Never Enough Space

My friend, D, collects Star Trek memorabilia. Anything Star Trek related he has to have. He actually has an entire room of his house completely dedicated to Star Trek - but his collection outgrew the room and is gradually taking over other areas of the house. Every birthday and Christmas D receives an avalanche of Star Trek merchandise, and he buys more throughout the year. He absolutely refuses to discard anything. If it's Star Trek, it's sacred.

"You'll just have to expand the Star Trek room!" one of D's friends said.

"Maybe I'll just take over a neighbor's house and fill it with Star Trek!" he joked.

That's when I realized: D and his wife will never, ever have a big enough house. Even if they expanded the Star Trek room to quadruple it's current size, it would quickly fill up.

To me it seems like a sad cycle to be stuck in; being eternally dissatisfied with the state and size of your home, but being unable to part with anything, and always wanting more.

But D insists that his stuff makes him happy. I wonder if it really does.

My Minimalist Wardrobe

These are all my clothes. Not pictured: socks and underwear.

When my husband and I moved, I got rid of any clothing I didn't really love. As a result, my wardrobe is pretty dang minimal. I was quite proud of the fact that my husband and I were able to fit almost all our clothing into a single suitcase. Here's what I currently have:

Tops: 15
Bottoms: 7
Dresses: 6
Coats: 4
Swimsuits: 1
Total: 33

These days I'm rotating between a few warm-weather tops. On the plus side, getting dressed is easy, and every day I get to wear my favorite clothes. But to be honest, after five weeks of this minimal wardrobe, I am getting a little bored, even though I haven't been shopping or looking at fashion blogs. My husband can wear the same shirt for several days, but apparently I cannot.

How do minimalist girls avoid wardrobe boredom? Any tips?

Warm minimalism: colorful quilt

image source

It's always nice to find an example of minimalism that isn't white-on-white-on-white. The brass lamp really compliments the warm colors of the quilt well.

Bracing for the holidays as a minimalist

Somehow the single room my husband and I share is slowly becoming cluttered, even though we haven't purchased anything new. A lot of the clutter is paper and mail, which I just need to deal with. It makes me dread the holidays, just a bit. Usually I love Christmas and I love presents - but we seriously do not have room for more things.

Around family, I am trying to slowly, subtly make references to me and my husband's new lifestyle, so that it sinks in before my relatives start buying us Christmas presents. I'm not announcing "we're minimalists now!" because that would be awkward, you know?

This weekend my brother-in-law had a birthday party, and my husband and I were offered party favor bags full of little plastic trinkets. We politely turned them down. Almost immediately the teasing ensued. "Oh, so our party favors aren't good enough for you?" they joked.

I felt bad. I considered accepting the party favors and then later secretly tossing them. But this way, my husband and I are sending a message that we are serious about not acquiring more stuff.

My mother-in-law mentioned that she is already collecting our Christmas presents. Reflexively I said,
"Well, we really don't have a lot of room right now, so-"
"I'll make them small things." She said, kindly.

It's a step in the right direction, I guess.

Warm Minimalism: A Floating Bathroom

I love the weightless simplicity of this modern bathroom. The bare lightbulbs and weathered mirror give it a slightly industrial look. This bathroom is from a stylish apartment in Berlin, and you can see more photos here. Imagine how few toiletries and beauty products you'd have to own to keep a room like this tidy!

How Stuff Makes Us Happy or Unhappy

A lot of minimalism blogs say "stuff can't make us happy," but I don't think that's completely true. Yes, ok, material objects can't provide true, lasting spiritual joy. But I still like stuff, and having new stuff. It makes me happy in a small way. For example, one of my favorite possessions is this bud vase from Crate & Barrel. It's beautiful and I really like looking at it.

We all like stuff, let's admit it. Stuff can make us feel temporarily happy, but more stuff does not equal more happiness. More stuff can make us miserable. People who suffer from hoarding disorders or cluttered houses describe it as "suffocating", "claustrophobic", "overwhelming" or "like drowning." That's pretty serious unhappiness!

We've all done it: we bought something that we thought would make us happy. We bring it home and have nowhere to put it, because our house is full. So we put it in a corner to deal with later.
Then it stays in the corner, making us feel bad every time we look at it.
When we do look at it we think "I would deal with it, but I'm just so busy."
We trip over it and stub our toes.
Other family members start to complain about it.
When guests come over we feel embarrassed and apologize for the mess.
We push it back further into the corner so we can have more space.
We feel guilty about the money we spent on it.

Eventually the stress it brings has more than outweighed the happy feelings we felt on buying it.

Not pictured: happiness. image source

So, weirdly, the key to enjoying your stuff is having less of it.

That's my approach to minimalism. I don't think I'll ever stop liking stuff or buying new stuff - although I am working on becoming less obsessed with it. My goal is to have less stuff, so that when I look into my closet, or sit at my desk, or pack up to move to a new place, I feel happy.

The one where I don't buy anything

I went shopping today, just for fun, for the first time in a month. My sister-in-law and two of her friends invited me to go to an antique shop with them. I enjoy looking at antiques, but generally don't feel a need to buy them, so I figured it would be "safe" for the recovering consumerist that I am.

And indeed, the antiques were mildly interesting but I lost interest about 40 minutes before the other girls did. I did find something really cool - an antique Turkish rug in pristine condition, with a bright pink pattern on it. Immediately I envisioned it in my future minimalist home - the fresh colors contrasting with the pure white walls and shining hardwood floors. It would really pop in a totally awesome way.

But I don't have that chic, modern home, and possibly never will. That's something I came to grips with in my last move. I realized that I had been keeping all sorts of stuff with which to decorate my future home - vases, decorative pillows and picture frames. But my husband and I are probably several years from owning a home, and until then we plan to live a semi-nomadic existence.

So I decided not to weigh down my present with items for the future.

Besides, the rug was $400. So....yeah.