The Philosophy of Less
This minimalism journey and tiny house craze is getting out of hand, don’t you think? People are living out of backpacks now. Yeah, I said backpacks. On one hand, it sounds pretty nifty and cool that someone can pick up at any time and leave with all their belongings in one go. It adventurous and admirable that they can be happy with so few things. It’s also really boring.
When I got my first apartment at age nineteen, I had my friend (now roommate), Connor come to hang out. While I set up a movie he asked to see my room.
“Yeah, go ahead! It’s on the right.”
“Oh my God, Kat! There’s nothing in here!”
Me, thinking maybe I got robbed because we always leave our door unlocked, rushed to see what the panic was.
“Connor, you scared me! What’re you talking about? All my stuff’s here.”
“What do you mean? There’s nothing in here!”
“Connor, I’m looking right at my bed, and I see my bookshelf, and my laundry basket, and…”
“Yeah, and that’s it.”
“So what? I’m a minimalist.”
That experience shed some light on me. Connor proceeded to tell me that my room looked “so boring” and “had no personality.” I was content with that room. Later, after we had moved int together, he noted how much more personality my room had. I’m also very content in this room.
The purpose of this short story is to show that minimalism isn’t a contest. This was hard for me to grasp because I’m a competitive person. But the day that my friend said that my room, a room I created, lacked personality felt equivalent to him saying I lacked personality, which hurt more than losing the minimalist competition. Additionally, forcing myself to get rid of things I liked added this annoying pressure that posed unnecessary considering the process was supposed to ease my stress.
How does decluttering decrease your stress you may wonder. Here we go. I realized how much I valued stuff in our society around age sixteen. At that point, I had decluttered everything I owned except clothing, shoes, jewelry, anything I could wear. I was switching out my clothes for the change of the seasons like I always did, except this time it took me THREEE DAYS! How stupid! I had them stored away, and although pleasant to surprise myself with what I owned, I had to wash them all because they stunk. The following Summer, I read Mari Kondo’s book, The Magic Of Tidying Up and decluttered a good portion of “wearables.” I didn’t want to ever spend that much time with my clothes again. And I never have.
It was also around this time that my one of my childhood best friend’s/neighbor’s house burnt down. She had just redecorated her room and shown me (proudly) how much she had decluttered. And I was very proud of her. Cleaning, organizing, and decluttering were tasks she learned to enjoy from me consistently doing it every time I came over. Poor thing. Her parents, along with a few others always joked that they’d pay me. It never happened, but I continued doing my thing.
