“There’s always more stuff,” she assured me, gesturing around her.

So true.  As I’ve pared down over the years, I’ve often ended up looking through catalogs or visiting shops like hers and thinking, “wow, that would look great with….” But I’ve learned the hard way to appreciate but not covet. That is, I’ve learned how to admire something, acknowledge that it would look great with my decor or be fun to own, and then put it back down again. I know from experience that too many of the “objets d’cool” that I buy on the spur of the moment end up in the charity pile as soon as my minimalist, control-freak tendencies reassert themselves.

But her words serve as useful reminder that if you’re thinking about decluttering for the new year, there are very few objects that can’t be replaced.  If you don’t love it or use it, and if it’s not an emergency or survivalist necessity (which you will love on the day it’s needed), then go ahead and get rid of it.  If you regret the loss later, you can always find something else to replace it.

There’s always more stuff, after all.

(Image from Bubba’s Antiques & Mercantile)

I’ve written before about the the magic of ownership, where I pointed out that possessions can be perceived as performing a sort of sympathetic magic: that is, owning the symbols of a certain lifestyle, social class, profession, or pursuit is thought to somehow bring that lifestyle, class, profession or pursuit into our lives. Possessions can be perceived as acting as a magical or symbolic extension of ourselves, a visible representation to others of parts of our identity that we want to show to the world. Possessions are also “memory-laden objects,” that, through sympathetic magic, bond us to better times, powerful people, or the support of our ancestors.

Advertising has strengthened the magical appeal of possessions. Its message is “This object will grant you powers you didn’t have before you purchased it.” This liquor, this car, this suit, this cologne will attract women. This purse, this lipstick, this dress, this perfume will attract men. This computer will make you smarter. This antibacterial spray will make your children healthier. This music will make you part of the in-crowd. This wolfskin belt will turn you into a wolf.

These messages promote a form of magical thinking. Magical thinking is a form of “causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events,” according to Wikipedia. With regard to advertising, magical thinking occurs when we believe, at some unacknowledged or subconscious level, that buying or owning something causes a desired event — or prevents an undesired event, in the case of such products as antibacterial sprays. Magical thinking is very powerful and can even have psychological merit, as in the case where belief in a placebo leads to an improvement in health.

This is the magic that professional organizers must confront when they’re trying to help people get rid of their clutter. How often have we watched or read a professional organizer intoning something along the lines of “remember, your mother’s teapot is not your mother”? They are fighting the power that the fundamental, often unacknowledged belief in sympathetic magic has over our minds. Sometimes their invocation of logic acts as a successful counterspell to the magic of material goods; sometimes it doesn’t.

In attempting to counteract advertising and consumerism, however, organization, voluntary simplicity, and minimalist efforts often offer a slightly different type of magical thinking. In this magical formula, a possession is not associated with something positive, but with something negative. Often-repeated phrases in the movements include “Clearing space will clear your mind,” or “owning less stuff will mean having more time.”

The phrases are backed up with explanations, of course, such as arguments that possessions are distractions, cost time and money to purchase and maintain. But it is the magical formula “possessions = problems” that many people are likely to internalize, just as others have internalized the message, for example, that “diamonds = love” or “luxury cars = social status.”

“Remember, no matter where you go, there you are”. — Buckaroo Banzai

This originally Confucian concept points out that it doesn’t matter how we may change our material world — by moving ourselves to a new place, by gaining or shedding possessions, by hanging crystals in our windows — ultimately, we are what is in our heads. And if what’s in our head is worried, nervous, stressful, antagonistic, pessimistic, or otherwise unpleasant, it will still be there no matter what physical changes we make to our environment. What needs to be worked on is our Selves.

The great majority of those who write about professional organization, voluntary simplicity, or minimalism know this, and they talk as much about making changes in thinking patterns as they do about making changes in the environment. I expect, however, that this deeper message often gets forgotten or ignored by the people they’re working with. We humans tend to be impatient sorts, and our penchant for magical thinking tends to lead to simplified understandings of complex messages. The formula “possessions = problems” is very simple and easy to adopt. Getting rid of material objects is much easier than changing deeply ingrained patterns of thought.

How many people have frantically jettisoned their belongings in the belief if they can only get their possessions down below some arbitrary number, their lives will get better? How many have prowled restlessly around their houses when they’re feeling tense or stressed out, cleaning and organizing and decluttering as if those assertions of control over their environments will somehow also impose control over their emotions? How many set off on vacations or sabbaticals hoping that a new environment will transform them into a different person? How many have desperately read advice book after advice book, as though the books themselves could somehow conjure up more money, a neater house, or a simpler life for them?

I have to admit, I’ve certainly done a few of these things. I’m as prone to magical thinking as anybody else.

In the best of situations, behavioral changes do lead to psychological changes. Placebos stop the pain, diamonds affirm love, and uncluttering helps a person relax. What is important for us to remember is that in these cases, the effect is not caused by the object or its removal. The effect is caused by the changes in one’s mental state that are triggered as a result of taking, buying, or decluttering that object. The object or action doesn’t cause the effect; it is only correlated with the effect. Object/action > change in mental state > emotional or physical change.

Magical thinking is very powerful and can be used in very beneficial ways. However, on those days that you find that your possessions or open spaces or rituals aren’t changing your life for the better, remember that it’s not the possession, open space, or ritual that does the work. It’s your mode of thinking. The real work of organizing, simplifying, and minimizing must go on inside of your head.

Photo credit: Brunosub

Consumerism is a powerful ideology precisely because it seems capable of taking every counterideological stance people might choose to assume and selling it right back to them. After all, what’s a revolution without buttons and tee-shirts?

Not that voluntary simplicity is the same thing as anti-consumerism, but they often go hand-in-hand; avoiding the accumulation of more Stuff is one of several ways people choose to voluntarily simplify their lives. And I think we’re just starting to see the same “commodification creep” with the minimalist movement, which ought to be the ultimate in anti-consumerist ideologies. But, still … as minimalism becomes more popular, the number of related commodities available for consumption begins to grow, whether books, convertible furniture, tiny houses, seminars, or whatever. Right now the social movement is still relatively nascent, and I am certain that the creators of these commodities are truly sincere. They just want to spread the word and make things easier for like-minded practitioners. That’s always the case in a social movement, right? And no doubt some of these commodities are good investments; I’ve bought a few books on the subject, myself, although they’ve long since been donated to the library. And it’s hard to see how moving to a tiny house would be bad for the movement. (Although maybe if it were your second home, you’d be defeating the purpose!)

But how long will it be until one of the global media giants starts publishing Minimalist magazine, do you think? And people buy it because they figure they can’t be minimalist unless they own a lot of minimalist Stuff. Ten years from now, will there be as many minimalism-related commodities for sale as there are simplification-related commodities today? I’d hate to think so, but consumerism is a clever ideology, capable of turning any counterideological movement into purchasable books, magazines, tee-shirts, greeting cards, bumper stickers, and self-help seminars. For every earnest individual out there offering advice and assistance for free, or priced to cover cost, there seem to be a dozen corporations hoping to make a profit.

Buying and owning things isn’t the problem; very few of us are or ever could be completely self-sustainable. The problem arises when people start to think that buying commodities about a movement automatically makes them part of the movement, and unscrupulous companies cash in on that mistake. You’re not a feminist just because you choose to smoke Virginia Slims. Or a metalhead because you bought a vintage AC/DC tee-shirt. And your life won’t necessarily be simplified because you signed up for an Eat Pray Love tour (does such a thing exist? Probably. Or it will soon!) But that’s the kind of sympathetic magic that consumerism promises. It conflates an idea with an object. It promises automatic membership in a group via the purchase of specific symbols associated with the group. A lifestyle that costs money instead of time, effort, and thought. A modern version of the belief that wearing a wolfskin belt will help you to turn yourself into a wolf….

Of course, it’s always possible that the minimalist movement will sputter out as soon as the Great Recession is over. But I’m going to take a leap of faith and guess that it and voluntary simplicity will continue as fairly niche but long-lasting lifestyle choices. After all, life isn’t getting any less complex or commodified, is it?

Photo credit: Dleafy

For the last week or so I’ve been adding minimalist lifestyle and voluntary simplicity blogs to my BlockSite add-on in Foxfire. I realized that instead of being useful, my daily blog-checking was becoming distracting — just another kind of clutter.

Browsing the web is like watching TV; it can waste hours that could be used more creatively. I ditched my TV, but it’s not practical for me to ditch the web — I rely on it in both my university job and my fiction writing. However, blog-reading, like TV-watching, can become a kind of addictive behavior, and the best way to avoid an addictive behavior is to remove the trigger from your life. Don’t get me wrong: I think that reading blogs about something you’re trying to learn and practice can be very important. Blogs offer a variety of perspectives and a community of like-minded individuals who support your attempts and commiserate with your setbacks. But once you’ve learned it and started practicing it, is your reading still useful, or is it just habitual? Are you still learning something new, or are you finding that the same messages are being repeated over and over, just in slightly different ways?

At the moment I’m still startled when I automatically type in a URL and get the yellow “this is a blocked site” alert … but it reminds me, “Oh, yeah, I did that on purpose. Right.” And I have been constantly adding any new site that I find myself checking as a means of procrastination.

Living a minimalist lifestyle involves more than just reducing how much Stuff you own. It also means reducing the number of distractions in your life — and by “distractions,” I mean anything that delays or inhibits the pursuit of your life priorities, whatever they might be. In my case, reading blogs about the minimalist lifestyle was preventing me from practicing the minimalist lifestyle because it became clutter, a distraction from one of my life priorities, writing novels.

Blocking my favorite sites reminds me that I don’t need to read about something to practice it.

And that’s what I did yesterday, asking myself why I’m still keeping books on my shelves that I haven’t opened in years … sometimes ten years or more.

I came up with the following answers:

(1) Because keeping them around proves to visitors that I’m a scholar. (The “magic of ownership“)
(2) Because I might need them if I ever decide to go back and turn my dissertation into a book.
(3) Because I still find the subject interesting.

To which minimalist-me (not to be mistaken for mini-me) replied: (1) the diplomas on my wall suffice to indicate that I’m a scholar; (2) if I ever really do revisit my dissertation, I can get the books through interlibrary loan; and (3) since I haven’t opened the books in years, my interest in the subject is obviously being satisfied by new material, in which case I should let the old material go.

The only volumes I really need to keep on my office shelves are the books I’m actively using to teach my classes or to conduct my research.

So I’ve donated over 100 volumes of the manga I purchased while working on my BL research to Yaoi-Con’s reading library, and I’ve made an appointment with a used-book buyer to scan my collection and buy whatever she can use. After she’s gone through the stack, I’ll put whatever is left in the “free books” shelf in the Humanities building or haul it to the local library, depending on the subject matter.

I’m sure my movers will thank me.

If you’re also thinking of becoming a minimalist professor, here are some tips that are working for me:

1. Scan your articles and files and shred the paper. Keep the scanner on your desk if you can; otherwise it’s too easy to let the piles accumulate.

2. Scan or photograph representative student works that you are keeping as examples or for accreditation purposes.

3. Use an electronic course-management system, if it’s available on your campus; I put my syllabi, lecture material, readings, and assignments on Blackboard and require students to upload their papers and projects to Blackboard, as well. I digitally mark up electronic student papers and re-upload them for my students to review; it’s very efficient once you get used to it, and students appreciate the faster turnaround. Since all the files are archived by the university, this helps with #2, as well.

4. Return hard-copy tests, papers, or projects to students promptly; don’t allow students to leave clutter in your office.

5. Bring a laptop or electronic reader to class and use it to refer to your lecture notes instead of using paper. I tried this last spring with an iPad and was generally satisfied with the results, especially since it meant I had access to the entire course’s worth of lecture notes at once.

6. Sell or donate the books on your shelf that you’re not actively using anymore. If you’re like me, this will be a real ego challenge — books are intimately tied into how we do “being a professor” — and it may take some time and several attempts. Obviously, if you own rare and/or extraordinarily expensive volumes, this guideline doesn’t apply … unless you’d consider donating the books to a research library so that other scholars can use them, too.

7. Avoid bringing new books into the office — use your library, interlibrary loan, the internet, or borrow the book from a colleague. If you must buy a book, consider buying digital; a lot of reader software permits annotation and bookmarking. Avoid requesting review copies unless you’re seriously considering using the book, and don’t keep the copy if you decide not to use it.

8. Pass along the tchotchkes you accumulate from the university and students — the paperweights, keychains, water bottles, magnets, thank-you cards, etc. Scan or photograph the ones you want to remember; donate the rest. Don’t keep your conference badges, either (why do so many of us do that?)

9. If your department has a central office space where supplies are kept, keep moving accumulations of intercampus mail envelopes, paper- and binder clips, pens and pencils, and so forth over to it. These things have a tendency to multiply, so make it a habit to drop off a handful every week or two while you’re in the supply cabinet rummaging around for a fresh dry erase marker — the only professorial tool that doesn’t breed well in captivity.

Those are the practices that I’ve been following over the last few years. What other things can a minimalist professor do to keep down the office clutter?

“Minimalism works best when the pieces that exist and their surroundings are of the highest quality,” commented one reader. This reflects the problem that I think many minimalists face — incorporating minimalist ideas on a minimal budget tends to look cheap or impoverished rather than minimalist.  How do you achieve this sort of look in a typical rental apartment featuring cheap carpeting and kitchen counters, ugly blinds, and bad cabinetry?

This gets back to my earlier comment that minimalism is not necessarily frugal. In the short run, you could spend quite a bit to create an aesthetically pleasing minimalist space; in the long run, of course, you may save money because you are not constantly adding to that space.

Now, some lifestyle minimalists don’t care about aesthetics, which is fine. But minimalists on a tight budget who also want an aesthetically pleasing space will need to work hard, and perhaps study a little design theory, to achieve an eye-pleasing balance between their few well-chosen furnishings and the rest of the empty space in their room, apartment, or house.

“[M]inimalism is not just an aesthetic thing, it is a lifestyle living with just the most basic essentials,” commented another reader. I appreciated the inclusion of “just” in this comment; minimalism is a lifestyle choice, but it’s also an aesthetic. I think some of the more extreme lifestyle minimalists forget that beauty (as an expression of our creativity and self-actualization) is one of our higher-order “needs” as human beings, once our basic survival and social needs have been met. However, meshing beauty with minimalism is an aesthetic challenge; it’s no wonder we have so much respect for those designers who manage achieve both. A great deal of effort goes into that achieving those apparently natural and effortless looks!

And finally, I sympathized with this comment:

I have trouble with minimalism because on one hand, I feel like it’s a totally practical, spartan concept where you have only what you need like an urban survivalist. And function takes the place of ornament, to be admired. But then when I see it put into practice it’s none of those things, although very pretty. There’s nothing practical about having nowhere to put your kitchen utensils or purse, or filling your apartment with jutting corners to whack your shins against. And having large expanses of space is nice but wasteful. What do the people in the first picture do with the emptiness, run laps?

I believe very many minimalists have this same disconnect between an understanding of minimalism as a spartan, survivalist sort of approach to possessions and minimalism as an aesthetic.

Minimalist design can look beautiful, but most of us can’t live like that for a variety of financial and practical reasons. Instead, we are challenged to find our own balance of, as Joshua Becker at Becoming Minimalist calls it, rational minimalism — a combination of lifestyle choice, aesthetic, and day-to-day practicality.

Image Credit: Apartment Therapy

1.    Cheap.  People often equate minimalism with the “college dorm room” look; particleboard and plastic. But you could be a minimalist who buys only objects of the very highest quality that reflect your exquisitely refined taste.

2.    Frugal.  Minimalism is often cited as a great way to save money. However, you could be a minimalist who buys whatever you need at the moment and then throws it away as soon as it isn’t needed anymore.  Or you could be a minimalist who owns almost nothing but spends an incredible amount of money on night-clubbing, dining out, taking exotic vacations, feeding a drug habit, playing MORPGs, or engaging in any other relatively expensive, non-material-goods-related activity.

3. Practical: Minimalism venerates open space and few furnishings — which can be a lovely aesthetic but completely impractical when you’re trying to have friends over (where do they sit? what do they eat off of?) or find storage for your toiletries or kitchen supplies (minimalist design shuns cabinetry, unless it’s all but invisible).  Heating those open spaces can also be a challenge (see #2, above).

4.   Relaxing. Minimalists often argue that they have reduced their stress levels by owning and doing less. But you could own virtually nothing and still be stressed out by your many time commitments.  Or you could do virtually nothing and still be stressed out about your family, friends, finances, health, and the like.

5.    Green. Minimalism is often cited as a way to reduce the consumption of goods and fuel and thus promote environmental sustainability. But you could be a minimalist whose few furnishings are all made of endangered woods, whose few clothes are manufactured and dyed in environmentally unsustainable ways, who eats food that hasn’t been sustainably produced, and who travels all around the world without a thought about your carbon footprint.

6.    Virtuous.  Many minimalists suggest that they are living a life of clear vision and moral virtue and that not being minimalist means you’re either a consumption-brainwashed dupe or ethically corrupt. But a minimalist can be a fool, a liar, a criminal, a jerk, or a wastrel, just like anyone else.

Minimalism can be frugal, relaxing, green, and virtuous (and even cheap, although I don’t personally recommend it) — but not by itself.  Don’t read a minimalist blog or two and automatically buy into the hype — be a critical consumer of whatever lifestyle choice you make, and make certain your behaviors all systematically align to reflect your core values, whatever they may be.

Image Credit: Footprints in Death Valley, by S. Bilodeau

Most of the pages and photos were thrown away. The rest will be scanned and then thrown away.

Minimizing is an exercise in detachment; how much can you bear to lose? When I scan and then shred the photographs and documents that record my life — grade-school report cards, achievement certificates, diplomas — I know I’m losing something. Paper texts can survive for thousands of years. Digital texts are likely to corrupt or become obsolete in a matter of decades.

So my fingers linger over the items a moment before I rip them in half or consign them to the shredder. Their destruction is a commitment; by destroying them, I loosen myself from my past. The digital files are still there, of course, like a safety net, but how often will I look at them? How long will it take before they’re lost or corrupted?

I destroy documents with an awareness that I’m destroying the very data scholars like me love to consult for information about the past; with an awareness that I’m going to forget many of the times recorded in these artefacts because I’ll no longer have them at my fingertips as reminders; and with an awareness that I’m saving my relatives the pain of deciding what to do with those documents after I’m dead.

For me, simplicity, minimalism, and paperlessness cannot be separated from my awareness of ephemerality and death.

I didn’t always think this way. When I was an Air Force brat, home was where my Stuff was. Houses and schools and friends might change every few years, but my Stuff was always with me, a sign of stability and security.

Of course, as I matured, I realized there is no stability and security. Everything changes. I began practicing voluntary simplicity after my divorce, looking for answers that couldn’t be found in other people or in material objects. My practice shifted toward minimalism after my mother died and my sister and I had to decide what to do with all the things she’d left behind.

Now, every object I give away and every paper I shred means one less thing to attach me to the past and one less thing to trouble my heirs in the future.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not completely unsentimental. I’ve kept my share of nostalgic items: my dented silver baby cup; the Alice in Wonderland books my mother read to me as a child; mementos from some of my trips, and the like. Nor do I live like an ascetic: I enjoy artwork and own nice furniture and buy rather too many blazers. But I’m trying to keep my eyes on the future rather than on the past and to put my faith in the spiritual rather than in the physical. So I keep paring down, editing, and streamlining, reminding myself that these items are simply passing through my life the way I pass through the lives of others — for a very brief period of time measured against the vastness of eternity.

Image Credit: Dawn on the Ganges, Varanasi 2008, by Dru

A.  Those items you love

Extreme minimalists would reject this first category of Stuff entirely.  However, bare, completely functional rooms don’t give me any aesthetic pleasure. My apartment contains artwork done by friends and family, antiques inherited from my mother, and other oddball items that give me pleasure to view and hold. These “useless” items remind me of people and experiences I’ve enjoyed, and they make my apartment feel like a home.

The trick is to keep this category small. Look at every nonessential item you own, evaluate the amount of pleasure it gives you, and edit out anything that isn’t personally meaningful and fulfilling. Remember as you do this that objects are not magic; they are not the people and experiences they represent. Getting rid of a space-cluttering memento does not imply rejecting an individual or memory.

B. Those items you use on a regular basis

For many of us, careers come with unavoidable material trappings — for example, the artisanal supplies you use as you paint, sculpt, sew, design, and decorate; the equipment you use as you compose, perform, program, troubleshoot, repair, and build; the artifacts, evidence, and/or reference works you use as you inspect, research, analyze, and model, and so forth. In addition, we use many other objects outside of our careers — furniture, linens, cookware, and the like.

The simple-living approach is to make sure that you own only those things that you use regularly, seeking to use the same item for multiple tasks and to rent or borrow items only used once in a while.

The minimalist approach would be to cut down to the bare minimum necessary to do the job.

What’s the difference? Someone practicing voluntary simplicity might choose to own two sets of sheets; one for use while the other is being washed. The minimalist might choose to own one set, washing the sheets and remaking the bed with them in the same day.

C. Those items you need for emergencies.

The decluttering guideline “if you don’t use it in a month/year, get rid of it” has one serious flaw: some things are worth owning even if you hope you’ll never use them. Fire extinguishers, for example.

Don’t be so clutter-averse that you risk your life by not having important emergency supplies on hand!

…Although minimalists would stop there (if they even bothered with emergency supplies at all), those practicing voluntary simplicity may want to extend this perspective to items they don’t use often but would be difficult or expensive to replace. Do you own camping gear that you only use once a year? A minimalist might say “get rid of it and borrow or rent what you need when you need it.” However, if you already own the gear, getting rid of it may not be the most simple or frugal choice. Weigh your aversion to clutter against your frugality and make the decision that makes the most sense for you.

Relevant Reading:

• In a nice bit of timing, Joshua Becker at Becoming Minimalist, one of the blogs I recommended yesterday, has just released his ebook today — Simplify: Seven Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life. He’s using the term “rational minimalism” to differentiate his approach from the same kind of extreme/100-thing minimalism I’ve been critiquing here; I suspect his rational minimalism is more or less what I’m calling minimalism (in the non-extreme sense) or simplicity.

• My comments on Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?, The Power of Less, and Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less.

• Unclutterer — a great blog on getting rid of clutter informed by the voluntary simplicity movement, albeit not necessarily minimalism.

I’m 43; I’ve been practicing voluntary simplicity since 2000, with varying levels of successes and setbacks. This isn’t a minimalist blog, and I’m not claiming to be a minimalism expert.

(4/26/10: Welcome, readers from Far Beyond the Stars; if you want my response to the post that sent you here, it’s over here. But please read this one first, so you can decide if you agree or disagree. Be a thoughtful minimalist!)

I’ve noticed that a number of younger minimalist bloggers take an extreme view of minimalism, particularly touting the ownership of no more than 100 things. I’m guessing this works for them for several reasons: (1) many don’t have office-based employment or aren’t established in a field that requires a lot of equipment or books; (2) many aren’t married and/or don’t have children; and/or (3) many haven’t yet lived through a major earthquake, fire, freeze, or flood — after doing so, one is likely to list at least a few emergency supplies among one’s possessions.

However, holding up 100-Thing minimalism as a platinum standard for minimalist practice excludes those of us who have different life circumstances and practice minimalism in different ways. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be a 100-Thing minimalist; if the approach appeals to you, adopt it. But if it doesn’t, here are some reasons not to worry about it.

If You Obsess, You’re Owned: Many minimalists enter the lifestyle in an attempt to free themselves of “being owned” by their Stuff, physically and psychologically. However, you’re just as psychologically owned by your Stuff if you fret over whether adding a notebook means eliminating a pair of underwear as you would be if you can’t get rid of any gift you’ve ever been given.

Is your Stuff — no matter how much of it you own — living in your head rent-free? Or do you allow it to come and go freely through your life, without spending undue amounts of time counting, categorizing, reorganizing, and re-evaluating it? Is it more desirable to own 100 things that you count constantly, or 1,000 things that you never worry about at all?

Making Exceptions Undermines the Ideal: Many lists of 100 things exclude or lump together things like toiletries: shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpastes, tampons, condoms, towels, cotton swabs, prescription medicines, cosmetics, combs, brushes, and the like. Or paper: seven years of back tax files, marriage and divorce papers, birth certificates, vehicle registrations, passports, insurance policies, Social Security cards, and so forth. Some 100-Thing minimalists don’t own this stuff; others get around it by counting all their files or toiletries or  clothes as one “thing.”

What, then, constitutes a “thing”?

I also don’t often see beds, bookshelves, tables, chairs, lamps, sheets, pillows, blankets, shower curtains, shower liners, blow dryers, brooms, vacuum cleaners, mops, dusting rags, garden supplies, kids’ drawings and sculptures, hobby supplies, vehicles, or things in one’s professional office or cubicle counted.  I realize that some extreme minimalists don’t own many of these things because they live with their parents, in a dorm room, on their friend’s couch, or in a series of hotels as they travel. And others don’t own many of these things because they don’t have gardens, or kids, or hobbies, or vehicles, or offices. But others get around ownership by making exceptions again: “well, that’s jointly owned with my parents/roommates/spouse/kids, so doesn’t really count as mine.”

What, then, constitutes “ownership”?

And what does this mean for single minimalists who can’t blame couches, towels, and cups on their family?

I realize some practitioners will argue that “there are no rules” to the 100-thing approach. But — pardon my ISTJness — calling more than 100 things “100 things,” or saying one doesn’t own an object that one lives with and uses, strikes me as doublethink. And, ultimately, pointless.

Relax! What’s the point of creating bulk categories of Stuff or denying the ownership of something that you’re living with and using just to get your list of possessions down to 100 things? There’s no god of minimalism poised to canonize you if you squeeze your list of possessions down to some arbitrarily decided number.

How many things you own will depend on what kind of life you live, where, and with whom. If you’re a painter, for example, you probably own more than 100 items just in paint, brushes, canvases, and cleaning supplies alone. Does that mean you can’t be minimalist? Of course not. Just purchase and store the minimum art supplies necessary to do your job, a number that will vary depending on your approach, expertise, and output.

Minimalism involves reducing a thing to its fundamental principles or essential elements without sacrificing its function and aesthetic appeal. Minimalist art, music, and literature still does what it’s intended to do; it is not deficient in its role as art, music, or literature, even though its style may not be to everybody’s taste.  So, too, the minimalist lifestyle.

Those who choose a minimalist lifestyle seek to pare down their possessions and practices to align with their core values and goals without sacrificing things that are important to them. One minimalist’s practice may not appeal to another minimalist, but it doesn’t have to; the minimalist aesthetic can be explored in many different ways. (Would anyone like to talk about a postminimalist lifestyle?)

So, practice 100-Thing minimalism if it appeals to you and you’re in a situation where you can do so. Heck, call more than 100 things “100 things” if it makes you happy. But if 100-thing minimalism doesn’t appeal to you or isn’t possible given your current circumstances, don’t stress about it. No matter how much it’s being emphasized by minimalist bloggers right now, it’s not the only or even the best way to practice minimalism.

Adapt minimalism to suit your life; don’t adapt your life to suit minimalism.

Relevant Reading:

• Every time 20-something Everyday Minimalist posts photos of her apartment on one of her blogs, somebody criticizes her aesthetic choices. If it’s functional and appeals to her, however, why should anybody else care? Design your own minimalism.

• 29-year-old Sunny discusses her less-than-100-thing minimalism with a wry and delightful narrative voice. I enjoy her blog, even though I’m long past the days where I enjoy sleeping on couches.

• Young minimalist Everett Bogue is a proponent of less-than-100-things minimalism and recently wrote The Art of Being Minimalist. I found his book to be strongly geared toward readers without families or jobs that tie them to a particular geographical area, however.

• The early-30s Joshua Becker of the Becoming Minimalist family of four addresses ways to practice non-extreme minimalism with children and wrote a book offering practical tips on creating the minimalist home.

• The  Guy Named Dave popularized the 100-thing challenge, inspiring a Time magazine article. (He was 37 in that article, so I’m guessing he’s 39 or 40 now).  He made clear exceptions to his list from the outset, arguing, “I get to set the rules and decide when a rule can be stretched or outright broken.”

• Last but not least, Leo Babauta’s Mmlist site isn’t updated often but is more focused than his Zen Habits blog. He argues for living with less than 100 things, although he doesn’t count possessions shared with his wife and six children. With more years of practice behind him than most of the other minimalist bloggers, Babauta is highly respected for his posts on simplicity, productivity, and creativity.