The Want To Need Less

First published: 2018/06/13 03:33 (metric, UTC-4) on selfreflectionjk.weebly.com 

I’ve often thought of myself as a bit of a minimalist. Whether or not it is true, I’ve often observed I seem to pay more attention to the amount of stuff I allow myself to personally possess relative to a lot of my peers. Despite this self-righteous thinking, I realize now that objectively, and relative to the majority of people in the world, my consumption is nothing close to being minimal. I consume too much, I waste too much, and I spend too much of my time using and thinking about the material things I own.

I’ve always liked collecting things. Growing up I had all sorts of collections: coins, seashells, flags, baseball cards, hockey cards, hockey pucks, book series, bobbleheads, pop cans, etc.  I even had a weird phase where I was determined I was going to obtain the world’s largest collection of library cards and get my name in an edition of Guinness World Records (which was in fact one of the book series I collected as a kid) because of the uniqueness of such a collection1. At this point though, for the most part I see the idea of collecting things pretty ridiculous. If you can actually attach meaning, an experience or story, to each item in your collection, that’s fair, I get that, but if you have dozens of collections, and you’re just collecting for the sake of collecting, for the sake of owning as many things as possible, what’s the point? Those items could be put to good use by someone who actually needs them, the resources could be used elsewhere instead of just sitting around in a room in your house. Even if you are trying to set a record, in most cases, collecting is just wasteful hoarding in my opinion.

Clothes is something else I’ve struggled with. Again, I’m probably a lot harder on myself than the majority of people who come from my socioeconomic background in North America: I rarely make impulse buys and to justify buying a piece of clothing it has to be something I really like that is different enough from the clothes I have already and I need to be able to wear it for multiple purposes. I remember going to the mall one year after Christmas when I had a bunch of gift cards, and I walked around probably for a couple hours without buying a single thing, making me feel both frustrated and depressed. I felt that since I was spending this much time at the mall and because I had all these gift cards I had this nagging voice in my head telling me that I had to buy something that day. Because of my stingy, perfectionist nature though, I wasn’t going to buy something unless it was exactly what I wanted and it was reasonably priced, neither of which I could find in a piece of clothing that day. Despite these nit-picky tendencies when it comes to clothes shopping, my closet and drawers have always been stuffed with items that I wear once every few months, if at all. Sizes change, fashion styles change, t-shirts come from everywhere, and these articles of threaded fabric keep piling up.

Something I’ve found in the past when I’ve tried to sort through all my things, including my clothes and my collections, either for the purpose of having a garage sale or just to try to tidy up my room a bit, is that you can make a sentimental, or nostalgic, or souvenir argument for practically anything: 

“I can’t get rid of this book, it was my favourite book when I was 9! I want to save it so my kids can read it too!”

“I can’t get rid of this deformed clay bowl I made in art class when I was in Grade 1! I always want to remember how happy I was when I was that age, and this piece of pottery will bring back good memories!”

“I can’t get rid of this travel mug I received as a giveaway when I went to that baseball game in Philadelphia! It’s such a perfect souvenir from that trip!”

You get the point. Yeah it can be good to have a few things to make sure we don’t forget important experiences we’ve had or to remember the good times we’ve had in the past but if you’re honest with yourself, in most cases, photos, videos, and your own memory should be sufficient enough to serve this purpose. We really shouldn’t be caring about the past too much anyways, appreciating the present moment is what our main focus should be on.

So where is my minimalist mindset coming from, what’s my motivation, my inspiration here? Well I think my dad has always had a bit of a minimalistic philosophy when it comes to making purchasing decisions (ex. the amount of time and deliberation it took before our family bought a DVD player, a digital camera, a second vehicle, etc.) which I think rubbed off on me (ex. my insistence on keeping my four-year-old cell-phone with a six-hour sleep-mode battery life for as long as possible) even though I’ve often mocked him for it and complained to him about it when I was younger. Until I started to become more educated on the concept of minimalism though, I’ve never been very methodical or intentional about being a minimalist.

My main inspiration has come from two guys who fittingly call themselves The Minimalists. You may have heard of them, their names are Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus,and along with writing for their blog on theminimalists.com, and going on speaking tours, they were featured in the film Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. This is how I first heard of them: as part of The Meeting House’s Less is More series we watched this inspiring documentary during a home church meeting (while I was part of a group while living in Mississauga for my co-op work term last year) (preview of the movie below) and I’ve gone on to read more about them and their reflections on their experiences of committing to living a minimalist lifestyle.

The motivation I have for writing my own essay on minimalism is to give myself a chance to reflect on my own lifestyle, to figure out where I feel I am going wrong and why I'm going wrong in terms of my consumption habits, and to summarize what changes I plan to make or have made already using the experiences of The Minimalists as a guide. So the following section is the second part of this: the reasons I think it’s important to make some changes to my lifestyle and the underlying issues behind these reasons. You’ll notice that these underlying issues all happen to start with the letter “C” (out of pure coincidence).

1Backstory: this ambition started when a member of my family forgot to bring the book they were reading along with them on our annual vacation to Chesley Lake so we went to the nearby Southampton library where I got a membership so I could get the book out. This put my library card count up to 2 where unfortunately, it has remained ever since so my dream was never achieved.

Environmental reasons for minimalism (issues with consumption)

I find we hear so much about environmental degradation  - the climate is changing, the ice caps are melting, the sea levels are rising, the ozone layer is being depleted, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, cities are going to be flooded, prosperous farmland is going to turn into desert - and how it is all our fault - we’re polluting too much, we’re consuming too much - that it often just goes over our heads. The stuff we hear and the advice we are given to try to make a difference also often doesn’t feel very personally relevant and if we do try to make changes to our consumption it’s often short-lived because the society we live in makes it hard to change our consumption habits.

That being said, here are a few random facts and stats I’ve come across through the environmental studies course I took at the University of Waterloo this past term (ENVS 195) and my summer job at the Region of Waterloo landfill that may make you stop and think a bit about how much you consume:

• The average person in Canada consumes as much as 6 Chinese people, 12 Indian people, or 40 Somalian people (E. O’Connell, ENVS 195: Environment, Resources and Consumption, January 11, 2018)

• Approximately 500 tonnes of garbage is added to the Region of Waterloo landfill each day. While I was working as a spotter at the transfer station, we supposedly had 1500 vehicles come by to drop off household waste on our busiest Saturday (personal communication)

• Strategies such as the reduce-reuse-recycle campaign, and the green bin program have extended the life of the current landfill site by approximately 15 years, which is now the amount of time regional planners have to figure out where to divert waste after it has been filled as there is currently no other feasible site in the region (E. O’Connell, ENVS 195: Waste Management, February 27, 2018)

Socio-economic/political reasons for minimalism (issues with capitalism)

Realistically, worldwide, we already have what we need for all human beings to live free and comfortable lives, for everyone to live up to their potential: we have enough resources worldwide to end poverty, homelessness, world hunger if we wanted to (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/the-world-produces-enough-food-to-feed-everyone-so-why-do-people-go-hungry). The problem is we don't want to and we don’t want to because of our capitalist way of thinking. As the word implies, capital accumulation is what drives a capitalist economy. Business-owners and corporations want to sell more to earn bigger profits for themselves, employees want to earn more to buy more things for themselves, governments want more production, and stronger economies for prosperity exclusively in their own country, and to grow their own power and influence over the rest of the world. Why don’t we see this as a problem? Because all of us are personally so used to looking after ourselves before anyone else as well. We’ve grown up in an individualistic society that encourages us to never accept that what we have already is enough and that we should always be trying to get more. How can we change this? Each of us can start thinking about how we’re contributing to this individualistic way of thinking, how we’re taking advantage of the fact that we were born in the right place, at the right time, how we’re part of the reason that this inequality continues. We can start trying to live and consume in a way that is fair to everyone we share the planet with. 

(Read more about my issues with capitalism in my upcoming post Self-Reflection as a: Conflicted University Student) 

Personal well-being reasons for minimalism (issues with consumerism/commercialism)

Although I do believe it is for the sake of my own well-being to protect the environment and live a more collectivistic lifestyle, minimalism can also have benefits more directly on a personal level. Because we are constantly bombarded by the messages that “you need this to be happy”, “you don’t have quite enough”, “there’s always better options out there”, by living a simpler life we are faced with less choice resulting in less stress, less clutter, and more time and attention to focus on what really matters. 

In his TED Talk The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz uses his experience with how jean-shopping has evolved over time to illustrate how we are truly worse off than we used to be with the amount of choice we have as consumers even though we are able to consume objectively better products because of the abundance of choice. This theory resonates with me: ever since I started consistently eating the same thing for my first two meals each day (plain greek yogurt with blueberries and Fibre One for breakfast, tuna sandwich, veggies, an apple, and a Pure Protein bar for lunch) not only have I felt healthier physically, I also don’t have to spend time thinking about finding something new and exciting to eat each day that’s also decently healthy and tastes good, there’s no stressful choice that has to be made anymore.

“Intentional living, personal freedom, deeper awareness, better health, improved relationships, individual growth, and meaningful contribution”: these are the benefits of living a minimalist lifestyle that Joshua Fields Millburn, one of The Minimalists claims to have experienced firsthand (https://www.theminimalists.com/apartment/). Since he reduced the number of possessions he owns to a mere 288 (https://www.theminimalists.com/288/), he also claims to have shaved down the time it takes to clean his apartment from eight hours to less than 45 minutes which sounds very enticing for someone like me who tends to avoid cleaning until absolutely necessary, much to the annoyance of some of my family members (I just see it as a waste of my valuable time). 

Just as I’ve stated in my other reflections so far, the purpose behind this blog is to provide a medium for me to articulate the scattered, often philosophical thoughts, opinions, and observations I have on a daily basis at random times, in random places to give me motivation to actually make use of these thoughts by reflecting on them and making changes to the way I live my daily life. So I know I’m kind of jumping on the bandwagon with this reflection since there are plenty of blogs, and articles, and videos out there about the “minimalism” or “living simply” movement, but I’m just trying to figure out how to make this minimalism thing work best for me. Here are some concrete steps, many of which are inspired by The Minimalists, that I plan to take (or have taken already) over the next couple weeks, and which I will try to incorporate into my habits from here on in:

1. Get rid of my “junk” possessions, and as many of my “nonessential” possessions as I can 

   1. Start by sorting my possessions into “essentials”, “non-essentials”, and “junk” as defined here (https://www.theminimalists.com/enj/)

   2. As I’m sorting, be mindful of the instinctive desire to label items as “essential” that have sentimental value (https://www.theminimalists.com/sentimental/) or I think I should keep “just-in-case” (https://www.theminimalists.com/jic/). Make sure I’m asking myself “does this add value to my life?” (https://www.theminimalists.com/add-value/)

   3. I could follow the “Packing Party” concept that The Minimalists used when they started (https://www.theminimalists.com/21days/day3/) where I would pack up everything I own into boxes and only keep whatever I end up taking out of the boxes in the following days but realistically I think I will probably just pack up my “junk”

   4. Decide whether I want to trash (https://www.theminimalists.com/21days/day11/), donate (https://www.theminimalists.com/21days/day12/), or sell (https://www.theminimalists.com/21days/day13/) these packed up items (I will likely donate the majority of it to MCC’s Thrift on Kent). I will probably also try to digitize (https://www.theminimalists.com/21days/day14/) as many of the various photos, papers, and notes that get scattered all over my desk as well if I can find time to do that

2. Limit my purchases of material things in general

   1. How would our economies survive if we all made the decision to consume less? The minimalist economy: experiences, services, travel and tourism, art, higher-quality consumer products, research and problem solving, public good, sharing (https://www.becomingminimalist.com/minimalist-economy/)

   2. My goal is to never personally own a car or a house, unless I do something like Daniel Norris where my house is my car/van (https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/please-dont-let-the-money-change-me/) (may be a challenge depending on who I may want to live with in the future). Why do we need to own our own house, have 2 or 3 cars? Because society tells us that's what we need to be happy

   3. I also want to work towards avoiding buying items that come with unneeded packaging that goes straight into the garbage as much as possible which would likely mean sacrificing some convenience in terms of where I go to shop

3. Try to bring the concept of simplicity, of “less with more” into all aspects of my life

   1. Relationships, eating habits, leisure time, etc.

   2. Learning to live in the moment, to find joy in every second of life, to focus simply on breathing and tune out all other thoughts that pop into my mind

I realize doing all this isn’t possible for everyone. I’m a single university student who only has himself to support at this point and I’m also privileged in many other ways. I know I won’t be perfect with all this either: this is a lot to shoot for, it will take a lot of willpower to actually follow through with all these things. I may still buy things impulsively that I don’t really need, it may be hard for me to let go of some of my possessions even if I don’t have any use for them, and it’ll take effort to intentionally live more simply and fight against the instincts that the capitalist, consumerist society I grew up in ingrained in me. That’s why this isn’t a self-reflection as a minimalist, it’s a self-reflection as an “aspiring” minimalist. I truly think that if we really try, we as a human species as a whole have the ability to live and consume in a way that is environmentally sustainable, that is compassionate and fair to everyone that we share this planet with, that allows us all to be at personally more at ease. I think this is all possible, but it has to start somewhere. Government policies take time to change, entire socio-economic/political systems take even longer, and people aren’t going to make changes en masse without incentive to. So why not start with myself?

1. Do you ever stop and think about the amount of things you buy and the amount of time you spend thinking about buying more things?

2. Of the three reasons outlined for living a minimalist lifestyle (environmental, socio-economic/political, personal well-being) which one is most motivating for you?

3. Are you able to honestly tell yourself that all the material things you currently own truly add value to your life?