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Oh, my word – that desk at the end of the article makes me want to flee just looking at it; but as I de-clutter I have surfaces that look the same in the interim.

After reading your posts about letting go of hobbies, last night I purged my key-ring collection (was planning this anyway). Now I just need to take some photos of the ones I’m giving up before I hand them to a friend who collects them.

At the moment I’m also scanning articles from old gardening magazines so I can give them to other friends. All this is in preparation for another move (back to our home town this time).

Each move I keep trying to get my “stuff” down to fit into a two-bedroom house / unit rather than 3 bedrooms, although I think that 2 bedrooms and a rumpus (for my craft, music and study gear) would be more suitable than 3 actual bedrooms. I could possibly manage 1 bedroom and a decent sized rumpus by getting rid of the futon couch-cum-double bed, but that would mean no o’night visitors.

You said:
“That’s true, Lori B, but I wonder if the visual language – the interior space – that we use to create that feeling of soullessness is always the same, or if it changes? ”

I think it does — specifically because how else would you visually represent such a thing? It could also be an all-black or all-grey space. To me the essense of soullessness is a repression of the human spirit, especially its urge to create.

I’m walking a fine line here, but in its extreme to me minimalism IS a suppression of creativity. Done well I think minimalism can be a celebrate of something that speaks so completely to or about a person that they want to strip away everything that would distract from that. But I think this requires a conscious embrace of minimalism.

It is far too easy to just strip away EVERYTHING, thinking that nothingness=simplicity. There is nothing being referenced. Here, I think creativity and spirit has been stripped away and it’s empty in a way that I think goes too far.

The THX scenes are depicting emptiness, and they are meant to be uncomfortable and sterile. That sort of minimalism to me is sterile in a negative way.

> Nowhere in the script did Hal say, “Dave, I made you a wobbly clay bowl at summer camp. You should display it for the other astronauts to see.”

Some talented soul needs to create this and post it on YouTube.

Regarding the matter of leaving dirty dishes sitting by the sink for longer than a nanosecond, I live in an apartment building in which sometimes I simply cannot, for whatever reasons, get the water to run hot. It doesn’t seem to matter what time of day it is (e.g., first thing in the morning, later in the afternoon, nighttime) so much as the luck of the draw.

That means that sometimes I can’t get past “lukewarm” when I want to run a sink full of dishwater. So I just rinse the dishes, so there’s no crud to attract pests, then let them sit until I have time to try again later and wash them properly with hot water and dish detergent. The world hasn’t stopped turning on its axis yet.

Bottom line for me: I like spaciousness and clean lines, but there’s a firm boundary between “neat and orderly” and “obsessive compulsive disorder.” I strive for the former, not the latter. Clean and organized enough to live in, relaxed enough to ensure that I’m actually doing some living and not just 24/7 cleaning.

I really think there are just two different types of people. Jessica said, “Minimalist photo spreads also show the place at its best, not during mealtime or a party.” This is exactly the problem my type have with these homes. In my opinion, a home IS at its best during a mealtime or a party. When else is it? When no-one’s at home? When they’re tucked up in bed and not “cluttering” things up? This is where accusations of minimalist homes being soulless come from – if a home doesn’t look good when people are enjoying living in it, then it’s not much of a home, is it?

I’m thinking back to the Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It’s many years since I’ve seen that though.

I guess the same cues – monochrome palette, usually white – and featureless interiors with an absence of any personal effects – have been used for a long time to represent an absence of human warmth. There was a series called ‘Andra’ I think from the 70s with the same themes.

It would be interesting to see how new cinema (given the recent minimalist trends) would handle these themes but given that Communism is no longer the enemy, I don’t know that we see much of the Totalitarian State, except in decay. ‘The Island’ I suppose.

Maybe the fact that these things become cinematic conventions, visual shorthand, means that they are fairly immune to change. Or maybe it’s because the white and antiseptic has such strong innate connotations that our best efforts to define them as clean, fresh and open tend are doomed to failure.

I get a bit touchy about spoilers, because Australia IS so far behind – some series, such as Battlestar, we don’t get until months after the USA. It makes it frustrating as a fan, when you have to assiduously avoid any discussions.

I looked it up and noted the comments about the directors cut – I think the original might be better as you say.

It would be interesting to do a timeline charting the writing and production of movies against a timeline of interior design trends and cultural trends.

At the moment, domesticity is ‘in’ – with the recession, everyone is ‘nesting’ and women are staying home, so the lived-in look, warm and homey, they are all back in magazines.

Science is almost always demonized.

At this point I buy the whole room a round of drinks and have to karaoke ‘my way’ as punishment.

Apologies to Fred E for my abuse. My ignorance, not yours.

@Erin: thanks for this thought-provoking article. My uncluttering which had started out from baby steps had been gaining momentum remarkably over the last weeks of “sticking to it”. You probably saved a new convert from hurting herself by becoming fanatic.

I agree from my heart that life is the purpose of any effort (e.g. to unclutter) – and not the other way round, Hah! now back to the hobbies, the social life and the relaxation that I started all this for!

That was rude and stupid. Posting the ending of a recent movie is just plain rude!!!! 5000 bad karma points to you.

Thank you for ruining the movie experience for me.

Well said! This is the most brilliant thing said in this entire thread:

“We each get to decide how much of daily life lingers on our horizontal surfaces, and each of us can choose how much we want our home space to be a reflection of ourselves. Each person’s balance point can be unique.”

My own two cents is that nobody but me can determine what is or is not an “unnecessary physical manifestation” in my home. What I don’t like about the minimalist mindset is the value judgement some proponents bring to it that something is unnecessary and/or undesireable about having something that doesn’t fit a specific mold around — that there is something wrong with wanting a richer visual experience.

The truth is, it works for you. Only you. I like clean and uncluttered surfaces quite a lot, but I also like well-placed decoration, and completely blank counters feel sterile and unsustainable to me. I can’t relax if there’s NOTHING on the counter, I feel like it’s not my space.

I recently moved, and for several weeks didn’t put any artwork up on the walls. For awhile I actually enjoyed the blank space, but I knew I was ready to hang art when I walked into the room and the blankness felt hollow and unwelcoming. I think it was nice to give myself a break from the visual stimulation, and also to see my art differently than I’d been used to seeing it in the old place. But at some point my soul longed for the self-expression of adding layers of complexity into my space.

However, I find it a little hard to believe unless your past generations were relatively wealthy. In my family there are the stories of how my great-grandparents packed up EVERYTHING THEY OWNED into a single trunk, bundled up their two children and stepped onto a boat headed to Ellis Island. Most of what they brought were my grandfather’s tools of trade. They proceeded to raise 7 children total in the US, never living in a space larger than my current apartment (1050 sq feet). It was the following generations that filled up the same house with furnishings, not them. Even so, a lot of it wasn’t “stuff”, it was useful items for running the household and running the family businesses out of the same space.

As children, my grandmother and her siblings each had 2 hooks on the wall from which to hang all the clothes they owned. There were no closets in the house at the time. We’re talking hooks that could hold maybe 10 clothes hangers total — in later years my great-uncle still hung his clothes from hangers on the same hooks in the same bedroom he’d once shared with broathers. We were able to fit all his clothes into a single box after he died.

http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/200.....ference10/

Funnily enough, the more cluttered version (left) is the one by the mag.

The balance that needs to be struck is aesthetic. I think a lot of messy people associate uncluttered order with a repressed family member. Either that, or they’ve never seen a home decorated in a style they’d like that also lacked a dirty sink, moldy bathroom fixtures, and stale piles of laundry.

Personally, I don’t have catalogs around because I shop online. I don’t have framed photographs up because I have so many on my phone, my iPod, my desktop, and my social networking sites. The digital world allows us to enjoy much more of this stuff virtually than we would in an unnecessary physical manifestation in our homes.

My house doesn’t have pencil cups, catalogs, or dirty cups, but it does have a parrot, a dog, plenty of art, and a bowl of sequined fruit. Sterile it ain’t.

We each get to decide how much of daily life lingers on our horizontal surfaces, and each of us can choose how much we want our home space to be a reflection of ourselves. Each person’s balance point can be unique.

I think it would be really boring if everyone’s home was “the same.” Haven’t we been in homes that we enjoy but “wouldn’t want to live in?”

Thought-provoking post!

I enjoyed this post – very thought provoking and has inspired me to think about the aesthetics of the various ‘visions of the future’ in my favorite scifi flicks and series.