Minimalism

Recently I've been looking into minimalism, I've watched a couple of TedTalks about it, some YouTube videos here and there and I realised, I've sort of already been doing it without thinking. See, my mother is a hoarder. She keeps everything, from an awful drawing I made at 8 years old to a folded piece of A4 paper I once wrote "I love you, Ma" on. I, however, never understood why it mattered. Whats the point?

Why do you need three blankets for the couch when we already have one? Why do you need another scatter cushion for your bed when you just take them off before you get to sleep anyway? What's the point in having two pairs of the exact same thing? Why do you need 7 red lipsticks in the exact same shade of red?

I guess I've always had a mentality of "do I need it or do I want it?". Usually, the answer is I want it, so I tend to put it back. I mean, I guess that mentality also came from the fact that we never had much money when I was a kid so we rarely could afford the things we wanted anyway, but my mum is a spender; a shopaholic if you will. Even if we didn't have any money, my mum would still spend and spend. Then, of course, came the debt and panic when we realised we couldn't pay off the credit cards but that's a whole other story. My point being, we would go shopping, buy whatever we wanted, they would come the guilt and panic when we realized how much damage we'd done. As a kid, I quickly understood that even though my mum would tell me to have anything I wanted, it would only cause much grief and problems later on. Eventually, I learnt my lesson and would refuse to have anything.

Back to my point, I quickly learnt that I didn't need everything and that actually, I never wore those clothes and never played with those toys. I learnt that I'm a tidy and clean person, I hate the mess, I hate clutter and I hate cleaning. Which meant that the less stuff I had, the more space I had. The less stuff I had, the less stuff I had to clean. The less stuff I had, the less there was to get messy.

Fast forward to now, I'm on a bit of a "journey" if you like. I've recently sold many, many things from my bedroom leaving it looking a little bare which is the look I was going for. Not only have I made a few pennies from the stuff I've sold, but I have more room, less stuff to clean, less stuff to organise and I know that there are no "extra things" lying around. Everything in my room serves a purpose or it's something I find joy in. Like my record player and records, for example, that could never go. But the laptop I've had since I was 10 years old, yeah I'm not as attached to that.

I'm far from a minimalist and in fact, don't think I ever could be, simply because I am quite a homebody and do love having my favourite things around me. I mean, I'm just not a mentally strong enough person to get rid of my books. Not the books. But I've realised that minimalism is different for everybody, there isn't a certain number of rules. You don't have to live out of a single suitcase or own less than 100 items to be a minimalist. It's all about the philosophy of minimalism. It's about understanding that we often put too much weight on our material possessions and believe that our memories are interwoven with those belongings when that couldn't be more wrong. My mother doesn't need to keep that drawing to remember when I was a child, I don't need to keep that old grubby band shirt to remember the time I wore it to my best friend's birthday party 5 years ago, I don't need to keep my old school uniform to remember that I went to school (though not regularly). Material possessions are just that, they are possessions. You are supposed to own them, not have them own you.

We live in a very materialistic world where everybody has to wear the same shoes and hoodies, where a celebrity confesses their favourite lipstick shade and it's sold out within minutes or where a singer disses a brand and the brand goes bankrupt. Nowadays, we all buy from the same places and listen to the same things and say the same slang. We are becoming less and less ourselves and more and more manufactured and generated into fitting in.

Now I won't wax poetic about that, but I've personally found it very cathartic and cleansing to get rid of the stuff I don't like, use or want. I still have my plants and my books and my records, but clothes from years ago and childhood schoolbooks can go. I feel lighter almost as if my belongings were attached to me. As if I was metaphorically pulling them along behind me in a cart à la Matilda. I'm not saying that in a year, you'll see me living in a tent with nothing but a toothbrush (not that there's anything wrong with that, live how you want boo) that life just isn't for me.

It's sort of therapeutic to sort through everything you have and decide whether you want to keep it or not, plus it feels nice to donate those old things to charity or make a bit of side cash off of them or even pass them on to a friend or family member that's been eyeing it up for months.

It's also helped in the stress department, as someone who is very visual having too many things to look out is overwhelming for me. Over the past few months of me looking into minimalism and trying to figure out what the hell it even means, I've discovered that I like clean lines and neutral colours and quality over quantity belongings. The stuff that lasts you years, that you know is still going to be in style a decade from now, the stuff you know won't let you down. That's the stuff I like.

So, my two cents on minimalism is this...love it. I love the philosophy around it and how minimalism can be so useful in letting go of thoughts, feelings and the past. I adore how there isn't a set of rules you have to adhere to, you can be a minimalist however you want to be; just because another minimalist may own less than you, it doesn't mean they are better than you. That's missing the whole principle of minimalism. I like how open to interpretation it is, how art and design often hold a big part in the movement (which you know I'm always here for) and how there are so many people who are spreading the word about the benefits of minimalising and educating people about what it really is and therefore, ending the stigma that minimalists are single middle-aged men who hate the world, are cold-hearted and live in a New York penthouse.

To me, minimalism is about getting rid of the excess. Of the clutter and things you don't care about, of the unreliable and broken and shedding all of those extra feelings, thoughts and emotions that make us all stressed and anxious. Some people like to find comfort in a messy, unorganised space where they can build their own little nest, I am more of a clean, simple, less is more type of gal myself but everything in between is great too! Live however the hell you want to, make your own choices about what environment makes you happiest. I will continue to sell and give away things I no longer want and I'll make myself a simple little hole to exist.

Do let me know your opinions on minimalism, are you a minimalist or do you think it's not your kind of thing?