My family lives in a large house, and whenever I had friends over as a child, they would never fail to comment on how lucky I am to live in such a big house with so many rooms and toys and gadgets. I never knew quite how to respond to these comments; I knew I should consider myself lucky, yet for me, an underlying current of discomfort accompanied all of the stuff we owned. While I was not always aware of the cause of this discomfort, I certainly felt the effects of it on a regular basis.
Until recently, my room was stuffed with memorabilia, awards, and clothes that had not been worn in years. Upon waking up each morning, my first sight was this mess of meaningless junk that had no other purpose than to fill up space...a sight that is extremely unfulfilling compared to, say, the sight of morning light filtering through the fabric of a tent or even the sight of a blank wall that demands me to look within and be aware of how I feel at the start of the day. I was always jealous of my friends’ rooms, which were quite bare and simple, and I often took refuge in my parents’ room, which is perhaps the most simplistic room in our house. Inspired by these living spaces, I began to organize and filter through all of my excessive belongings in middle school. This endeavor lasted until this past Monday, an ironic ten days prior to my last day at home before my final trips of the summer and college. Why did it take five years to finally be satisfied with my room? Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, also known as The Minimalists, posit that “organizing is well-planned hoarding.” How true. For the past several years, I have cleaned and organized my room in order to make room for more stuff. Each November and December, I would reconfigure my room to fit in the new birthday and Christmas presents. The amount of stuff in my room was oppressive, so I desperately tried to organize my room to make it seem like I had less junk. Items that obviously no longer had places in my room, like old stuffed animals and children’s toys, quickly filled keepsake boxes in our basement because I could not bring myself to say goodbye to them. I was emotionally attached to my possessions, and it felt terrible. Just a few weeks ago, I watched Minimalism, Millburn’s and Nicodemus’s documentary on simple living, and realized how attached most of us are to material possessions. In the modern day, it is difficult not to be. We are conditioned from an early age to want more; one haunting statistic given in the film stated that companies spent $100 million in 1983 marketing to children...in 2006, just 23 years later, that number had increased to $17 BILLION. But once we realize that it is not the items we want, but what we believe they will bring us (happiness and fulfillment), and once we come to terms with the fact that buying a shiny new car or expensive, new clothing does not enable sustainable happiness, we can escape the claws of the marketing industry. Similarly, we must question memorabilia in our homes before we allow them to take up precious space; the most important question to keep asking yourself is, “Is this adding value to my life?” Minimalism also expounded upon the concept that we configure our lives to fit our spaces rather than our spaces to fit our lives. In other words, we fill up the space and time we have with items and activities rather than appropriate reasonable amounts of space and time to what is essential to our lives’ purposes. I took this theory into account while cleaning my room Sunday afternoon. I realized that I had eliminated enough junk from my desk so that what remained fit in one drawer with room to spare. Looking at my waterbed, I realized how excessive it was; I have a bunk bed in my room as well that takes up far less space. My desk and waterbed were gone from my room within 24 hours. I now have a lovely space for reading and meditating. I ask my friends and family now to only give gifts that I would consider valuable enough to bring into my future tiny house. Better yet, gift experiences rather than objects (read the linked article; it is very, very short and valuable). I would much rather a special dinner, a surprise trip, a cooking session, tickets to see Billy Joel in concert, etc. than material items. If you are looking to simplify your life, I strongly encourage you to subscribe to The Minimalists’ blog. You can read past short essays here, and their books are also great investments. And yes, to answer the question that I know is going through many of your minds, Minimalism IS on Netflix. Now you have no excuse not to watch it ;) Good luck!
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