Noble on Minimalism

Sometime during August I discovered something called minimalism, probably through an article on the Yahoo homepage. I was immediately intrigued; people who live with the fewest amount of things they can get away with? I had heard of it before, namely in a young adult book called The Gospel According to Larry and its sequels, but I didn't know it had a name to it.

As usual, I did a ton of research on it. When I want to know about something, I read EVERYTHING. Seriously everything. Since talking with the Air Force recruiter I haven't learned anything that I hadn't already learned from doing my research. I'm a bit obsessive that way.

Anyway, I found a lot of blogs to read, a lot of articles, and the more I read it the more I realized that I liked the idea, even agreed with some of it. While I will probably never be able to be an extreme minimalist, I would love to only own what I absolutely need.

In my family, it's never really been that way. We have always had stuff; books, tools (kitchen and guy tools), decorative knickknacks, magazines, CDs, even old vinyl records that my mom collected and kept for a long time even though we didn't have a working player. I learned, probably subconsciously, to keep things. I keep all my papers, I always find a reason to keep books I will probably never read again (or even read for the first time), and I can't seem to get rid of small things that are usually associated with memories. Over my twenty-one years I have collected a lot of 'stuff'.

Moving four times in less than a year has shown me that I really don't need half the stuff I lug around, and that really they are weighing me down. And when I join the Air Force I won't be allowed to have my stuff for at least the first four to six months.

After a couple of weeks of going over everything I could find on minimalism it went to the back burner in my mind, like most things do. I kept tabs on my favorite of the blogs, listed to the right as miss minimalism, but that was about it.

Recently though, I've been having to go through my stuff and start packing it up again. While I'm not leaving for several more months, I wanted to make room in my room for a desk for my mom's sewing machine because I feel bad that I'm going to be here a lot longer than anyone thought. Originally the room I'm staying in was supposed to be mom's sewing room, and she's had to do without because of me.

So I had to look at my stuff and say what I could live without for a while so that I could give her a place to do her favorite thing (so she doesn't go crazy over the winter). I've found that packing things up and getting it out of my room, as well as getting rid of things I don't have room for, made me feel good. My room felt open again, and I have places for some more things. I even got rid of all but two of my favorite stuffed animals. I only kept the two that had the most special meaning to me (one I got when my second youngest brother was born, and the second I got when I was eight and got baptized).

Yech, I'm rambling.

Anyway, what I mean to say is, while I will never get my possessions down to one hundred, or even two hundred, during the months before I leave for basic training in Texas I hope to start my way down the minimalist path and get rid of everything I don't need and never use. Hopefully without so much stuff weighing me down I will feel less tired all the time and feel like I don't have to worry about where I'm going to put everything.

If you've heard of or practice minimalism or something like it, tell me about it.