“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)

Evocative objects are objects that cause us to reflect on ourselves or on other things. Put otherwise, they give us materials that help us to do this in new and richer ways. Objects can be evocative for many different reasons. Some of these reasons have been widely studied. So, for example, objects that are “betwixt and between” standard categories are classically evocative because they cause us to reflect on the categories themselves. This is why computational objects, standing between mind and not-mind, between the world of the animate and not animate, have been so evocative as objects-to-think-with.Other evocative objects partake of elements of what Winnicott called “transitional objects.” These are objects that blur the boundaries between self and not-self, object that we experience as being in a special, blurred, sometimes fused relation to self. Here, too computational objects have had a special role to play. From the very beginning, people experienced a kind of “mind meld” when using software, saying things such as “When I use Microsoft Word I see my ideas form someplace between my mind and the screen.” Now, in talking about always-on-them digital devices, there is an ever greater sense of the device being part of the body.

Evocative objects provide a special window onto life experience, one that is grounded and cannot avoid issues of depth psychology. Science studies, sociology, anthropology have each in their own way welcomed the study of objects but have been hostile to depth psychology. When one pays careful attention to evocative objects, one “hears” psychodynamic issues, one “hears” family history, one “hears” a close attention to personal narrative and the texture of a life in all of its peculiarity and deeply woven interconnections with others. In science studies, studying objects and life narrative has the additional virtue of making the point, which seems to need making for every new generation of students, that technologies are not “just” tools, that our relationships with objects are profoundly interconnected to how we make meaning out of lives and think through who we are as people.

Because liminality fascinates me and because I pursue minimalism, I found Turkle’s comment on evocative objects to be, well, evocative. My dissertation was on clothing and the ways people used it to escape and to enforce categories of gender, of race, of social status. In the old days, clothing, like computational technologies today, allowed people to try on different selves, to exist (or imagine they existed) in some liminal space between categories. Clothes and computers are both, in other words, potential tools of transformation.  Other objects and behaviors hold the same magical transformational promise; I wrote in 2008 about magical possessions, magical ownership, and, in 2010, even about magical thinking about minimalism.

So, to turn to a different kind of technology … what is it about steampunk’s artefacts that’s so evocative?  Is it the transformative promise of steampunk cosplay and artefacts, suggesting that we can return to a time when clothing and objects were made to higher standards of material quality and aesthetic design?  Is it the promise of a return to some neo-Victorian form of ultra-polite social etiquette and interplay, a la Stephenson’s The Diamond Age? Is it the promise of a return to a simpler time, when technologies were controllable rather than controlling, as some steampunk scholars have suggested? (Of course, this wishful thinking ignores the dark side of the Victorian Empire; those wise in the ways of myth will remember that Cinderella’s slipper was stained with blood….) Is it just another form of technology promising to erase, or permit, or ease, liminal existences? (Click on the image and read artist Molly Friedrich’s description of the mechanical womb for a case of liminality & steampunk.)

I don’t know. I’m just throwing ideas out there right now, inspired by Turkle’s lovely phrase, “evocative objects.”

I read this article a day after finishing William Gibson’s Zero History, the third in a set of linked books dealing loosely with fashion and trends. In the NYT article, David Wolfe, from the Doneger group, a trend-forecasting company, adopted a uniform as what the article described as “a protest against how accessible trends had become,” and that is what Gibson describes in his novels. The first book in the series, Pattern Recognition, featured a trendspotting protagonist who felt ill when confronted with logos and advertising, whereas  Zero History‘s protagonist is sent on a search for the secret brand of clothing called Gabriel Hounds. Anti-branding, secret branding, a shift toward low-key but high-quality clothing; all of that seems very much tied into the trend we’ve been seeing among minimalists in the blogosphere and in the adoption of minimalist uniforms among the elite.

My uniform, as a professor, is similar to that described in the NYT article: jeans, a black vee-neck t-shirt, and a blazer, although I confess to owning a rather non-minimalist number of blazers from which to choose. It certainly makes dressing much faster in the morning; I remember days when I used to try on multiple outfits each morning before settling on one — never again!

Both address the question of how we spend our time, 168 Hours by pointing out that we have 168 hours in each week, and that assuming 56 hours of sleep (8/night) and 50 hours of work (a significant overestimate for most of us, according to the American Time Use Survey), that leaves us 62 hours a week for other things, including things we love. Vanderkam goes through the math and urges us to do the same — do we really have no time to pursue those things we claim we have no time for, or are we frittering away our time on things like, well, the 18 to 23 hours a week the average American spends watching TV (or, for some of us, computer screens)?

Maushart, in The Winter of Our Disconnect, discovered the answer when she put herself and her three children on a 6-month electricity fast in Perth, Australia. Her concern was the amount of time they all spent before screens — the TV, the laptop, the video game, and the iPhone — and “the Experiment” showed without a doubt that family without screentime at home spends more time talking, cooking, and playing games together and that teenagers get better grades, read more, and pick up new hobbies or return to old ones, such as journaling or, in one case, saxophone playing.

I’m fortunate to have a great deal of spare time, as a single, child-free professor, although during the semester my time gets divided into a loose, ever-fluctuating schedule that makes it hard to use Vanderkam’s 168-hour spreadsheet. Still, it’s clear to me that even with a comparatively open schedule and no TV as a distraction, I still waste too much time browsing numerous news sites (something Maushart also admitted to doing) and minimalist/frugality/paleo blogs, even though they all — news sites included — swiftly become repetitious. I also spend a lot of time on email, which isn’t avoidable as a professor or an editor but could be better-scheduled.

So, in an attempt to clear out more time for writing fiction, I’ve deleted the less-”worthy” news sites from my iPad Pulse app, moved my email icon to remote spots on my Dock and iPad to remind me to be more mindful about opening it, and downloaded the Freedom app for my laptop … although much of my lecture-writing and fiction-writing involves internet searches for information, so I’m not sure how well it’ll serve. I’ve also blocked most of the time-wasting blogs on Firefox on my laptop but, unfortunately, I can’t set up blocks in Safari on an iPad. So we’ll see if this helps me free up an hour or two a day for writing fiction again, or whether I simply find other ways to procrastinate … like blogging….

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.)

The Everyday Minimalist posted this and I watched it with wry appreciation. The video’s creator, who practices voluntary simplicity, suggests a new term — mediumism; or, to use more philosophical phrases, the pursuit of the Golden Mean or of the Middle Way.

For my more moderate take on some of the ideas raised in this video, you might want to check out Commodifying Simplicity; Minimalism is Not Necessarily… (frugal, eco-conscious, etc.); and Why I’m Wary of 100-Thing Minimalism.

In the year since I posted my critiques of the movement-as-blogged, I’ve noticed a shift in the ‘sphere away from extreme minimalism; an increasing number of bloggers are defining minimalism more broadly and attempting to make it applicable to a wider variety of life situations. This may be because some have given up on minimalism and others have rethought their extreme stances, but I also think it’s because we’re seeing a more diverse demographic of writers. The shift is a healthy one. It’s not that there’s anything wrong about selling ebooks, arguing that minimalism is frugal or green, or paring your possessions down to 100; I do, however, think it’s counterproductive to claim that one’s own practice is the only or best or truest form of minimalism (especially ironic when one changes one’s mind less than a year later!), which inevitably discourages people intrigued by the idea but not in a position to carry out its more extreme forms. Kudos to the moderate, thoughtful minimalists who are keeping the movement open enough to offer suggestions to anyone who investigates it.

Moving into a new office was a great chance for me to reduce my paper. I’m not entirely paperless — for example, I study BL, so there are a number of BL books on my shelves, as well as the textbooks and references I use in class and other books currently unavailable in either digital form or from the local libraries. And I haven’t attained a stark, modernist, minimal look — I don’t care for the impersonal coldness of that aesthetic, anyway — but I’m pretty happy with the space. This new office is definitely much more open and peaceful than any of my previous offices, and I’m very fond of it and of the airy feel of the Swenson Center in general. (Office photos below the cut.)

The skulls, statuary, and shadow box were inherited from my mother. The art was mostly done by students and friends like artist Rich Brimer; the stained-glass windows were made by my mother. A small iguana “shrine” on the left side of my desk includes an oil painting by Stella Violano; I love iguanas!

So I’ve been trying to reconcile the two extremes, maintaining a sense of open space while retaining a few quirky odds and ends: a battered old barrister’s bookshelf; some antique trunks; and, of course, two guardian foo dogs ready to attack any airship pirates who might want to break into the apartment….

My furnishings combine antiques inherited, picked up on travels, and scoured from Craigslist with new pieces like the barrelback chair and tripod light and some original artwork by friends, like the massive “Golden Oak” oil painting by Leah Jay and the pillar-like sculpture “Alien Artifact” by my mother.

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