ONE. I haven't heard any bad things about it. I have yet to come across an article or a story of a person complaining that minimalism ruined their lives. Or made it worse at all. Run a quick search for "the negatives of minimalism." The first six links are all minimalists writing satirical pieces or actually responding with solid arguments to not-so-solid questions and complaints. Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar goes so far as to claim that the human instinct is to avoid loss rather than gain. True, but some of his other claims cut deep, even in the community of minimalists. I'll let you read the article yourself. We, by pursuing minimalism, are fighting against what we are naturally inclined to do, and in it, we make ourselves better- even if it's just to explore the concept and go back to our "old lifestyles," we inevitably find something out about ourselves.
TWO. The idea of purging the majority of my possessions is appealing. The idea. This is because I, although I am still in the process of downsizing drastically, am not a minimalist. I don't count my things (and a quick informal Facebook poll told me that most other minimalists don't, either), although I've tried, and I still have excess. I tend to organize my crap instead of purging the crap. Which is why, in the next month, I am going to try to live with drastically less. More on that in a later post. But basically, reason number two is because the idea appeals to me.
THREE. Stuff has never held sentimental value to me, until now. As a child and a young teenager, I had no problems purging things if I needed to or was asked to. But as I quickly approach the end of the "teens," I find myself holding onto more and more of the things that remind me of my childhood. This journey into minimalism is, greatly, to prove to myself that I can still have memories without the things. That the things do not equal the memories, and that they have no power to hold me in childhood, much as I'd like to stay there.
Those are, for the moment, my top three reasons of continuing this journey. What are yours?
Keep it simple,
Sarah
TWO. The idea of purging the majority of my possessions is appealing. The idea. This is because I, although I am still in the process of downsizing drastically, am not a minimalist. I don't count my things (and a quick informal Facebook poll told me that most other minimalists don't, either), although I've tried, and I still have excess. I tend to organize my crap instead of purging the crap. Which is why, in the next month, I am going to try to live with drastically less. More on that in a later post. But basically, reason number two is because the idea appeals to me.
THREE. Stuff has never held sentimental value to me, until now. As a child and a young teenager, I had no problems purging things if I needed to or was asked to. But as I quickly approach the end of the "teens," I find myself holding onto more and more of the things that remind me of my childhood. This journey into minimalism is, greatly, to prove to myself that I can still have memories without the things. That the things do not equal the memories, and that they have no power to hold me in childhood, much as I'd like to stay there.
Those are, for the moment, my top three reasons of continuing this journey. What are yours?
Keep it simple,
Sarah