spending about the same. What we save on collecting crap, we spend on services. We are saving on power, and go out more. We spend less time at home, and less time cleaning up.
EDIT: Plus now we only need a much cheaper and smaller flat. Rent is cheaper, but heating is MUCH cheaper.
Your situation doesn't seem that different from mine actually. I'm also married, which does make a big difference in lifestyle.
But I cannot possibly bring myself to throw away books. It's (almost) religious. Books are the foundation of civilized culture. The nazis burnt books and destroyed cultures (the things parents teach you..).
I agree with that aspect, however I dd not throw them away, I gave most of the technical ones away at user groups and conferences, and the novels to a second hand shop.
No I couldn't destroy them either. Also you have to separate the actual material in the book itself, from the dead tree that gets dragged around with it.
When I was honest with myself, it was purely the financial aspect that made getting rid of my books a difficult proposition. I gave away over a thousand euros worth of books. I kept less than 10 that I hadn't read yet, and will give them away once they are read. We kept a lot of my 2 year old daughter's books, as she doesn't have a kindle yet, but we didn't keep all of them.
Classic case of letting sunk costs influence a decision about the future. I think we almost all do this at least some of the time. I have lots of DVDs that I never watch, but I think about the money that was spent on them and it makes it harder to get rid of them, even though that's irrational.
I still wonder if I could have made more money back by spending more effort on selling them. I probably could have, but it would have taken longer. But you get some freedom in return for your capital assets, that is how I rationalize it.
I changed my diet to avoid wheat and sugar (something like paleolithic). I just did it cold turkey and didn't find it that hard. Stop eating bread and other baked goods, candy, soda and you're 90% there. I lost close to 50 pounds in less than a year. I have not eliminated sugar in the sense that I still eat fruit, but mostly berries and I think eliminating nearly all the refined sugar is what's important.
My diet is now mostly meat, eggs, fish, and salad with some nuts and fruit. There's really nothing complicated about it.
> Wife and kid don't necessarily have to change everything, as long as you find someone who thinks similarly to you.
Sorry, this is quite a naive statement. My wife before pregnancy and childbirth had a different outlook on life... people's personalities change, and having kids often makes this change (large cause of divorces and break-ups).
Also, your kid's personality you can't choose. Some kids are very colicky and stubborn and do much better with stable environment. Others are free spirits. If you have a special-needs or disabled child, forget about it. No choice there.
My wife's friend roams around with her husband (and their kid) - he does short-term contracts around the world. She had repeated complained about the churn and stress to my wife.
I agree with you and I have a wife and a son. I didn't say it doesn't change anything, but that it doesn't change everything. What I meant is that there will be things you cannot do anymore and there will be things for which you use the changed circumstances as an excuse not to do anymore. Extreme minimalism in particular gets harder but buying a house/car/TV/expensive furniture/100s of other things, just because that is what society excepts from a settled person is silly.
The effect of a child on your life is partly due to things you can not change, partly due to your own and your spouse's decisions and partly due to what society/TV/advertisments/"common wisdom" tells you to do. If you limit the third factor to a sane minimum, you can go a long way.
For what it's worth, I study all these articles and adapt them where I can to my married with 3 kids life. It's been challenging getting my wife to go along with it, but we're starting to see significant savings.
I don't really blog about my experiences or mention them to friends, I just silently do it and feel a little more of life's burdens lift. It's nice to work on getting rid of attachments (in the Buddhist sense).
As a personal counterpoint (ish) to this, I've found that minimalism is fine, to a point, but change is the huge thing that makes me feel better about myself. Even something as simple as a different clothing style or different haircut can improve your self-confidence and outlook on life, if you let it.
Potentially offtopic but relevant for Minimalist fans who live in Berlin: we have a weekly meetup for people doing Four Hour Work Week related businesses, or doing any online business whatsoever. We've had Tim Ferriss and tons of other entrepreneurs come visit us. If you're around, check us out on Mondays at 5pm at Betahaus, Moritzplatz U8
Kids, at least for the first couple of years, don't really require that much stuff, certainly much less than most people buy. Beyond clothes, bottles and consumables (like diapers), all you really need is a carriage and/or carrying device (I highly recommend getting both) to transport the kid, some sort of crib like thing for the kid to sleep in and some simple toys.
Ask me again in a couple of years time and I'll let you know if you need more stuff for older kids.
And its not just a matter of what you get them. Birthdays, Christmas, random gifts from grandparents and other relatives and friends, and before you know it you can't walk across their bedroom for all the crap that's accumulated.
Good plan is to say "ok now that you have this new thing we need to get rid of one of your old things" but good luck getting them to accept that happily.
One suggestion I'd make (that I haven't seen implemented, so it's only an idea) is a regular cull. Every few months or a year, depending on your preference / tolerance, just sit them down and ask them to choose what they're willing to throw away or give away. You could explain it in terms of your philosophy, or frame it as giving their lovely things to other kids who would also like to play with wonderful toys, or so on.
Kids can be a lot more reasonable than people give them credit for.
Diapers are a great example of balancing minimalism. Cloth diapers are cheaper in the long run and use less space, but they also take more time and energy to maintain than disposables.
I'm not sure if this qualifies as minimalist, but 5 months ago I moved out of my apartment, put everything in storage, packed a week worth of clothes, a macbook air, ipad, ipod and set off around the world.
I used to have quite a bit of "stuff": home theater, nice car, video games, etc. But I don't find I miss it very much at all. If anything, the only thing I really miss is my dog. Right now I'm working on my iPad app at an amazing cafe in Budapest. There really is no other place I'd rather be.
If you don't mine me asking, how old are you and how are you currently making money? I'm assuming you saved some for a bit before you left wherever you used to live. I'd actually be interested in anything you have to say.
28 and married. I'm own a mobile app business so I can work from anywhere in the world. I didn't need to save up any money as my earnings are enough to cover all of my expenses.
I consider this occasionally (as I have mostly the same options of travel), but I can't handle the idea of not hanging out with my dog regularly. I'd just miss the stupid quadruped all the time.
Good for him but i find this kind of free-wheeling and 'zen' lifestyle very selfish at its core. Go minimalism to what end? Why don't you do something that contributes to tree of human knowledge or something makes humanity more efficient?
I try to add value to the world as well. I don't see how those things are exclusive?
And yes, it is very selfish. I try to optimize for my own happiness. Which includes helping others, being nice, adding value, doing things that make life less fun in the short term but better in the long term.
Anecdotal (read: personal) experience suggests that rich people are more likely to be minimalists. Case in point, my brother is extremely wealthy and even though he likes nice things, his houses are always very sparsely outfitted, his cars never have any personal stuff in them, everything is extremely clean and besides his laptop, he doesn't carry around any personal possessions.
Compared to that, I hardly scrape by in an absurdly small apartment, and until recently it was stuffed to the brim. My car is full of things. I'm a slob. And all the poor people I know are too. Recently, I have started to throw away or auction off a huge part of my stuff and it feels really liberating (how many computers does a person need, anyway).
I wonder if being poor triggers people to hoard and/or to prefer complicated items. For example, I observed that rich people tend to have really simple furniture that is reduced to its core function, whereas poor people tend to have complicated-looking things and a lot of them. Poor households are absolutely cluttered.
interesting anecdote. Though not as extreme as your example, my wife comes from a lower middle class background, and my parents are a bit more well to do. Her parent's house is much more cluttered than mine.
To some degree, to get ahead in business you must personally present as clean. This would carry over somewhat into your personal life - it's hard to be wearing thousand dollar suits to work while living in a rat's nest, I guess.
Personally, I like clutter. Random toys people give you, buildup of projects and jobs and whatnot. It personalises a place. I understand the appeal of not caring about items - I don't particularly care about most of my clutter - but minimalism is so... sterile. Walk into a minimalist's house and there's nothing really there of their personality, nothing particularly different from any other minimalist's house. I don't have a problem with other people living that way, but for me, it's just so sterile and sometimes even feels unwelcoming.
EDIT: I wonder if part of your rich/poor thing is that the rich have the opportunity to move around a lot for both business and pleasure and so can get a variety of memories and backdrops, whereas the poor see the same thing day in day out, and so personalisation of spaces (or making them more varied) is more important to them?
This would carry over somewhat into your personal life -
it's hard to be wearing thousand dollar suits to work while
living in a rat's nest, I guess
Yeah, maybe, though the rich people I know are generally not suit-wearers.
I like your backdrop/decoration thing though, it's an interesting theory. But I still believe that having a nice bank account makes people feel independent and free, in the end causing them to see a lot of superfluous things as they are: clutter.
Marcus Aurelius is considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers, yet he was a Roman Emperor, probably the mightiest and richest man on earth at that time.
Maybe we have diverging definitions of minimalism, but I think minimalistic design leads to a sterile feeling but that you can still have a warm, personalized space with remarkably less stuff than the norm.
For example my desk was once home to three computers and various pieces of computer hardware laying around. I don't need three computers, I really don't need a desktop computer at all anymore. Removing the desktops and the rat's nest of cabling makes things much easier to maintain and it looks much nicer. I also don't have to track what's going on with multiple computers anymore. No more sorting out cables, no more putting away bits and pieces, and the room looks cleaner now too.
Another, I like to cook so my kitchen tends to accumulate things either via stupid impulse buys, upgrades or gifts. I don't need a small toaster oven, I don't need a huge serving tray, I don't need four spatulas, three paring knives and two can openers. I have a wife and kid I feed -- we don't need a stack of 10 plates and 10 cups at hand (I can't even seat 10 people, let alone serve that many). Keeping the kitchen to a minimum means cleaning a few more things on demand while prepping and serving food but it reduces the cleaning, sorting and storage time requirements overall. This form of minimalism doesn't mean we can't have pictures on the wall or a vase of flowers on the table, but it's a huge win for reducing the total time spent in the kitchen every day.
For me, minimalism is about identifying my real requirements and removing the rest. Toys and old projects may be a requirement to keep the creative juices flowing, but I'd try to strike a balance between keeping stuff simply because there is sentiments attached and keeping stuff that really matters.
I agree that a person's surrounding clutter (as you put it) does give a sense of personality (I did a photo project on posessions).
However, I think you're missing a bigger picture. A minimalist's house speaks TONS about the personality of its owner. And there are no two minimalist houses alike. The differences are, shall we say, minimal, but they're there.
PG may have a point that since humans use spacial memory to organize things, a cluttered environment may put more stress on the mind than an austere one.
Udo, I think you are onto something here. An important aspect of going minimalist is getting rid of (so called) superficial possessions. That means, to a large extent, only those who have stuff to get rid of can do so as a part of going minimalist.
The second important aspect is taking care of basic needs of daily living: food, clothing, shelter, healthcare (when absolutely needed). For someone engaged in the daily struggle to have such basic needs satisfied, the very idea of getting rid of anything they possess would be an anathema.
Clutter and hoarding are, thus, in (some ways) the unintended results of that struggle. Every item that has been acquired by (very) hard labor, or (minimal) lucky breaks is, from that point on, almost a lifeline. The question: What if I need this again? rings out every time an item is about to be discarded.
However, the other side of the same argument is the definition of needs (as opposed to wants). There are always going to be genuine needs and the point of comfort one feels with their net worth in satisfying those needs is going to define the point at which fear of the unknown ceases to be a driving factor in their decision making process. Including the decision to go minimalist.
That point is, understandably, different for everyone of us. In the end, I feel, it is easier to make the minimalist choice with (a). a solid net-worth (bank balance, property etc.) OR (b). absolute courage when a sense of security is lacking such as when (a) is absent OR (c). a combination of (a) and (b).
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TL;DR : I think, it is easier to be minimalist if you are materially secure; have sufficient support for a minimalist lifestyle from your life-partner or rugged courage and self-confidence if you are single/dependent-free.
A striking minor point in the book "Xenocide" (third in the "Ender" series) is how a major political leader's office was decorated with little more than a nice desk, small statue, and suitable ornate rug ... all of which were replaced with new ones every night. Easy to go extreme minimal when objects can, and are, replaced on a regular frequent basis obviating any conflicting need to "get it right" once and live with the choice for prolonged periods.
While I don't disagree with your observation, one contributing factor is that wealthy people can pay for housecleaning, decorating, landscaping, and other services that contribute to a neat, tidy household. Poor people cannot, and especially if the household is a working single parent with kids, there is not a lot of spare time in a day to make sure the windows are polished.
I'd paint a contrasting viewpoint, that minimalists are more likely to be rich. My anecdotal evidence comes from the millionaires next door, who live well below their means, purchase quality over quantity and value experiences more than personal belongings and material wealth.
My thoughts are that when you have plenty of money, you don't worry about getting rid of things. If I find later that I really did need that thing, I can easily get another one. On the other hand, if money is tight, it's hard to get rid of anything that has any value at all. I might need it later, and not be able to purchase a replacement.
Being poor means that when you throw something out, you count the cost. It's more practical not to throw things out that you don't need right now, because if you have to buy it again, it'll be xyz dollars, and you don't want to spend xyz dollars again.
The best thing I've done recently was move aggregators like Techmeme and Sphinn out of Reader and into a bookmark folder. I later realized most of the stuff in the aggregators was not only useless, but even skimming took so much time and energy away from the post-a-day/week blogs where I drew most of my inspiration from.
I also did this with all the news sites I read. Most of it was filler anyway. I end up not reading much news, but somehow I still hear about the important stuff.
I had a similar experience when I moved from the UK to the Netherlands in 2006. You gather a lot of hubris over the years and it feels nice to be able to dispatch a big load of it.
Also it's an interesting point you make about dutchies and their agenda's. No wonder people think I'm crazy. I've never had an agenda (or used calendars either for that matter).
I've gone towards minimalism -- or at least as far as I feel is reasonable -- for the purpose of eliminating parts of my life that were pure maintenance, such as cleaning and commuting.
In 2008 I got rid of what I thought were "most of my possessions". The big thing was every piece of furniture I owned except for a desk, a small lamp and am Eames molded chair. I did, however, have a walk-in closet full of clothes and boxes. I also kept the computer, and the TV.
By having no furniture -- not even a mattress -- for months, it really changed my perspective on what I valued about furniture. Sleeping and sitting on the floor tends to do that to you. It really made me think about what I wanted in a bed, or in a couch, or whether I even wanted certain things at all. It also forced me to focus on the space. By most measures I lived in a very large apartment, but I started to notice how awful the floor plan was, how much room was wasted by an excessively large kitchen, oversized bathroom and tons of useless hallway... it was "big", but not in ways that were useful considering how you actually live in the space.
So 8 months later I downsized. Over that period of time I got rid of more things. Useless baubles and kitsch. Clothes I never wore. Books I never needed again. I had purchased a nice bed, nightstands and two lamps, but hadn't acquired anything else, so I brought far fewer things into a considerably smaller space.
However, that smaller space was MUCH nicer than the larger one, for a bit less money, and in a ridiculously good location (subway across the street, in the city instead of 10 miles out). My commute went from an hour a day to being able to stumble out of bed at the last minute and walk across the street. Cleaning was just getting easier and easier. With no junk around, you can just power steam, vacuum, or wipe down every surface very quickly. I also seemed to have to clean less often, in addition to reducing it to maybe 30 minutes a week. Insects? What are those? I think I've seen only a fruit fly and a spider in nearly 3 years. Despite losing 250sqft, I think I only lost 20sqft of usable living space.
But I wasn't done. If I spent an hour going through everything, I'd still finish with a 15-gallon garbage bag full of things to throw out. The former walk-in closet of boxes? It's down to just one box (as of this weekend). Two of the (three) reach-in closets are now empty, so I'm turning one into my office (which reclaims a lot of floor space). I could probably downsize again and still have tons of room, as even with a few more pieces of furniture (partial living room) the place is feeling a bit gargantuan, and I'm worried I might just buy furniture to eliminate the seemingly empty space.
I don't really strive for the absolute reduction to large, basic forms. Without having built my space to control the lighting exactly as I intend, I think that'd be impossible. Mostly I'm just for removing things that aren't being useful to eliminate the costs of having to deal with said things.
However, do not underestimate proper use of color. My bedroom is backed by a Benjamin Moore Jack O' Lantern [1][2] that gives the desired effect (and similar in the bathroom with Shy Cherry). My living area needs something, and I'm considering finding photos (Monaco Grand Prix, Targa Florio) to enlarge and use as panoramic wallpaper.
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One thing I have noticed is the opportunity cost of having useless things. Not just the space to store it, but not having the space to store useful things, and the lost opportunities by not having those useful things.
The most common example are having clothes you don't wear. Since they're taking up space in your closet, you end up running out of the clothes you do wear, and not having enough of the preferred styles/articles you like to wear. So by keeping the articles of clothing around, you end up creating this ridiculous artificial problem for yourself which results in more frequent laundry.
I've noticed similar with pots and pans. The 3-quart pot is dirty and I want to make some pasta? I can't with a 2-quart or 1-quart, so I won't be having a shrimp scampi that night. If I simply got rid of the useless pots I almost never use, and bought more of the ones I did, I'd be eating what I want (and probably better overall).
Additionally if the pots are decent looking, and are well organized, it's free decor. I once went to someone's home and their bath towels were in an open reach-in closet, but meticulously folded and stacked. I was impressed, because someone had made some plain, boring, inexpensive bath towels part of their decorum rather effectively.
I admittedly subscribe to the minimalist newsletter, but in my mind there is no better decoration than sunlight on a white wall, especially if it meets wood-coloured floor.
'Less is more' is a thousand years old general maxim. And of course, there is nothing from Buddhism or stoicism in cutting some costs and undoing some bad habits. One also should watch the Fight Club movie. ^_^
Very interesting article, I can see some of our discussions in there. I think it's indeed fair to say most people could use less stuff in their lives (minimalism). Furthermore, it's honorable to strive for a simpler life in this age of the Internet and globalization. However, I also agree with the comments that the audience for this article is probably individualistic, unbound, single young men.
Both minimalism and stoicism are about constraints. Therefore, I do not agree with replacing books with a Kindle. A Kindle - like most Internet-connected mobile devices - represents abundance: an abundance of information. Hence I find this point a bit at odds with an information diet. Having physical books puts a constraint on what you can carry around with you (especially important when traveling). Also, which is an argument not heard enough, reading from books - especially hardcovers - has aesthetic value, and it's easier to remember the contents of the book.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadI find not judging people almost impossible. Isn't judging people, things and events what makes me an intelligent creature? What do you (or Buddhists) think of accepting oneself as a judgmental person?
Was replacing his book collection with a Kindle an example of "less stuff" or "more stuff"? I don't think it's either. It's an alternative, and in this case, it felt like "less stuff" to him. That was in line with his goal and it worked.
BTW, I don't even own a television!
Selection bias rears its ugly head again -- you never read blog posts by minimalists who don't write blog posts about their lives.
But there are so many things I would not throw away because I need and use them every day: books, cds, musical instruments, cooking gear, all kinds of tools, wires, parts, etc. for tinkering. This adds up to what I own, and yes, it is quite a lot (moving requires the biggest truck I can get with a normal license). For the books and cds I could go to a library, for the tools to a hackerspace, for my food to a restaurant... The instruments, well, that'd be hard.
It seems to me that such a life would be more expensive and require more organisation. In short, it would be far less enjoyable for me.
The point I'm trying to make in my article is that minimalism makes me happier, but I'm not sure whether this will always be true. Too minimalistic and I will probably become less happy. Also, doing it for a long time might also get old. We'll see, so far I like it.
However paradoxical, minimalism can be also an be attachment. As Buddhists would say, take the middle road.
Taking cooking as an example: food touches on the outer world (think of everything involved in a simple crop, from the farmer to the sun) and the inner world (physically and mentally). Preparing food is very good for exercising awareness and appreciating life, why would one sacrifice that?
Edit: sorry for accidentally downvoting you :(.
One of my favorite lines in philosophical thought is, "Moderation in all things, including moderation."
Family minimalism is a lot harder I think than individual minimalism. Most minimalist blogs paint a picture of a single male hipster with a macbook couch-surfing between RoR consulting gigs. Family minimalism cannot be that extreme.
Our books and cds were the easiest to get rid of, we both have kindles, and noticed that we never re-read books anyway, and listened to mp3s or streaming radio rather than cds. The hardest bit was thinking about what it represents in financial terms.
I would say keep the musical instruments. A couple of ideas I have seen floating around are the 100 things idea, where each person has 100 things, and if you want to buy something and have 100 things you have to decide what to ditch. I think it is fully acceptable to have a musical instrument as one of your 100 things.
The other idea I like is splitting things into the create or consume categories, and feel better about holding onto things that let you create. Anything related to consumption like a TV for example should be on "consider ditching" list.
As far as cooking goes, well if that is your thing keep it. We ditched ours as we ate too much anyway. We worried that we would spend more money and eat out more, but basically we ended up eating less and losing weight.
For us it has meant outsourcing a lot of stuff. Instead of burning all home movies and photos to blu-ray, we are more selective, and upload stuff to the cloud. We used to have external hard drives and actual servers, now it is just laptops and the cloud.
Overall we are spending about the same. What we save on collecting crap, we spend on services. We are saving on power, and go out more. We spend less time at home, and less time cleaning up.
EDIT: Plus now we only need a much cheaper and smaller flat. Rent is cheaper, but heating is MUCH cheaper.
But I cannot possibly bring myself to throw away books. It's (almost) religious. Books are the foundation of civilized culture. The nazis burnt books and destroyed cultures (the things parents teach you..).
No I couldn't destroy them either. Also you have to separate the actual material in the book itself, from the dead tree that gets dragged around with it.
When I was honest with myself, it was purely the financial aspect that made getting rid of my books a difficult proposition. I gave away over a thousand euros worth of books. I kept less than 10 that I hadn't read yet, and will give them away once they are read. We kept a lot of my 2 year old daughter's books, as she doesn't have a kindle yet, but we didn't keep all of them.
Don't throw them away! The trick is to give them to a library. Win-win situation.
Even so, I find that after moving the 'stuff' creeps back in again and after a couple of years there is just too much of it.
It's just different stuff... especially tools, it's hard to get by without them.
I couldn't care less about clothes or furniture but tools matter.
Changing my eating habits to reduce my sugar intake will definitely be more complicated than not doing so. The same holds for an information diet.
I understand why you're doing this and it'll most probably have a positive effect, but I don't see how this is necessarily simpler.
My diet is now mostly meat, eggs, fish, and salad with some nuts and fruit. There's really nothing complicated about it.
A better general tip is to have a positive goal.
See what I did there? :)
Instead of reducing sugar in your diet, go for increasing the good stuff - vegetables, berries etc.
emphasis on single. no kids. no obligations, no responsibility.
oh how zen you are.
Sorry, this is quite a naive statement. My wife before pregnancy and childbirth had a different outlook on life... people's personalities change, and having kids often makes this change (large cause of divorces and break-ups).
Also, your kid's personality you can't choose. Some kids are very colicky and stubborn and do much better with stable environment. Others are free spirits. If you have a special-needs or disabled child, forget about it. No choice there.
My wife's friend roams around with her husband (and their kid) - he does short-term contracts around the world. She had repeated complained about the churn and stress to my wife.
I don't really blog about my experiences or mention them to friends, I just silently do it and feel a little more of life's burdens lift. It's nice to work on getting rid of attachments (in the Buddhist sense).
http://www.facebook.com/groups/146524318752855/
(Another point this may be off topic)
Something about your 30-day-no-candy experiment.
If you continue trying to about complex sugars, you'll see that you will not miss carbs at all.
For a different reason (I'm a body builder -hobby-) I tried 3 months with no carbs at all, and I really felt good!
Ask me again in a couple of years time and I'll let you know if you need more stuff for older kids.
Good plan is to say "ok now that you have this new thing we need to get rid of one of your old things" but good luck getting them to accept that happily.
Kids can be a lot more reasonable than people give them credit for.
I used to have quite a bit of "stuff": home theater, nice car, video games, etc. But I don't find I miss it very much at all. If anything, the only thing I really miss is my dog. Right now I'm working on my iPad app at an amazing cafe in Budapest. There really is no other place I'd rather be.
this is why I discourage friends who consider getting a dog but intend to travel lots. it's kind of an anchor.
And yes, it is very selfish. I try to optimize for my own happiness. Which includes helping others, being nice, adding value, doing things that make life less fun in the short term but better in the long term.
Compared to that, I hardly scrape by in an absurdly small apartment, and until recently it was stuffed to the brim. My car is full of things. I'm a slob. And all the poor people I know are too. Recently, I have started to throw away or auction off a huge part of my stuff and it feels really liberating (how many computers does a person need, anyway).
I wonder if being poor triggers people to hoard and/or to prefer complicated items. For example, I observed that rich people tend to have really simple furniture that is reduced to its core function, whereas poor people tend to have complicated-looking things and a lot of them. Poor households are absolutely cluttered.
Personally, I like clutter. Random toys people give you, buildup of projects and jobs and whatnot. It personalises a place. I understand the appeal of not caring about items - I don't particularly care about most of my clutter - but minimalism is so... sterile. Walk into a minimalist's house and there's nothing really there of their personality, nothing particularly different from any other minimalist's house. I don't have a problem with other people living that way, but for me, it's just so sterile and sometimes even feels unwelcoming.
EDIT: I wonder if part of your rich/poor thing is that the rich have the opportunity to move around a lot for both business and pleasure and so can get a variety of memories and backdrops, whereas the poor see the same thing day in day out, and so personalisation of spaces (or making them more varied) is more important to them?
I like your backdrop/decoration thing though, it's an interesting theory. But I still believe that having a nice bank account makes people feel independent and free, in the end causing them to see a lot of superfluous things as they are: clutter.
For example my desk was once home to three computers and various pieces of computer hardware laying around. I don't need three computers, I really don't need a desktop computer at all anymore. Removing the desktops and the rat's nest of cabling makes things much easier to maintain and it looks much nicer. I also don't have to track what's going on with multiple computers anymore. No more sorting out cables, no more putting away bits and pieces, and the room looks cleaner now too.
Another, I like to cook so my kitchen tends to accumulate things either via stupid impulse buys, upgrades or gifts. I don't need a small toaster oven, I don't need a huge serving tray, I don't need four spatulas, three paring knives and two can openers. I have a wife and kid I feed -- we don't need a stack of 10 plates and 10 cups at hand (I can't even seat 10 people, let alone serve that many). Keeping the kitchen to a minimum means cleaning a few more things on demand while prepping and serving food but it reduces the cleaning, sorting and storage time requirements overall. This form of minimalism doesn't mean we can't have pictures on the wall or a vase of flowers on the table, but it's a huge win for reducing the total time spent in the kitchen every day.
For me, minimalism is about identifying my real requirements and removing the rest. Toys and old projects may be a requirement to keep the creative juices flowing, but I'd try to strike a balance between keeping stuff simply because there is sentiments attached and keeping stuff that really matters.
However, I think you're missing a bigger picture. A minimalist's house speaks TONS about the personality of its owner. And there are no two minimalist houses alike. The differences are, shall we say, minimal, but they're there.
PG may have a point that since humans use spacial memory to organize things, a cluttered environment may put more stress on the mind than an austere one.
The second important aspect is taking care of basic needs of daily living: food, clothing, shelter, healthcare (when absolutely needed). For someone engaged in the daily struggle to have such basic needs satisfied, the very idea of getting rid of anything they possess would be an anathema.
Clutter and hoarding are, thus, in (some ways) the unintended results of that struggle. Every item that has been acquired by (very) hard labor, or (minimal) lucky breaks is, from that point on, almost a lifeline. The question: What if I need this again? rings out every time an item is about to be discarded.
However, the other side of the same argument is the definition of needs (as opposed to wants). There are always going to be genuine needs and the point of comfort one feels with their net worth in satisfying those needs is going to define the point at which fear of the unknown ceases to be a driving factor in their decision making process. Including the decision to go minimalist.
That point is, understandably, different for everyone of us. In the end, I feel, it is easier to make the minimalist choice with (a). a solid net-worth (bank balance, property etc.) OR (b). absolute courage when a sense of security is lacking such as when (a) is absent OR (c). a combination of (a) and (b).
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TL;DR : I think, it is easier to be minimalist if you are materially secure; have sufficient support for a minimalist lifestyle from your life-partner or rugged courage and self-confidence if you are single/dependent-free.
While I don't disagree with your observation, one contributing factor is that wealthy people can pay for housecleaning, decorating, landscaping, and other services that contribute to a neat, tidy household. Poor people cannot, and especially if the household is a working single parent with kids, there is not a lot of spare time in a day to make sure the windows are polished.
I also did this with all the news sites I read. Most of it was filler anyway. I end up not reading much news, but somehow I still hear about the important stuff.
Also it's an interesting point you make about dutchies and their agenda's. No wonder people think I'm crazy. I've never had an agenda (or used calendars either for that matter).
In 2008 I got rid of what I thought were "most of my possessions". The big thing was every piece of furniture I owned except for a desk, a small lamp and am Eames molded chair. I did, however, have a walk-in closet full of clothes and boxes. I also kept the computer, and the TV.
By having no furniture -- not even a mattress -- for months, it really changed my perspective on what I valued about furniture. Sleeping and sitting on the floor tends to do that to you. It really made me think about what I wanted in a bed, or in a couch, or whether I even wanted certain things at all. It also forced me to focus on the space. By most measures I lived in a very large apartment, but I started to notice how awful the floor plan was, how much room was wasted by an excessively large kitchen, oversized bathroom and tons of useless hallway... it was "big", but not in ways that were useful considering how you actually live in the space.
So 8 months later I downsized. Over that period of time I got rid of more things. Useless baubles and kitsch. Clothes I never wore. Books I never needed again. I had purchased a nice bed, nightstands and two lamps, but hadn't acquired anything else, so I brought far fewer things into a considerably smaller space.
However, that smaller space was MUCH nicer than the larger one, for a bit less money, and in a ridiculously good location (subway across the street, in the city instead of 10 miles out). My commute went from an hour a day to being able to stumble out of bed at the last minute and walk across the street. Cleaning was just getting easier and easier. With no junk around, you can just power steam, vacuum, or wipe down every surface very quickly. I also seemed to have to clean less often, in addition to reducing it to maybe 30 minutes a week. Insects? What are those? I think I've seen only a fruit fly and a spider in nearly 3 years. Despite losing 250sqft, I think I only lost 20sqft of usable living space.
But I wasn't done. If I spent an hour going through everything, I'd still finish with a 15-gallon garbage bag full of things to throw out. The former walk-in closet of boxes? It's down to just one box (as of this weekend). Two of the (three) reach-in closets are now empty, so I'm turning one into my office (which reclaims a lot of floor space). I could probably downsize again and still have tons of room, as even with a few more pieces of furniture (partial living room) the place is feeling a bit gargantuan, and I'm worried I might just buy furniture to eliminate the seemingly empty space.
This has been a fascinating thread and I've really been influenced.
However, do not underestimate proper use of color. My bedroom is backed by a Benjamin Moore Jack O' Lantern [1][2] that gives the desired effect (and similar in the bathroom with Shy Cherry). My living area needs something, and I'm considering finding photos (Monaco Grand Prix, Targa Florio) to enlarge and use as panoramic wallpaper.
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One thing I have noticed is the opportunity cost of having useless things. Not just the space to store it, but not having the space to store useful things, and the lost opportunities by not having those useful things.
The most common example are having clothes you don't wear. Since they're taking up space in your closet, you end up running out of the clothes you do wear, and not having enough of the preferred styles/articles you like to wear. So by keeping the articles of clothing around, you end up creating this ridiculous artificial problem for yourself which results in more frequent laundry.
I've noticed similar with pots and pans. The 3-quart pot is dirty and I want to make some pasta? I can't with a 2-quart or 1-quart, so I won't be having a shrimp scampi that night. If I simply got rid of the useless pots I almost never use, and bought more of the ones I did, I'd be eating what I want (and probably better overall).
Additionally if the pots are decent looking, and are well organized, it's free decor. I once went to someone's home and their bath towels were in an open reach-in closet, but meticulously folded and stacked. I was impressed, because someone had made some plain, boring, inexpensive bath towels part of their decorum rather effectively.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/yyi62.jpg [2] http://i.imgur.com/D1DyH.jpg
Both minimalism and stoicism are about constraints. Therefore, I do not agree with replacing books with a Kindle. A Kindle - like most Internet-connected mobile devices - represents abundance: an abundance of information. Hence I find this point a bit at odds with an information diet. Having physical books puts a constraint on what you can carry around with you (especially important when traveling). Also, which is an argument not heard enough, reading from books - especially hardcovers - has aesthetic value, and it's easier to remember the contents of the book.