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Shaun’s Musings: Becoming a Minimalist
My parents were middle class and they worked hard all their lives. They were graced with my presence in their mid-to-late 40s. Before this they had been minimalists, working two jobs and, instead of taking vacations or buying new cars, focused on paying the mortgages on their rental properties. By the late 1970s, when I appeared on the world’s stage, they owed nothing and were continually investing in the stock market.
The allure of stuff, the collective term for things that we buy which we really could live without, has taken hold of our generation and our culture. Shortly after my father died, but before I got married, I began to remodel the house a little, installing a small room in which I could play guitar unmolested. The room started as a small idea, but as I went to yard sales, flea markets, and Guitar Center, I amassed more musical instruments (some broken) than I could possibly have room for.
Over the past few weeks, several free Kindle books have found their way into my hands on minimalism. Minimalism is often considered to be one of those extreme left-wing modes of thought, on par with tree-hugging and Occupy Wall Street. But when one considers prior generations and how they were able to get by with very little and, even after retirement, often don’t feel the need to display their wealth.
According to Vincent Miles, author of The Joy of Minimalism, a simpler lifestyle can lead to a more happier person in the sense that getting rid of all the clutter one does not need, and this includes canceling subscriptions to magazines one does not read anymore, and having more time to oneself. I once went to a workshop on procrastination, hosted by Hillary Rettig. While a liberal, she made a statement that has resounded within me ever since: We spend money on things, and then we pretty much spend the rest of our lives working hard to maintain those things. While this may be an overstatement – the only maintenance a guitar or amp needs is a little TLC, I have friends who have bought sports cars and began to “trick” them out, turning them into Fast and Furious race cars, spending thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands on them.
If one thinks I am acting superior, that is not all the case. As I sit in my kitchen, I can see the latest installment in National Geographic, a magazine I don’t even read anymore. From my position I can see the tail end of my 1979 F250 monster truck in the driveway. I can think of six or seven amplifiers I have either pulled out of the trash or bought at yard sales that work, but have no practical use. This weekend, my wife and I will be working side by side to clean out the clutter that has accumulated from both myself and my father over the years.
What scares many economists is not that one person will stop buying stuff and start putting money away, but that many people will start doing the same, realizing that buying stuff does not make one happy, and in fact can be detrimental. However, this generation never considers the long-term impact of things. A CNN Poll revealed that over 76% of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck, with 50% having three months worth of cash if something happened, and 27% revealing they have no savings at all.
How can this be happening in the most prosperous nation in the world? A lot of this is because people use credit to buy things, and instead of making sure their savings is well-stocked, they are out making sure they have the latest Apple gadget or a newer model car. Saving for retirement is something that their parents did, they think, and doesn’t accomplish much today. The economy can only continue to grow if people spend, and people continue to spend, believing Social Security will be enough for them when they retire. Smarter people know better, but when you consider that youth are flocking to socialist Bernie Sanders in full belief that he is America’s savior, things make sense.
It is easy to blame the 1% for all the nation’s problems. While high concentrations of wealth are indeed bad for the economy going back to the Eisenhower administration in which the rich were taxed at 90% seems excessive. As health care costs rise, as food bills rise, and as housing bills rise, America’s youth are going to be unable to do more than pay for the basic necessities of life, much less put money away for retirement.
But back to minimalism. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that people will be forced into a minimalist lifestyle due to the rising cost of healthcare, food, and housing. It will be a cycle we have seen before, only this time it will be much, much worse. There is a possibility that youth today, after facing hardship, will decide they never wish to go through it again, and begin saving.
That does not mean it will happen in every case, though. A friend of mine lost his father and inherited $27,000. He was homeless and wasn’t working. I told him he needed to get a job, invest that money so that it can grow, and buy a small car that can help him get back and forth to work. Instead, he went out and bought a $24K sports car. He does not own that car now and is back on the street. Some people, as they say, never learn.
In The Joy of Minimalism, the author discusses the mentality that one must possess in order to get rid of our accumulations. We must not be looking at cleaning house as something that we are losing, but rather, gaining because we are gaining time, gaining space, and gaining peace of mind. While it may seem a loss to be throwing out an old radio that could potentially be fixed, the fact is that it would probably stay in its currently assigned place until one of your kids, or mine, tosses it, probably a few weeks after we pass away.
Published in General
I have been de cluttering for several years. My own personal possessions are down to three drawers. I showed them to my husband and suggested he put them all in a large trash bag when I die, and call me gone.
On the other hand if he should go first I shall have to burn the house down. There is no way I am sorting through his stuff.
My sister made me promise years ago that if her husband died first, I would come empty her attic and basement where he has been accumulating for 30 years and counting. That way she could continue to treasure his memory, as he is an exceptionally wonderful man aside from the pack-ratness.
OH. MY. GOSH. How? Honestly. How? How have you done this. Doulalady. Are you young, middle-aged – old like me? 68.
@ doulalady
Confession: It’s the sentimental things. Dear Heaven. We just had our 40 plus year-old home re-shingled.
Came home from vacation and discovered that the roofers had had to remove the weather instruments that my dear dad installed up there years and years ago.
He’s gone now.
So here it is. I removed the yards and yards of wires . . . but there it sits on that old wood bracket – replete with the bolts that dad installed . . . his hand-work haunting me.
He died of ALS in his active, happy 70’s.
How can I pitch this ?
When I was a little girl we moved into an 75 year old four-square on a hill. It had been a show place when it was new. Now of course it’s small but the landscaping was lovely, the big front porch and swing and the enormous elm tree in front all frame my happiest childhood memories.
This was a farm place with a grove and in the grove were old farm implements left behind like a rusty plow and hitch and cultivator also meant to be drawn by horses. Those were fun to play on. Even better, in the attic the original family had left boxes of old clothes and faded letters from decades of their lives. We probably should have preserved them, but we were kids, so we played with that stuff and shuffled it all up and when it wore out, Mom tossed it. It was pretty cheap entertainment.
But who knows what that stuff meant to someone 70 years earlier? The elderly lady who grew up there left what she didn’t value and their former hired hand would visit and he didn’t shed much light. Maybe your clutter will be some kid’s treasure hunt someday!
Good point. I have kept my father’s tools for the sense of purpose, as well as a number of other things. But stuff doesn’t replace memories. There are things I will never get rid of, nor can I: my father’s passion for learning, his constant reading, and involvement in conservative discussions. Those are the things that really matter. I think for a long time I saved quite a bit of my father’s things to honor his memory. I can do that by living my life in a way that would make him happy, not through his endless numbers of trinkets.
Trink, so many of my friends got burdened with their parents’ stuff because in getting real estate ready for sale they had to move the contents quickly into basements garages and storage without sorting. Years later they are still unable to figure out what to keep and what to dispose of.
I am absolutely determined not to do that to my kids.
When I start a task, for example, when organizing every photograph in every box, envelope, file drawer etc I do not stop until it is done.
I gave each child his/her own childhood albums with the proviso that should they want to throw them away I would not object. Memorabilia the same. Two of anything out goes one. Not used, out it goes. Mine, gone.
Empty cupboards, storage boxes, bookshelves, are put on the curb with a free sign.
Dealing with my husband’s stuff involves more discretion. I have been thoroughly organizing his possessions so that he can distinguish the things he uses from the things he doesn’t. I have found he can get rid of something if we know someone who can use it. For example he was willing to give all those perfectly good pieces of wood he had stashed up to the ceiling of the basement to a young couple who needed it for heating.
Giving things away to people who can actually use them without a second thought is my secret power. Even my kids started to ask for things because they knew they might be gone by the time they came by again.
Reorganizing empty spaces helps. As each room in the basement has been dejunked I have repurposed it. This rewards my husband for getting rid of just-in-case junk. He now has a wine cellar, a fishing gear room, a train room, and a work shop room. Every one of these spaces was full to the ceiling with unusable, inaccessible stuff. Now he can find what he wants and he doesn’t have to go out and buy what he cannot find…. like the six soldering irons I uncovered.
Trink, also I’m heading into my sixties in the full knowledge that Alzheimer’s is probably in my future so sentimentality will not be an issue.
I have started removing my father’s old National Geographics. i kidded myself into keeping them, thinking that I would keep the tradition. But NG has become so liberal (I am sure it always was) that I have just largely given up on them. I am downsizing the bookcases (presswood from Wal-Mart. Trust me, nothing really important) and getting rid of so much stuff that my cat is hiding =) I’m only taking a little each day, though. That way it does not get overwhelming.
Kim . . . This was simply poignantly lovely.
My deceased father-in-law was a collector. His philosophy seemed to be that if he enjoyed having one or two of something, then he should collect a dozen or more. As a result, when he died we inherited many of these things. Personalized pewter mugs & steins, coffee mugs, and pipes were among the things I found myself contending with. My husband has not been able to bring himself to thin out these things. (His father died in 2000) It has been a powerful lesson to me about burdening my adult children with “stuff” someday.
I don’t get it. What is so hard about renting a dumpster?
Oh dear iWe . . . .
Even the thought of ‘dumpsters’ makes me sentimental. (See? Theres’ no escape)
In the 60’s during hubby’s internship at Ftizsimons Army Hospital – we billeted beside a lovely southern couple whose uncles had invented Dempster Dumpsters. I can’t look at a dumpster that I don’t think of Ann and Everette – our long ago friends :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dempster_Brothers
Figuring out where to park it?