Minimalism: It Works

stripping away everything that you don't actually use in your day to day life has a remarkable psychological effect.

I've taken a couple stabs at minimalism (of possessions) in my life, staring when I moved from Austin to Seattle in 1995. I'm doing so again after relocating from Seattle to San Francisco a year ago.

There is absolutely no doubt that I've been happiest during those periods when I've had the fewest 'things'. I look back at the time when I downsized from a 1000 sq. ft. apartment in Seattle to 500 sq. ft. studio as the most productive and enjoyable time of my life.

Since moving here to SF, my wife and I have almost halved the space we occupy from a 1600 sq ft townhouse in Seattle to a very comfortable 850 sq ft. in San Francisco. I continue to get rid of the stuff and replace it with either 'virtual stuff' (e.g. electronic books) or just happily do without (e.g. espresso machine).

The main reason I 'upsized' from the small apartment to the large townhouse was that I felt like at my age at the time (30) I was 'supposed to'. I was the only one of my friends/work-mates that hadn't gotten married and/or had children, and bought a house. Oh, what a mistake! Now, ten years later, I'm so glad I'm back to shrinking the possessions in favor of a leaner, simpler life. For the first time since I was 16 I do not own a car. I have no debt (and with the exception of the townhouse and a couple years of credit card debt, I haven't since 1998).

I'm totally sold on continuing down this path, as she is as well. We don't plan on having children. We are both 40+ and enjoy the idea of moving around some more, perhaps even relocating overseas in time.

There are a ton of thunguses in one's life that can be ditched to remove the maintenance of. There's a lot of validity in that particular concept.

But when one wants to develop a fuller life than virtually living - things become useful towards that goal. Let me give some examples.

* Musical instruments. iPad instruments just don't cut it.

* Older books. There are a ton of out-of-print and hard-to-find books that just aren't online, especially in the non-tech fields.

* Gardening requires tools.

* Any variant of a construction trade requires tools.

* Travelling longer distances in a place without a densely connected public transport requires (bike | car | skateboard | etc), which requires maintenance tools.

* Cooking & baking requires a multitude of tools; hosting people for dinner requires kitchenware.

* Offline gaming usually requires game boards & misc accouterments.

I could go on, but those examples are from my own life. The existence of a monk is simply not pragmatically livable for people who fancy dealing with the physical. I like some of Christopher Alexander's writings as he searched for a pattern language in architecture. He considered highly complex systems where people engaged in their environment and lived and hypothesized the idea of the "Quality without a Name", and he had this to say about it, "It is a subtle kind of freedom from inner contradictions". What I see the Minimalism people striving for is this freedom, and they are seeking this freedom by removing as many pieces from the system as they can so that the contradictions go away. I - obviously - don't think that this is the complete solution.

While environments and ourselves do mutually shape each other, I believe that a complete solution is to work towards being consistent and uncontradictory with the things we have both in our heads and outside of them. Sometimes that's getting rid of things, sometimes that's adding things, and other times that's simply changing things around.

Well, that's my 0.02c anyway.

(edit1: formatting)

There is this idea of zen and asceticism that has crept into the conversation and honestly I'm not sure what reputable source people are drawing it from. No one is saying you should be living on a tatami mat and with 256kb of storage. No one worth listening to is saying you should avoid owning a pet or enjoying an occasional drink with an umbrella in it.

A lot of people, particularly in our affluent western world, simply say "yes" to the do-I-want-more-stuff proposition. They don't ask, "Do I need this? Does it serve a purpose?" I think the world would be a better place if people made a habit of asking that question and not being afraid of saying, "No." Even if the answer is "Yes," the conscious consideration of utility has benefits.