30 Years of Minimalism

On stuff, and the absence thereof

I grew up in a 4500 sq ft. home sitting on 10 acres of land, with a six-car attached garage and an inground swimming pool. You could say my parents did okay in life. But we weren’t exceedingly wealthy — my Father mowed the lawn, maintained the pool, did his own maintenance on the house, and stuffed the garage with old cars he planned to fix someday. He parked outside.

Inside the house, there were knick-knacks, collections, bowling balls from the 70s, and a room full of things that ‘needed to be gone through’ that, by my estimation, didn’t get gone through or thrown out for a decade or two — an entire room used as a holding facility for transitory trash destined for the landfill. Some of it is still there.

This isn’t to say the place wasn’t clean. It was. We just had too much space. If you have a six-car garage, why throw anything out? There is space for it, and besides, we may need it someday.

My bedroom was no different. A 10-year-old boy has stuff. Toys and books and clothes that don’t fit anymore, clothes that will fit someday, and dirty clothes worn for three days straight, left to decay on the floor. When the mess got out of hand, things were stuffed in the closet until the door would no longer shut as a way to escape detection from my parental wardens.

Eventually, the mess in my room would garner the attention of my Father, who, by decree, would order it to be cleaned no later than Sunday Night, usually on a Friday night during family dinner. This was terrible news for 10-year-old me. The weekend was ruined. I didn’t want to clean that mess.

Late Sunday afternoon, I would begrudgingly dig in, bringing trash bags from the kitchen to start filling them with things. Logically, my thought was: the easiest way to clean this was by getting rid of the 90 percent I didn’t want. As I started hauling bags full of toys, clothes, and actual junk through the house toward the garage, my parents would stop me, exclaiming, “What? You’re throwing all of this stuff away? We need to go through this first,” my Mother would say. My brain would melt. You people wanted this room clean, I remember thinking. Now, you’re complaining about the way I’m doing it!? I’ve had a disdain for clutter for much of my life.

Minimalism wasn’t on my radar at ten years old. I didn’t know the word existed. I was just a kid who didn’t want to clean. Yet, when my room was clean, I felt better. I liked how it looked, my parents stopped complaining, and I felt lighter. I liked the extra space and being able to open the closet without an avalanche of preteen refuse falling in my direction.

Fast forward to today, and the 291.5 things I own as of this writing, the .5 being a sock without a mate, minimalism is a central part of my life. But it’s not because of childhood trauma. It’s about freedom, control, and a slight touch of OCD. The thought of having to acquire, maintain, and eventually discard stuff, the burden of it all, keeps me from wanting to accumulate more.

I won’t go into the cliches of minimalism. I won’t use words like intentional or meaningful, and if anything, I am somewhat cynical these days. Minimalism isn’t a fix-all for life’s complications; however, it can lessen the number of complications one must confront. The lifestyle movement in itself has become gross, infected by influencers who found a way to commercialize anti-consumption, which could be a whole other essay if finger-pointing were my jam.

For me, though, minimalism enables a certain degree of spontaneity along with the convenience of nimble living. Want to go on a weekend trip? Absolutely. I’m already packed. Need to leave because of a natural disaster? I can have the car loaded in 30 minutes flat. It is a way to control circumstances out of my control. Minimalism as a form of prepping, so to speak, and a way to safeguard my time. I don’t have to spend my weekend doing housework. Things never get lost because most of my stuff is organized in bags. I can spend time doing what I want to do, which is usually not very much.

But really, I think it is about taking responsibility for your life. Sculpting your day-to-day experience by chipping away at nuisances. While chores, stressors, and financial constraints plague many, minimalism can alleviate some of those symptoms. My parents struggled endlessly to maintain their 4500 sq ft. home, and my Father did so until the day he died. My Mother continues still. This afternoon, I plan to read a little, then I might go for a walk. There’s not much else to do.