In recent times, I see many people promoting minimalism in everything we do. Those people advocate living with 100 things, creating your own food, maybe even your own clothing. I can very well understand the aim of this movement. By taking everything away except the essentials, you can make those essentials count and maybe even enjoy them.
In some cases, for example wen you create your own clothing or start your cooking process not in the supermarket, but in the garden, you fill the time that you gained by taking non-essentials away with the extended process. That might also intensify the experience you gain from something.
I don’t like it. It’s nothing I would enjoy, I think.
Sometimes, I enjoy minimalism and minimalizing. But for the large majority of things, I like my comfortable, yet sometimes ineffective procedures. Let me give you three examples:
- Clothes: I have a lot of clothes. I did not realize that until our washing machine was broken and my housemate was forced to wash his belongings by hand. I could live comfortably for around three weeks until we had our new machine. The only piece of clothing I wore multiple times were my jeans. The rest I could change every day. – And I even buy a new piece every month or so.
- Room interior: I have a huge amount of stuff: Several candles, decor, books, vases, lamps, chairs. I even have two beds, because I my room came furnished and I did not feel like settling with a single bed. Just for the delight of having it, I bought a double bed from IKEA. I love it.
- Connectivity: My e-mail inbox is overflowing, because I did not see the need of additional administration. I empty it once in a while and thanks to Gmail it does not really make a difference for me whether I see my mails in the inbox or in the archive. Oh, and I’m on several social networks.
At all, I am quite an average guy. The only thing were I practise minimalism is my productivity. And this is quite a different story – because I hate the many rules of productivity systems I totally block them from influencing how I work. I have been what you could call a productivity geek in the past, valuing GTD and other systems whilst ignoring that the administration of them took more time than my actual work. Especially because I did not have that much work, as a studen
However, life is a journey and I will give “minimalism” a try. In August I will be moving into a new apartment and over the course of the summer, I will get rid of some old clothes of mine. My goal is not to live with 100, 50 or less things but to just tune stuff a little bit down. Less clutter, more that I can enjoy.
I would be glad to hear some of your opinions. How do you cope with the increasing amount of stuff we all collect in our lives? Have you recently turned minimalist? How does it feel?
