Is our economy stagnant because there are no easily obtained resources to exploit anymore or because an affluent population has turned from primarily materialistic to primarily ephemeral pursuits? NYT Op-Ed columnist David Brooks asks this question in response to Tyler Cowen’s book The Great Stagnation.

It could be that in an industrial economy people develop a materialist mind-set and believe that improving their income is the same thing as improving their quality of life. But in an affluent information-driven world, people embrace the postmaterialist mind-set. They realize they can improve their quality of life without actually producing more wealth.

That is, he argues, using the web and social media, consuming digital good such as ebooks and streaming video, taking care of one’s health and working in a service industry may be very experientially satisfying while not employing a high number of people or otherwise increasing the material wealth of the nation.

This makes sense to me; the more affluent members of Gen X and Gen Y in highly developed nations have started to privilege experience and social connection over material goods. This has made social movements like voluntary simplicity, minimalism, and frugal/debt-free lifestyles more attractive than they might have been a generation or two earlier, when social status was firmly tied to Thorstein Veblen’s concept of conspicuous consumption or, later, Pierre Bordieu’s concept of class stratification through aesthetic display.

Which isn’t to say that everyone has embraced a minimal lifestyle, of course:

This means that Jared has some rich and meaningful experiences, but it has also led to problems. Every few months, new gizmos come out. Jared feels his life is getting better. Because he doesn’t fully grasp the increasingly important distinction between wealth and standard of living, he has the impression that he is also getting richer. As a result, he lives beyond his means. [...] Jared is also providing much less opportunity for those down the income scale than his grandfather did.

In other words, while conspicuous consumption may be on the downturn, inconspicuous consumption is on the rise, both in digital terms (apps and games, digital music/books/subscriptions, data plans, etc.) and more concrete terms (organic food, green products, supplements, travel, gym memberships, etc.). This hearkens back to my post “Minimalism is not necessarily,” where I pointed out minimalism isn’t necessarily cheap, green, or frugal. Nor, as Brooks suggests, is it necessarily good for the economy in the long run, although here we have to acknowledge the tension between individual financial well-being vs. national economic well-being, especially given a measurement of national well-being based on goods produced/consumed and people employed.

I prefer inconspicuous consumption, myself; for example, my aversion to clutter has led me to embrace digital documents, books, and music. Which is all still a set of possessions, of course, no matter how clean I may keep my desktop and how well-organized I may keep my digital folders. Similarly, my life priorities have led me to pay lots of money to travel to different countries while driving a beaten-up old pickup with a cracked windshield and rusty bumper, because experience is more important to me than display. Yet I am mournfully aware of the environmental costs of digital waste and airplane travel, even though I haven’t chosen to curtail my love for computers or travel as a result of that awareness.

The concept of inconspicuous consumption poses a challenge for minimalists, I think; at least for that brand of minimalism that argues that the movement is “good for the environment” or that it’s about “living with less.” Good for whose environment? (Where do you think we dump our e-waste?) Less what, exactly?

I’m being deliberately contrarian, of course; that’s what we professors do. We like to challenge listeners’ assumptions and force them to think through their assertions. I have no doubt that some minimalists are incredibly green and frugal and don’t have laptops full of ebooks, digital music, apps, and other such ephemeral possessions. However, I suspect that most of us are not so cautious, in which case we should be judicious about our claims about the movement. For example, I have never been able to claim that I adopted simplicity/minimalism out of a concern for the environment or any such morally superior reason. My reasons were selfish — I wanted to save money and I wanted to be able to focus on a few important things, which I can’t do in a visually distracting environment. (A nod of acknowledgment here to The Everyday Minimalist, who recently posted her own “selfish” reasons for adopting minimalism and engaging in other pursuits; she and I are similar in many respects.)

So, here’s a question for minimalist bloggers to consider (some have already done so): Is a minimalist lifestyle primarily aimed at reducing consumption, or merely at reducing conspicuous consumption?

The more economically minded may then wish to engage with Brooks’ conclusion: “For the past few decades, Americans have devoted more of their energies to postmaterial arenas and less and less, for better and worse, to the sheer production of wealth.”

(Image: I, too, prefer experiences over “stuff”; for example, learning to row in Venice.)

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

Although I find clothing interesting in the abstract — I wrote my dissertation about the sumptuary laws and rules of etiquette that governed clothing usage from the 1500s to the 1900s — I find it frustrating on the day-to-day level. I don’t like choosing outfits and accessories, having to own different pairs of shoes for different lengths of pants and skirts, and figuring out what level of formality any given social situation requires. I’ve tried, really I have. But after I got tenure I decided, “to heck with it” and began paring back to what’s now more or less my daily uniform: blue jeans, a black or brown tee-shirt, and a blazer. I figure, if a minimalist wardrobe is good enough for Steve Jobs, it’s good enough for me.

Of course, I own far more than six items of clothing. For one thing, I have a number of blazers; I figure they’re the only part of my outfit anybody really notices, anyway, so that’s where I spend my wardrobe money. And I have shorts and pajamas and gym clothes and a doctoral robe and a kempo gi — those garments you need for hot weather or specialized activities. The photo here shows the “blazer/regalia/gi” corner of my closet! But if you dropped by to visit me, chances are you’d catch me in jeans and a dark tee….

I can certainly imagine paring back some more, but … nah, not back to six. I don’t like hand-washing clothes every night; I live the “extreme minimalist” lifestyle when I’m on the road, and I don’t want to live like that at home. Also, when I’m traveling, I find that I eventually get sick of wearing the same outfits over and over. Many of the participants in the Six-Item challenge started feeling the same way! There’s something to be said for the luxury (and yes, it’s a luxury) of having some variety in one’s wardrobe. Even if, in my case, that’s mostly a choice of blazers.

However, I really appreciate knowing that I’m not alone in preferring to save time, money, and effort by simplifying my wardrobe. Congratulations to all of you who participated in the Six-Item challenge and who are wrapping up The Great American Apparel Diet! It’s very inspiring to read your stories.

I find myself in good company. He expressed similar sentiments to a number of his readers earlier this month.

What struck me as interesting about that first post, in which he suggested that readers who want him to moderate his approach should unsubscribe from his blog, was how many people were upset by the fact that he wrote that. I thought he was being admirably honest about his opinion.

“If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha,” said Zen master Lin Chi. “If you meet the patriarchs, kill the patriarchs; if you meet an Arhat, kill the Arhat; if you meet your parents, kill your parents.”

Lin Chi wasn’t condoning murder. What he was saying was that you must never revere teachers or gurus to the point of no longer questioning them.  That is, if anyone tries to tell you what to do, it is your responsibility as a mature, inquiring adult to question and criticize, weigh and evaluate, and make up your own mind. To accept without question what somebody else tells you is to surrender your freedom to that person. That is not the path to wisdom.

To bring this back to minimalism, it is the mature adult’s responsibility not to become what that minimalist described in his post as zombies, mindlessly accepting society’s instruction to consume. Similarly, it is the mature adult’s responsibility not to accept the kind of teaching that minimalist Leo Baubuta recently criticized as intended to “force learning, that homegenize children, that teach them to be robotic workers instead of thinkers, creators, independent learners.”  Minimalism is in many ways a countercultural mindset in the Western world; you cannot voluntarily practice it without first thinking critically about this culture’s dominant ideological messages of consumption and planned obsolescence.

But you mustn’t stop at criticizing mainstream societal messages. You must also criticize those who are criticizing those messages — even the Buddha. That means that you must apply the same critical standpoint to those of us who practice and write about minimalism in our various ways.  Read widely, absorb the diversity of viewpoints, and find the path that suits you best, accepting that your path will change as your life changes. Be wise and thoughtful, critical and analytic.  But most of all, don’t get upset by the writers you’re reading; whether it’s him, or me, or anybody else. Getting upset is pointless.  You can’t change others; you can only change yourself.  Writers with whom you disagree may still have important, useful things to say.  Just stop and listen long enough to absorb and evaluate the lesson they offer, and then thank them and start walking again.

Wisdom will come to you from many sources, but ultimately it’s your life path; don’t let your progress be halted by any Buddha you may meet along the way.

Edited 1/27/11: In a final bit of irony, said self-styled minimalist blogger has now renounced minimalism on a site he’s created called FuckMinimalism.Com.  As I said, choose your gurus wisely. The man who told me to get screwed because I don’t care for the practice of counting one’s possessions has now … stopped counting his possessions.

“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.