How radical a minimalist do you want to be?

Becoming a minimalist is one of those things in life that can have many forms, and each person can decide just how far they want to take it. For instance, there are some minimalists that have made the decision to minimize not only objects in their homes, but their homes as well.

One example of this is Nina Yau...

Nina blogs at Castles in the Air. Just a short time ago, Nina was in a corporate job in Chicago, then she set out on a path to minimize the things in her life and to also seek truth. Now, she lives with only what she can carry, has lived in multiple countries, and has just completed yoga instructor training in Bangalore, India. Nina has certainly minimized.

Another dedicated minimalist is Colin Wright, his website is called Exile Lifestyle. Colin went beyond the popular minimalist trend of getting your possessions down to 100 items, and now has only 51 things he owns. To make his life even more challenging and adventurous, Colin moves to a new country every four months based on the votes of his online readers.

But a minimalist does not have to be as extreme as Nina and Colin are, although I must say that I admire both of them. You can simply have the goal of getting the clutter and excess stuff out of your life. As Peter Walsh, a well-known organizer has aptly said, "It's all too much!"

Truer words have never been spoken. In modern society it is easy to acquire things, and many of us have been brought up with an acquisition mindset but not a letting go mindset. In other words, we keep getting things but find it difficult to let go of things and pass them on.

Leo Babauta explains this as being a scarcity mentality versus an abundance mentality. He applies this idea of abundance not only to minimization but to copyrighting his work online.

If you come from an abundance mindset, then letting things go becomes easier because you know you can create and obtain more wonderful things when and if you need them. Conversely, if you come from a scarcity mindset, you tend to hang onto things for the rainy day that might come.

Those of us who grew up with parents or grandparents that lived through the rough times of the Great Depression or a previous war, likely had the rainy-day-just-in-case mentality either subtly or overtly drummed into our consciousness. While that is understandable, it does make it a challenge when you make the conscious choice to minimize. However, it can be done.

I suppose the bottom line is that each of us that wants to become a minimalist has to try and understand where they are starting from and where they want to ultimately end up. It will not be the same for everyone. My minimal lifestyle will not look the same as Nina's, Colin's, Leo's nor anyone else's, but the key is that it is the life that I want and is perfectly suited to me.

The fact that it is a life of my design is what matters most. What will your minimal life look like?

Drowning in Stuff

The realization has been coming for a long time that I have been drowning in stuff. Too many t-shirts, shoes, pairs of jeans, books, momentos, and of course papers. I look around my bedroom or living room and it's awash in stuff. Most of the stuff has a purpose, is still servicable, but I seldom use one tenth of the things I own. Still, it's not so bad...

Until, that is, you look in the "office" or the "garage". If you happen to go in there you might be lost for weeks. Fortunately you would probably find some stray food from the last time my wife or I attempted to clean or organize either space. Truthfully, I have seen worse places, mostly on television shows like "Hoarders".



But does the fact that there are worse cluttered spaces make it alright for me to live with what I consider too much stuff?

My answer is simply, no.

About a year ago I stumbled on Leo Babauta's blog about minimalism, and then found a great blog by Nina Yau about living a very minimal life. In both cases, the writers had to go through a process to pare down the excess stuff in their lives and begin to live in a more minimal way. Often I would read Nina or Leo's posts and think, "I'd like to do that," but frankly it seemed hard. Every now and then I would make an attempt to get rid of stuff, to organize things, but then I would fall off the wagon and just stop working at organizing or paring down.

Yet in my heart I feel that I need to change, that if I do not minimize and get rid of the nonessential stuff that is cluttering up my life I cannot be the person I want to be, nor do the kind of work that I really want to do. The clutter is dragging me down and keeping me down.

So, I thought that creating this blog would be a good way to place my intention to minimize out in the universe for all to see. I'm a writer, after all, so I use writing to process my world, to make sense of things. Why not write about the experience of becoming a minimalist and have fun with the process. There are no set rules for this blog or for this lifestyle change for now. The bottom line is that I know that something needs to change and I am damn well ready to begin.

Leo Babauta writes a lot about making small, steady changes and creating habits you can maintain. That is what this blog is about, creating a sustainable life change.

Here's my start for the day: my nightstand after minimization.





It just makes me happy.