Stuff

I’m not actually a minimalist

Although I can see why someone might think otherwise, given my tendency to purge my belongings. But I’m not interested in owning just 10 or 20 items of clothes, you’ll never find just one pair of shoes in my closet or just one purse and I like art on my walls and color all around. But I detest clutter and disorganization. When things get cluttered and disorganized, then I feel out of control in my own home.

Kent and I send each other links to interesting articles all the time. This week I sent him an article by miss minimalist about the concept of of areté, a Greek word for excellence; I've translated that in my mind to the notion of quality over quantity in all your belongings.

He sent me an article by Marc Gunther that looked at something called the Veridian; this article took the last Veridian note and considered the relationship we have with our things and why that’s so. The two articles sparked a really good discussion yesterday, sort of a philosophy of belongings conversation.

(I will say that Marc Gunther is clearly very involved in the the green movement and I'm not, so I found the first few paragraphs fluffy and I didn't get interested until he moved on to talking about the article The Last Veridian—however he did a great job pulling out the good stuff from there. I tried to read the original article and had to stop.)

I dislike using the word mindful because it smacks of eastern mysticism which I do not believe in and don’t follow, not in yoga and not in anything, but the word sort of works here. Kent and I want to deliberately choose to own our possessions and neither of us wants them to own us.

When I settle for something and it’s not exactly what I really wanted and needed, then it becomes a source of frustration and clutter—like the near misses in my closet; they hang there mocking me. I’ve seen Kent go through the same thing when he’s gotten a tool for home repair and it wasn’t really the one he knew he needed but what he needed wasn’t available.

I foresee a new round of purging for us, using the four categories mentioned in the second article.