151–160 of 178 posts
After school, measured my minimalism by counting the things I owned. As long as over half of them had been given to me, I was doing good.
Living with other people for awhile, find myself sometimes fantasizing about if I could get my life down to two steamer trunks.
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The missing pieces of the conversation are "How self reliant?" and "Self-reliant from what?" Are you trying to be a homesteader, entirely off-grid and not reliant on society? Or are you trying to be financially self-reliant, not relying on a paycheck? Or are you trying to be personally less reliant on things and items? These are all different ideas that get wrapped up into this conversation, and like the OP said, the…
While I agree that pieces are missing for a full conversation, I disagree with the simplification that minimalism is mainly about wanting to be less reliant on things or just having less for the sake of having less. Minimalism is about having what is essential to a fulfill a certain need or goal. What is essential varies from person to person and of course is vastly different whatever we are talking about a software…
This is what I mean by poverty. Most people who are ingenious live a balance of self reliance, minimalism (usually due to lack of money) and poverty.
By poverty I do not mean that taking one step into self reliance makes you instantly impoverished but it frequently means doing without some luxury or need fullfiled that people are accustomed to. It usually comes in the form of "making do".
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Amish are definitely not minimalist. The array of tools Amish carpenters have and are skilled with is very impressive.
They might have many tools but they probably make them themselves or know by name the person who makes them. Out of close to raw material. (I’m assuming the Amish don’t mine and smelt their own metals). One modern power tool could replace many of those Amish tools but it brings with it so many more dependencies.
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They might have many tools but they probably make them themselves or know by name the person who makes them. Out of close to raw material. (I’m assuming the Amish don’t mine and smelt their own metals). One modern power tool could replace many of those Amish tools but it brings with it so many more dependencies.
That's not true at all. In another comment of mine I discussed this. They generally get their equipment outside of the community. They are no longer self sufficient in the sense that you think they are. They might make some shit but for sure go to Costco and stuff like that. The costco close to where I live even has a place for their horse and buggies(which should be outlawed IMO. The cruelty to horses is undeniable…
And the Amish definitely pay taxes, even for schools which they don't use. (An exception is social security in the US because they were exempted from the very start, but they can't collect it either.)
Also, how is having horses pull buggies cruelty to animals? Horses are working animals, and it's no great hardship for them to pull a buggy or a plough. They can be overworked or treated roughly, but so can any animal.
First of all, the unnecessary mention of "mostly white male". I'm So. Bloody. Tired of this trope being injected into every article at every opportunity. I get it. Life unfair. Move on. It's like how every NYT comment section will mention Trump within the first two comments. Give it a rest already!
Then, the vague-at-best connections between minimal art and Minimalism as a response to the excesses of Boomers. It's really not that complicated. Grow up in a house of hoarders, and you're well on your way to embracing minimalism.
Lastly, this whole "Your bedroom might be cleaner, but the world stays bad". Yeah! Minimalism doesn't promise world peace! It's just a way to make your own life more manageable and sane!
Just because a piece is longform doesn't mean it's good. Reading this article was a terrible waste of my time.
I just want to say I don't like this article at all. It makes minimalism seem like a rigid ideology specifically for white males who command poor people to build and craft expensive housing and objects for them (and many of those objects are in the shape of penises?) A whole lot of discussion on random art and murder from one of the people who made that style of art. I thought this was going to be about minimalism, w…
My advice is to just stop identifying as a minimalist, and find a better word to describe your identity. The thing is, the article is describing a group of people who self-identify as "minimalist", but you, along with ten other groups that are nothing like you OR the minimalists in the article OR each other, all identify as "minimalist". It's just not a word with any coherent meaning. The result is that every time an…
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That's not true at all. In another comment of mine I discussed this. They generally get their equipment outside of the community. They are no longer self sufficient in the sense that you think they are. They might make some shit but for sure go to Costco and stuff like that. The costco close to where I live even has a place for their horse and buggies(which should be outlawed IMO. The cruelty to horses is undeniable…
What are "road taxes"? Where I'm from, highway infrastructure is funded with general taxes (property or development taxes in municipalities, or federal/provincial income and sales taxes). There are additional taxes on fuel, but that covers only a small part of roaid maintenance. And the Amish definitely pay taxes, even for schools which they don't use. (An exception is social security in the US because they were exem…
pretty sure that horses would disagree ;)
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If your possessions all have practical utility, you are already a hardcore minimalist. No one should begrudge you a well-stocked and well-used workshop. That’s not what the minimalist message is supposed to be about. It’s the stuff accumulated carelessly, just because you could. Decorative doo-dads, outfits worn once, toys from kids long since grown, furniture retained out of a sense of duty. The suburban middle-clas…
I’ve always thought Guy Clark’s song Stuff that Works captures this ethos perfectly. Here is the first verse and chorus: I got an old blue shirt and it suits me just fine I like the way it feels so I wear it all the time I got an old guitar, won't ever stay in tune I like the way it sounds in a dark and empty room I got an old pair of boots and they fit just right Well I can work all day and I can dance all night I g…
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Yeah, it's funny, ordering takeaway all the time is also one of the plenty of alternatives to lighting money on fire.
So, I eat out and order takeaway a lot. The average cost for this is roughly $8-$14. I could cook, I suppose, spending an hour or two every day, and cut that cost to.. $3-$5? But just for the heck of it, say I save the whole damn cost, because I grow my own rice on the windowsill or whatever. So, by spending an hour every day (excluding going to the store to buy ingredients, which we all know takes no time, or browsi…
For a comparison, down here, we make 3 servings of a pizza which is around 10€. A McDonald is 8€ for 1 serving. A Chinese meal is around 9€ for 2 servings. French fries + meat balls are 10€ for 4 servings. SO the cheapest is more than the double of the price I pay to make my own stuff.
Today, I've spent 1.5 hours cooking (but that a more involved recipe, I do the usual stuff twice faster), and I'll spend an additional .5 hour on the dishes. Ordering takeaway, and going to take them at the shop is about 30 min. So that's much faster for the takeaways.
But as I said : I control what I eat (more vegetables, less salt, less fat, less sugar), I enjoy a lot of variety too (I can cook a hundred dishes, with various level of complexity). Also, I enjoy it, but as said before, that's quite personal.
Oh, btw, today's recipe :
- grounded pork/veal 600grams
- mince a big carrot and the equivalent volume of onions. Slowly cook them with olive oil (let the pan covered, it will cook with its water)
- heat a good glass of white wine to remove alcohol (say, boiling during 3 minutes). Put the white wine on the cooked carrot/onions.
- cook some green cabbage leaves, say 15 big ones in boiling water for around 7 minutes. Cold them in cool water, dry them.
- put the leaves on a big plate, then put the meat iin one layer on top of it.
- roll the whole thing, put it with the carrot/onions/whine
- add garlic
- cover and cook slowly for 30 to 40 minutes.
- instead of waiting, take 20 grams of wheat, 20 grams of butter and mix them together (no heating !).
- once the meat is cooked, remove the big roll, and put the cooking juice away, in another pan, bring it to a boil. Lower the heat. Put your wheat/butter (say 20 grams at once). Whisk that, the sauce becomes more creamy.
- and now, serve slices of the roll, the carrots/onions, add the sauce and some regular rice. Et voilà
I think that some people, like Colin Wright, have the right idea with their brand of minimalism, but too many others have co-opted it and put their own rules on it.
I like the idea, but I own a house, and a yard, and appliances. And I maintain all of them. So, in the garage, I keep good-sized stashes of scrap lumber, random pieces of plastic and metal, screws, bolts, washers, grommets, and tools. I have fixed or MacGuyvered countless things with these random parts.
And at some point, I jumped off that minimalism train and jumped onto my own train: practicalism (lowercase p, because I have to maintain some pretension).
practicalism (tm): Own only what is practical -- and maybe just a little more.