A little too much minimalism

Yesterday on NPR’s On Point, I heard authors Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, founders of the website theminimalists.com, discuss the process that transformed them from people who actively pursued material gain to people devoted to a lifelong process of stripping down. One of them described an experiment in which he packed everything he owned into boxes, as if he was moving, although he wasn’t. Then he unpacked things only as he needed them, in order to find out what objects he really had use for in the course of a day, a week or a month.

We’re doing that experiment too, only not so much as an experiment in minimalism as just because it’s easier for the time being. When we moved here in spring of 2011, we thought we might be able to stay only a year; it turned into longer, but we still haven’t bothered to unpack all the boxes in the garage. In the past 20 months, we’ve done just what the minimalist author described: unpacked only what we needed. And so we too can tell what objects matter most to us.

Of course, 20 months with a family of four makes for a fairly broad range of material needs, or at least material uses. Dishes and kitchen appliances were unpacked within hours of the move; clothes and linens too. Over the next several weeks, the kids brought out games and books and craft supplies. Now that we’ve been here well over a year, any decorations we own for any particular holiday have been uncovered, and so has just about all of our athletic equipment and computer accessories. Last Labor Day weekend, we unearthed the lobster steamer and lobster crackers for the first time since moving.

So in a way, the author is right; this is a great way to see what you really need. When we do move again, we’ll have to take a very critical look at anything that has stayed boxed all this time. The only problem is that there’s one large category of items we never unpacked but that I still can’t think of as superfluous: sentimental objects. We don’t have a single wedding photo in our current house; it didn’t seem worth unwrapping them from their protective casing. In fact, we don’t have any framed photos at all here, except for the kids’ school photos, taken earlier this fall. Last summer I pulled out a few vases, but we have other knickknacks – some heirlooms passed down, some collectibles from our travels, others wedding gifts – that we haven’t bothered to pull out.

And for me, that’s a source of struggle when I contemplate the issue of minimalism. Doing without piles of, say, cloth placemats in different patterns, or CDs no one listens to, or old high school notebooks, or any of the other things that people typically accumulate in their attics or basements is definitely a positive thing. But not having any family photos around? That seems sort of sad.

So next time we move, we might try the same thing, but this time I’m determined to find that box of wedding photos and other framed pictures and unpack that box early on. Minimalism is good, but living without sentimental objects seems a little too abstemious. I miss our photos and collectibles, and I look forward to seeing them again, whenever the next round of unpacking occurs.

 

Coveting thy neighbor's Netbook, iPhone and wardrobe

Sometimes it’s hard not to covet, and other times I feel like I go the other extreme and use anti-materialism as an excuse for being negligent or sloppy. Often I’m not sure where the middle ground is.

As far as coveting, I have gadgety tendencies and find it easy to desire those electronics and office accessories that seem to make life easier. I’m the only person I know – well, not the only person, but the only 40-something semi-professional in Carlisle – who doesn’t have a cell phone that can do more than just call people, and I’m the only serious writer I know who doesn’t have a Netbook. One evening last week, I was feeling covetous and fell into a long contemplation on which I would rather have: an iPhone or a Netbook. With a Netbook, I could write and have web access even when I was away from my home office. Currently I have a little Alphasmart, which is a portable word processor that can store a few files and then sync up to my computer. This is enough to enable me to draft documents when I’m away from home; it’s just that the small screen prevents me from doing much revising.

Then I thought about the iPhone. With an iPhone, I could email or look things up on the web from anywhere, though that wouldn’t expand my portable writing options much. I covet both; I couldn’t decide which would help me more in the long run.

But after spending a couple of hours not only thinking about iPhones and Netbooks but even doing some online “window shopping” (screen shopping?), I woke up the next day thinking I didn’t really need either one that much. The fact is, I can write when I’m away from home – whether at Starbucks for the afternoon or on a weekend getaway or even in the car while Rick is driving – on my Alphasmart, and I’m not convinced that having constant portable access to email, Twitter or other internet functions would actually be a good thing for me. Sometimes, walking away from my desktop computer and over to where other activities are going on – such as where the kids are playing, or into the kitchen where I should be preparing dinner – is the most effective way for me to switch my concentration away from work and on to other equally important things. With portable email, I fear I’d be one of those people who Never Stops Checking, and the fact is, I’m not someone who gets constant emails or tweets or instant messages. Maybe having more access to email would only serve to underscore the occasional sense that I’m not in very high demand.

I covet electronics, and I also covet clothes. It seems everything I own right now is at least four years old and doesn’t fit me very well anymore; and yet now that I work from home and hang in not-very-fashion-conscious social circles, I can’t justify to myself the need to buy more clothes, or accessories, or jewelry. So instead I try to affirm the positive value of being minimalist; I tell myself not acquiring a lot is a positive thing; it’s good to be light on one’s feet and not carry a lot of clutter on one’s person or in one’s household.

At the same time, it’s possible to be too minimalist. I feel a certain disdain for people who find it too easy to disregard style, in terms of their clothing or their home. The world is, after all, full of beautiful things for the body and the home; to appreciate them is part of cultivating an aesthetic sense. I admire those people whose beautifully decorated homes reflect not the message that they can afford to buy a lot but that they possess inherent artistic style. It’s easy for me to say “Oh, I’m a minimalist, I do well with clean lines and a lot of open space in my home rather than a lot of knickknacks,” but the reality is that I’m not very good at choosing things for my home, even things that might enhance those clean lines and sunny spaces. Sometimes it seems to me it’s almost too easy to be anti-materialist; it becomes an excuse for not even trying to appreciate things of aesthetic value.

So for today, I’m writing on my portable word processor at the indoor pool while the kids swim, unable to indulge in the distraction of checking email or Twitter. Back home, my bedroom is, at the moment, neat but not overly accessorized. My clothes for today are very plain but clean and undamaged. I’ll just tell myself that I’m doing fine, in my minimalist way, and leave the tabletop candles, the trendy jewelry and the newest seasonal fashions -- along with the latest electronics -- to those who can pull them off in a way that I don’t seem able to do.