The Changing Definition of Minimalism

I was talking to a friend about his impending trip and asked if he was preparing already. He said he was leaving Sunday, so he would probably get ready Saturday night. All he has, a suitcase and a laptop, isn’t much, so there is not much to plan.

(Cue envy)

Ten years ago, I gave up my life in the USA, got rid of everything I owned, and moved to the Philippines. For a long time my possessions consisted of a suitcase and a laptop as well and it was nice knowing that my life was no longer a “U-haul life.” If I wanted to move in the States, I needed a truck to move all my shit from one place to another, but after the great rending, when I got rid of everything, I could move from place to place with little effort.

Even after I married again, my wife and I kept everything light. But that all changed when we had a baby. Soon we rented an apartment, had furniture, and bed coverings, and dishes, and five different kinds of baby bottles. I had a desk and a chair, and piles of clothes I couldn’t wear anymore following me around.

Now, I own a house, with two TVs and a full office with a desk and monitor. We have furniture and paperwork from the past years that pile up in a cabinet in the spare room.

We even have a trampoline.

We are far from being minimalists in the truest sense of the word, but compared to others in the same situation, our lives are minimal. Our house is uncluttered, which is my major complaint of most houses in the Philippines. We don’t buy so much stuff that every nook and cranny is filled with shit we never use.

When we no longer need something, we sell it, or give it away. If it’s broken there are people that come around and collect broken items to fix and sell. We donate. You won’t find items we don’t use on a regular basis filling the empty spots in our house.

My wife loves the stark, white, and simple look of our house, and most visitors are amazed we can keep a house like this with kids underfoot. I love the simplicity of it all, and it helps my anxiety to not see clutter everywhere I look.

But, it’s not perfect. We just agreed we need to get control of our lives and start utilizing the space we have. We have an addition to the house that we don’t use because the roof leaks, and next month we are going to tear the roof apart and fix it all. That will become our bedroom/office.

Right now, we are all jammed in one room, and we realized with the kids getting older that co-sleeping is not working anymore. Not only do the kids need space but my wife and I find ourselves without any privacy, and intimacy is a thing we only aspire to have.

So after we get our room set up, we are going to renovate the kid's room. Our daughter will have a loft with a desk nook underneath where she can do her art and schoolwork and keep her electronics away from the baby, and the baby will have a safe place to play and watch his shows on YouTube.

We have one other small room which will serve as a wardrobe and storage for our bedding. When the boy is old enough to want his own room, he can easily move into that room with a little maneuvering.

While we are renovating, we are going to tackle a cabinet that is full of documents and receipts. If you live in the Philippines, you know that everything we do involves a lot of paperwork and it piles up after a time. We plan to go in there with a shredder, take pictures of documents we may need later and shred the rest. I will feel a whole lot better knowing all that stuff is not piled up in there. Then we have to tackle the clothing. Kids clothing that no longer fits and my wife’s clothing that she no longer wears. I tend to use my stuff until it falls apart, and then it becomes rags used to wipe up spills and clean windows. If something doesn’t fit, I get rid of it. I do have quite a bit of clothing, but I use it all so its not wasted.

With a little work we can get our house and lives back to minimal, but the definition has changed for us as our lives change. We don’t have the minimalism you see in the magazines or on Instagram, but we are organized and don’t subscribe to clutter. We have a small number of things we use all the time and don’t keep anything around that isn’t useful.

We buy quality items that don’t break and use them until they are no longer useful, then we pass them on to someone who can get use out of the item. Nothing ever goes to waste, and even here, where our products tend to be the cheaper plastic variety from China, we get much use of it. Even after we think it is broken, there are people who will gladly fix the items and use them for another few years.

Very little ends up in the landfill. We have really been trying harder to minimize the amount of trash we produce, by recycling and reusing but it still shocking to see several bags of trash going into the truck every week.

We are going to try a few more things, like starting a compost heap, and potty-training the toddler so we can avoid the use of those wasteful and expensive diapers.

Minimalism to us is about having less and using everything we have. It’s using less stuff that has to be thrown away, and passing on unused items to the ecosystem, thereby giving others a chance to use things our family no longer finds useful.

So I may not be able to jump on a flight somewhere, by throwing a suitcase and laptop over my shoulder and taking off, but it's nice knowing we live our lives with a smaller footprint, by buying less and owning less.

That is the definition of minimalism for us right now.