101–110 of 178 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people just don't like cooking. I guess the magical kitchen gadgets may appeal to them in the sense of "this might make me like cooking" because it looks easy.
So what if you just don't like cooking, do it anyway, ya dongus.
There's plenty of alternatives to actually cooking.
Two ideas which often I encounter together yet I have grown to find incompatible are self reliance and minimalism. If you wish to become more self reliant i.e. more able to handle for yourself rather than through another's labor the impositions you create in the world, you will find yourself needing to masters, access and eventual own many more tools and material. My father, a man capable of building or repairing alm…
> The reality is, if you wish to combine self reliance and minimalism, you essentially must embrace a life of poverty. Why? If you take minimalism to the extreme, and keep stripping away until reaching the bare essentials of living, then the basic tools and materials are what you left with. It would be "against" minimalism (which is not well defined anyway) to buy say a chain saw because you think you might need it o…
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, they're not all compatible.
If you want to be an off-grid homesteader, you're going to need a lot of tools, materials and skills. If you want to be less reliant on things, then you are going to have to be content with being able to do less.
None of those things are bad, but the conversation is incomplete if we don't make clear what we're really talking about when we talking about self-reliance and minimalism.
There's another way of looking at this, which is minimalism as symptom rather than cause. Most millenials, even the upper-middle class ones, see a future with less material prospects than their parents had. I do not believe that minimalism is fundamentally a cultural phenomenon driven by the wealthy, but by the impoverished. You can say that Marie Kondo and Bauhaus have some subterranean aesthetic connection, but I t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think that is minimalists nightmare Not at all.
Yes, it is. Unless you have an explanation of why not without getting into no true Scotsman territory.
Wikipedia has it as: "The term minimalist often colloquially refers to anything that is spare or stripped to its essentials."
Oxford Dictionary as: "a style of art, music or design that uses very simple ideas or a very small number of simple elements"
So in my opinion, having rusting car wrecks around in an old shed with the intent to re-use their essential spare parts later is perfectly compatible with minimalism, and what I would expect someone with the skill set and space to do so.
Contrast that with a large garage where numerous expensive cars are being parked and continuously maintained as well as cost of electricity, cleaning, security etc. for the building, although the cars are pretty much never driven.
That would be much closer to a minimalists nightmare. Not the self reliant utilitarian guy with the old shed.
You will be surprised how similar it feels to have your tools well organised, versus removing them all together.
I think it comes down to our brains attempting to forecast and predict everything we do. So when your workspace is messy, your brain can't look very far ahead, it doesn't know where everything is so it can't accurately forecast the situation. It gets flustered and you work slower. When you're organised, your brain can subconsciously connect all the dots and suddenly everything feels easier and more simple.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what if you just don't like cooking, do it anyway, ya dongus.
No... You order takeaway. Or you buy ready meals from the store. Or you go to subway. There's plenty of alternatives to actually cooking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
having a lawn service means not needing a mower. Hiring out a painting service means not having old buckets, brushes, tarps, etc, laying around. Minimalism means not having a lawn which needs mowing, nor walls in need of painting.
so you live in a cardbox box near a creek for running water?
At one point I might have called myself a minimalist, but these days I'd call myself more of an anticonsumerist or something along those lines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often wonder what these folks do with their time. It certainly isn't, say, painting canvases of artwork - these sorts of hobbies require stuff.
You can paint canvases if you find that fulfilling, you'd just be deliberate about what painting stuff you treated as a possession. Either you'd rent access to a stocked studio, or you'd buy paints and brushes but treat them as ephemeral, or you'd cherish them enough to count them towards your number, and use them frequently. What you wouldn't do is have a pile of painting stuff in your closet that you used five year…
This doesn't jive with the folks that brag about minimizing possessions - because it requires such. They might do digital art... maybe.
And rent a stocked studio? Most folks on earth aren't near such a thing nor is it something most folks can do. The few times I've seen any of this, you can't simply rent (and none have been near me). You have to apply to make sure you are good enough and do the right sort of art. At that point, you are representing the studio.
This goes for a lot of hobbies that requires a number of tools, supplies, and space, though. Simpy doing active work requires space and stuff - and some of it might go for months without use because you use different tools in different stages of work. (A woodworker might use a planer, but not every day and rarely if a piece takes a few months).
Actual, truthful minimalism accounts for this, but that wasn't what the topic in this thread was: It was the unobtainable minimalism that creates those that brag about having few possessions... and wind up having to rely on the labors of others to do sometimes basic things.