A cross-post on minimalism
Mar. 28th, 2010 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonShameless cross-post from my public blog, which you guys mostly don't read and which never gets comments...
Lately I've been bitten by the minimalist living bug. Sort of. Do you know about minimalist living? The idea is "less is more", and "simplify", and "hey, maybe that Thoreau guy had a point, and I want to be just like him except that I live in the city and have a Kindle." A Kindle counts as just one object, you see, and a bunch of these people are very into getting their number of possessions down to 100, or to some other number.
Snarking aside, I think this post by J. Money sums up the allure nicely: owning less stuff means having less stuff to maintain, less stuff to worry about losing or damaging, less stuff to move, and so forth. I understand this, and in fact I'm annoyed by the things I seem to own by default: things that take up my space but don't inspire me, and aren't used anymore, and don't even reflect anything about me that I might like an observer of my home to know.
For the last few weeks I've been getting rid of things (sometimes when I should be doing something else). I'm not even finding it difficult the way I once did -- annoyance drives the whole process, and I've lost most of the insecurities about not being able to replace a thing if I should find I really needed it.
One thing that bothers me: I don't want to sit around just counting my possessions over and over making sure I didn't accidentally get to 101. It's like one of the central ironies of being childfree... some of the childfree message boards out there are mostly talking about children, and in the same way, some of the minimalist bloggers out there are largely talking about their possessions. Hmmmmmm.
I'll be happy if my efforts eventually add up. I've been noticing more shelf space lately (not just on my new shelves), and feeling calmer at home.
Related reading in case this topic interested you:
Lately I've been bitten by the minimalist living bug. Sort of. Do you know about minimalist living? The idea is "less is more", and "simplify", and "hey, maybe that Thoreau guy had a point, and I want to be just like him except that I live in the city and have a Kindle." A Kindle counts as just one object, you see, and a bunch of these people are very into getting their number of possessions down to 100, or to some other number.
Snarking aside, I think this post by J. Money sums up the allure nicely: owning less stuff means having less stuff to maintain, less stuff to worry about losing or damaging, less stuff to move, and so forth. I understand this, and in fact I'm annoyed by the things I seem to own by default: things that take up my space but don't inspire me, and aren't used anymore, and don't even reflect anything about me that I might like an observer of my home to know.
For the last few weeks I've been getting rid of things (sometimes when I should be doing something else). I'm not even finding it difficult the way I once did -- annoyance drives the whole process, and I've lost most of the insecurities about not being able to replace a thing if I should find I really needed it.
One thing that bothers me: I don't want to sit around just counting my possessions over and over making sure I didn't accidentally get to 101. It's like one of the central ironies of being childfree... some of the childfree message boards out there are mostly talking about children, and in the same way, some of the minimalist bloggers out there are largely talking about their possessions. Hmmmmmm.
I'll be happy if my efforts eventually add up. I've been noticing more shelf space lately (not just on my new shelves), and feeling calmer at home.
Related reading in case this topic interested you:
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-31 12:29 am (UTC)