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04-13-10

A Formula for Minimalism

The Prob­lem

Mankind is wired to con­form to the env­iore­ment around them.  So, when you read about guys like Everett Bogue or Leo Babauta, you might feel like in order to be a min­i­mal­ist you’d have to do what they’re doing to achieve that type of lifestyle.  That’s not true, though, min­i­mal­ism looks and feels dif­fer­ent for each per­son.  It’s not prac­ti­cal to carry every­thing you own in a back­pack when you have a 9-​​month-​​old.

The Vari­able

The point of min­i­mal­ism isn’t to get every­thing you own under 100 items, it’s to get rid of all the things you don’t use or really need; and that’s rel­a­tive to each per­son.  If every­one adopted the min­i­mal­ist life and got rid of most every­thing they had, there would be no muse­ums, no libraries, and can you imag­ine a min­i­mal­ist hospital!?

The Equa­tion

So, in your quest to be min­i­mal, be aggres­sive in cut­ting out stuff but don’t be irra­tional.  Besides, the goal of min­i­mal­ism isn’t to have less stuff, it’s a lifestyle that enables you to live out your dreams which is a byprod­uct of hav­ing less. If your dream is to move into a smaller house and have a cheaper mort­gage pay­ment, then that’s not going to require you to get rid of as much stuff as if you were going to be a vagabond and travel the world.

My Solu­tion

I’ll be hon­est, my dream is to quit my day job and take a trip around the world.  So, my life is going to look a lot like Everett’s, but I have library of books (some that are very rare) and a col­lec­tion of indi­geouness arti­facts from my trav­els that I don’t want to get rid of.  My solu­tion is to leave them at my family’s house.

What about you, what are your dreams?  And what will it take to accom­plish those?

Andrew is a 20-​​something Chris­t­ian who adopted a sim­plis­tic lifestyle after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege and real­iz­ing the van­ity of rush­ing around and all the mate­ri­al­ism of our soci­ety. He wants to squeeze the most out of life and live each day extra­or­di­nar­ily through sim­ple means. Andrew is the author and edi­tor of Live [Sim­ply] Free, and con­tin­ues on the jour­ney of declut­ter­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing his life. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @Andrew_Randazzo.

Andrew Randazzo

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