I'm a second year graphic design student and am currently working on a project heavily linked to the cult of less.
I would really love to know each of your experiences with minimising your possessions - how you did it, why, when, etc.
I would also love to know ways in which you feel would be best to promote the idea of simplifying your lives. How would you go about letting more people know about this lifestyle?
All input is welcome, thank you!
Welcome, Maimai!
I started decluttering at the beginning of 2011 because the sheer volume of unused stuff in my house was interfering with my ability to think and to concentrate on my projects. I've been working at it steadily, sometimes only 1 or 2 things a day, sometimes mass quantities of giveaways or carloads of stuff headed to the city dump.
From a graphics point-of-view, what I would suggest is a "before-and-after" approach. Show a space before decluttering, and after. If you can do simple stop-action animation, you could even take a series of photos and have things vanish from a surface or a room, one by one.
Stop-gap photography would be cool - a slide show with each slide having less clutter in it! Wish it could work that way at my house, LOL.
I started on my own clutter this year because my life is too busy to take care of all the stuff we've accumulated. I did a major purge in 2009 after my mom passed away in early 2008; the entire contents of a condo were in my basement! It felt so good to clean out, that I decided to begin on my own belongings. The kids are beginning to pick up on it, now, too.
I'm the same as Astreja - somtimes I'll go for a few days tossing nothing but junk mail, and then I get inspired and do a whole drawer, closet, or room. I'm going easy on myself, with no deadline, just a gradual purging of things I don't like or use, and slowing way down on the aquisitions.
maimai, I got into this through disasters (fires, floods etc). I was reading about preparing for these, and skipped upon sites like this. That was earlier this year when Australia had some bad natural events.
Now, I'm motivated by moving house. I am buying (since March I've been looking), and so I keep thinking 'would I want to move this?' I aim for a home that's almost like the displays they put in properties - very stylish, minimal. I want to have less stuff, so I can have a calm space like these people create (also the 'hotel room' look, but with my art and photos rather than the banal stuff!)
I'm neither a thing a day nor a purger. I read a daily blog about uncluttering, and i read this, but it's a 'when there's time, where's this a motive (ie an area I think that could be refined) or when I want to use my storage spaces better. ie I needed somewhere 'out of sight' for two duffel bags (swimming stuff and gym stuff). I usually use them daily or so, but with a fractured shoulder, they weren't in their usual homes (car), or in constant movement. So I wanted them in my blanket box. Which meant I had to tackle the 'school' memoribilia to make space. Now some of that ended up in boxes in my large bookcase that was previously on a slow 'emptying' path, as I'm not sure I was open shelves, that big, that style etc. So it's a slow migration, waiting to work out the perfect amount, the perfect place for everything etc.
hi maimai, what an interesting project. i would begin with the expression "less". i am (obviously) not a native speaker/writer but i think it works in my language and in english, too: what is "less" about? less is a comparison of -what-? less than others? less than before? less than normal? this would be my starting point of a project like this.
when i began to reduce my posessions it was more or less organizing. i have had a lot of old and used things that i wanted to replace. i found out that reducing is better than replacing. the house looks more calm, more designed, life got easier. there are no negative consequences for me.
Hi Maimai...cool project!
My "less is more" adventure started when I was in art school...didn't have money for a lot of stuff and survived on bare essentials...I felt poor.
When I got out of college, I had a little more money and thought that possessions equaled wealth...this is what I learned from my family (who, by the way, are all hoarders :) I began collecting stuff for no other reason than to HAVE MORE stuff! This included knick-knacks, clothes, food, animals, you name it...I had more of it and I felt rich...but I didn't feel happy :( I spent most of my days cleaning and taking care of all the stuff and could never do the things that I REALLY wanted to do.
Fast forward 20 years...deeply in debt from buying all the stuff I had acquired I was fat, miserable, unhappy, depressed and at my wits end. I decided to give it all away...or at least the non-essentials. It was HARD...because I was still paying for most of it via the credit cards I had used to buy it. Bit by bit, my house began to empty and my soul began to fill :) The more I gave away, the happier I became.
Now I am a border-line minimalist...I have only what I need and I don't purchase anything without hard-core thinking. I don't have to clean as much because there is nothing much to clean! My house isn't sterile-looking...in fact it is quite arty in a minimal sort of way...when people come over (which I allow now) they say my house is so calm and friendly. This has created an upsurge among my friends to par down their possessions...they also thought that "more" equals "rich." Many people are no longer feeling the need to (as the saying goes) "keep up with the Joneses" in a material sense because the "Joneses" are rich in so many other aspects.
I don't have much...I don't feel poor...I am SO happy now...I am so rich! :)
Hi Maimai,
I was always interested in clutter free living, but I had a hard time pulling it off. I never owned a lot of things, except for books (around 1000 now down to 700), yet the feeling of messiness and chaos at home was always prevalent.
I knew most of the concepts and methods for decluttering, but that did not help in achieving a state of harmony and peace at home.
When I saw the link to another decluttering expert, Brooks Palmer (http://brooks-palmer.blogspot.com), it's like I found the answer.
There is an emotional pain caused by keeping unwanted things. This emotional pain causes the restlessness in the mind; therefore I could never feel at ease at home.
When I really began to discard unwanted items, suddenly my home became an oasis where I could actually relax. Messiness no longer bothered me because it was created by things that I actually want and use.
Giving oneself permission to go with one's own true feelings about things was the key that allowed me to apply all the decluttering concepts.
I find that the society teaches us to ignore or even worse go against our feelings. When we stop doing that, sanity and peace are restored, and everything becomes so much simpler.
Bobyu, great points about the emotional aspects of clutter.
Open question: For a design project, how would one go about representing negative vs. positive emotions?
Hi Maimai!
Cool project, I'd love to see the results!
My minimizing came in waves. Growing up, my family were always neat and organized, but not minimalist at all. As a kid I accumulated a lot of things, had several collections and was very attached to all my things. Then we moved across the Atlantic to Canada, and we took only the bare minimum with us. That forced me to become quite pragmatic about my things, and take with me only the things I held most dear.
After a few years in a new house, I'd started to accumulate a lot of stuff once again, to the point where I had trouble fitting it all in my available storage, and cleaning and organizing were constantly needed. I was never terribly messy, but having things out of place bothered me, and the sheer abundance of stuff made it a chore.
The following purge came when I moved into my own apartment, and I had to fit everything I owned in a little studio. Luckily, I had ridiculous amounts of storage (closets and built-ins) for such a small place, so I didn't have to pare down too much. However, a year or so later, I moved in with my boyfriend and we both had to reduce our possesions quite drastically to make them all fit into a 1-bedroom apartment with less storage than we'd each previously had. We both have a bit of a minimalist esthetic and we're dancers who love having room to practice, so we agreed very early on that our house would be serene, minimal and easy to keep clean with 2 grown-ups and 2 cats.
Over the successive waves of getting rid of stuff I realised that having more wasn't making me happier, it was only stressing me out in much the same way that having too little can stress you out - excess can be just as taxing as want. My decision was never to cut down my possessions to the bare minimum, it was only to eliminate excess things, unused things and unloved things from my life. Rather than minimalism, it's a return to balanced living.
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