How to minimize your life (a minimal tutorial)

by Victoria Backle
Staff Writer

We all know that American culture is based on consumerism. Whether it’s clothes, food, movies or whatever it may be, we are expected to buy everything we see that holds even the slightest bit of interest for us.

It’s not hard to find the latest winter style and it’s not hard to wander through Walmart for “one thing” and walk out with forty. We’re expected and encouraged to do this. The real hard part is looking at the pile of useless junk you already have and asking how you’re going to downsize it all.

I have spent the last three months staring at the abyss of my belongings and asking myself the same question. It’s become my mission to rebel against the expected American and be a person that can live with the bare minimum. As I’m contemplating how to put the lives of five living creatures (my girlfriend, myself and our three dogs) into a twenty-one-foot RV, I’ve found that the answer is sheer creativity.

First things first when it comes to minimizing our lives: clothes. I don’t want to be stereotypical here, but generally, a woman’s heftiest belonging will be clothes and shoes. The first place to hit when you want to purge your life is the closet and the dresser. Here’s the best advice I can give on this though – do it when you’re in a very specific kind of mood.

A mood when you’re tripping over things you hate and don’t need. A mood when you’re sick of digging through your closet for one specific piece of clothing, probably the piece of clothing you wear three days out of the week, as you rifle through clothes you haven’t worn in two years. That’s when, and the only time when, you should be purging your clothes.

This mindset is when you’ll throw the clothes you could care less about in a bag and bring it to a donation station. Otherwise, you’ll come up with a million reasons why you need to keep your tube top and overalls from 1995. They may come back, you’ll say, but they won’t. They never will.

After you’ve successfully minimized your clothes, you will feel a thousand pounds lighter. The next step is to look at the things you’ve been hoarding or collecting for years. For me, it was a very extensive, very invested in, record collection. I sat in the living room sifting through them, even crying a little bit, as I priced each one individually. Within an hour, I was holding a stack of cash and had an empty music room.

Non-attachment to things is probably the best feeling in the world. Knowing that things are things and that at any point you can collect and sell is an important life lesson. Nothing is forever and unfortunately sentimentality doesn’t grant us much more than an over-stuffed room.

Let go of some things, even the things that might mean a lot to you. I’m not saying go pawn your wedding ring or get rid of the necklace your great grandmother left you, what I’m saying is get rid of the things you collected for entertainment. The hoarding you did with no end result, other than to have things.

There’s no one way to minimize one’s life, but getting started is the hardest part. Once you’ve done that, it will be harder to stop than you think. It feels good to purge life of the things we don’t need. Have fun with it and feel good when you give the things you didn’t wear or use to someone who will.

Enjoy the space in your closet for a while, or in my case, enjoy living in a twenty-something foot living space. Even if you’re not making that drastic a move, purging once a year keeps your belongings up to date and gives you an opportunity to give selflessly on an annual basis.

Copyright 2017 The Gayly – February 22, 2017 @ 11:35 a.m.