Updated on August 6, 2016
Minimalism is Freedom of Movement
I’ve been thinking about the concept of belongings & their direct relationship to freedom. If we own a lot of stuff, we tend to need a large property to store them in, we may need storage lockers or overflow storage elsewhere, we may even find ourselves needing to move house just to accommodate our belongings.
For a long time I was following that pattern. The first few times I moved house as an adult I only needed the space in a car to transfer my belongings, as time went on that car became a few car trips, then small transit vans and finally large removal vans. At the same time, the size of my property was also increasing. We started out in a tiny 1 bedroom top floor apartment which was owned by family, sparsely furnished and housing only our most important possessions (which at the time where are only possessions).
Our next apartment was even smaller, it was essentially two rooms in a converted Victorian house in Manchester, which had both been split in two, giving us a small living room & galley kitchen downstairs, a small spiral staircase in the living room went up to a small bedroom and tiny bathroom. We physically couldn’t fit much into that space & as a result we had the bare essential items. We didn’t feel deprived & the rent was so cheap. Our bikes were locked in the communal hallway & as the rent was so cheap, we really did exactly what we wanted with our lives.
Fast forward a few years and we progressed to a bigger 1 bedroom apartment, then onwards to a 2 bedroom house, then to a 3 bedroom house before finally moving into a 4 bedroom town house with garage and driveway. We haven’t had children and our core belongings haven’t changed. We still value our computers, cooking equipment, books and media centre, but the space had allowed us to accrue a load of extras. We had extra seating in the living room in the form of massive armchairs & sofas (for guests). We had a huge dining table to seat 6 people (we are still a family of 2). A garage full of rarely used tools, a spare bedroom, another bedroom used as a dressing room. Another bedroom used as a study and 3 bathrooms. Things where completely out of control. We where earning more money than when we lived in that first 1 bedroom apartment but we had next to no disposable income, the rent was almost triple & we had run up debts.
At this time a very close friend of mine was emigrating to New Zealand. He had been travelling for around a year and had seen a lot of Europe and ended up over in Australia & NZ. While in New Zealand he had made some good contacts & did some voluntary work at a maker space. He had decided to take up an offer of employment at the maker space in Wellington & with a bit of planning was ready to go. I was really sad to see him go, we have been close friends forever but this move was a positive step for him & the lessons learned helped me inadvertently.
On the morning he was leaving, I offered to take him to the train station to start his long journey to a new life on the other side of the globe. When picking him up I was shocked & intrigued by the fact he only had his travelling backpack & a small hold all. I don’t know why, but I expected this move to be like all of my moves. Surely all of his stuff was being shipped over. That wasn’t the case, he was literally starting a new life with only the things he could carry.
For some reason that really resonated with me.
I guess we both had similar upbringings & we both seem to have an issue with being tied to anything for too long. Be that work, a location or a routine. We always seem to change things up & make drastic moves or changes. He has always been a bit of a minimalist. Never owning much stuff, never buying into the latest crap. He even held off buying a mobile phone for years & always seemed to have money. Probably, because while we were busy buying rubbish, he was saving.
Suddenly I realised that if he could start a new life with only his most important & personal items, I could slim down my life to a much more manageable level & start to downsize property & belongings. It didn’t take long.
Within a few months I’d given notice on our 4 bedroom house, sold my fancy car, sold off a ton of the extras we had acquired, donated most of my clothing & started culling every aspect of my life. Within a few months everything was sold, the house was gone & we filled a small 80sqft storage unit with our entire life. We moved in with family for a year to clear off the debts we had run up over 10 years of ‘maximum-ism’. Each day we paid off a bit of debt & regained some of our old spirit. After a year, we had paid off almost £18K & bought a tiny 11 year old Fiat Panda car. It was the start of a new chapter in our life.
The next step was to move to a new property. We found a lovely church conversion in Cornwall which was 350 miles away from where we lived. Within a month we had moved in. It’s a modest two bedroom property. One bedroom is our work office and the smaller room is our actual bedroom. It has one bathroom, one living room & a kitchen.
We are still on our Minimalism journey. Just last week I bought a kindle so I could start to give away my physical book collection & move to a much lighter digital library. All of my music is digitised & we only use streaming services for movies now so no DVD’s. I do most of my work (including writing these posts) on an old Thinkpad X200 laptop I got on eBay for £50. Before it would have been the latest & greatest Macbook. This U-turn was life changing & in part I need to thank my friend for showing me the true value of stuff in your life & how it can hold you back. If he could make a new life in a new country without all the trappings of his old life, so can I.
Minimalism is definitely something I would recommend if you have itchy feet & constantly like to be on the move. My boredom threshold is quite low & routine while useful, tends to stifle me. I like to change things up constantly. Becoming minimalist allows me to do this with much more ease. When we moved down to Cornwall I still felt like we had too many belongings. We filled a van & the panda to get down here. It’s definitely a work in progress & I would expect that most minimalists are in constant review of their belongings. We are still sorting & downsizing & we aim to pay off all remaining debts & move to Amsterdam in the next 12 months. Following in the footsteps of my friend, we may not move with just a backpack and hold all, but it certainly won’t be any more than what we can fit in the car. This prospect really excites me.
The friend in question is still one of my closest, we talk often on Skype & Whatsapp & I’m hoping as my downsizing & simple living continues, I’ll be able to afford the air fare to go & see him in his new surroundings. We haven’t seen each other since that morning at the Train Station & it would be great to see inside each others lives again. To meet his new friends & family. The day is fast approaching when that will become reality. He also currently works at a micro brewery in Wellington, so that can only mean good times, right?
If you are new to Minimalism, feel free to ask me any questions in the comments below. If you are experienced, why not share some of your best advice with new readers.
Updated on August 3, 2016
Minimalism A documentary about the important things
I have been waiting on Joshua & Ryan’s documentary for a while now. The documentary is called Minimalism – A documentary about the important things. When they announced they where making a film I got very excited & knew that the final documentary would be great. Yesterday I saw them tweet the link to their documentary on Vimeo and I instantly headed over to the website to place my order. What I wasn’t expecting was to receive over 6 hours of bonus content & interviews. For £13 this is an absolute bargain.
My wife & I sat down to watch the documentary last night. The great thing about buying on Vimeo is that you can download a 1080p version of the documentary (HD) and watch it on any device you choose as it’s DRM free. This meant that I could watch on my media centre without worrying about having the Vimeo app installed & also means I can copy it to my laptop or tablet for watching on the go. A real bonus for me.
The documentary itself follows Ryan’s & Joshua’s book tour across the USA. They interview various bloggers, scientists and minimalists along the way & they really do highlight the benefits of living a more minimal lifestyle. I can totally relate to a lot of the issues raised in the documentary. My upbringing was very similar to Joshua’s & I feel a need to constantly reassess my life & check that everything is going in the right direction. I also have a real issue with wasting time & not wasting my day doing something that is meaningless.
I’ve already adopted a lot of minimalist values in my life. I only buy high quality items & I limit the items I own to ensure they meet multiple needs & add value to my life. It’s certainly an ongoing process and I find reading blogs & watching documentaries like this enable me to stay on track and address issues I’m having based on others experiences.
The documentary suggests that there is a real movement of people rejecting the modern norms of mass consumerism & debt. In their year of travel the boys start off giving talks to a few people in small halls & end up doing TV interviews and selling out talking venues & book shops. There is one scene in a Barnes & Noble store where people are literally standing on the bookshelves to listen. It’s nice to see that other people are adopting this lifestyle & with that brings more experiences and ideas.
I like it when Joshua mentioned someone he had met who kept a library of books & derived real joy from his book collection. Joshua’s answer to that was that it’s OK to keep things that bring you real value, but most things we bring into our home are faddy and don’t contribute anything to our lives in the long run.
Books used to be something I couldn’t part with, but I’ve slowly been converting my book addiction over to ebooks. I got the Amazon app for my iPad and just yesterday I took delivery of my first Kindle. My wife has had a kindle for years, she tends to read a lot of novels & never feels the need to hang onto them when she has finished. I, on the other hand tend to read a lot of non fiction, technical & text books. I find real value in having these available for reference, but I’ve actually found that having digital versions of these allows me to carry them everywhere with me on a single small device & makes me much lighter as a human being who tends to move house a lot (books weigh an absolute ton when moving house). The biggest benefit I’ve found however is the ability to search within the text of ebooks. It’s a game changer.
Anyway, back to the documentary. So far I’ve watched the documentary itself, which if you are even remotely interested in simple living or minimalism, you should watch. I’ve also watched the 40 minute full interview with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits which is well worth a watch. I’m nowhere near as far into this journey as Leo, but I do relate to what he said about thinking of himself 10 years ago & giving that person advice. It definitely helps me to see how far I’ve come & the work I’ve still got to do. I’ll be working through the other bonus features this week.
For £13 you get the documentary which is 1 hour and 18 minutes and you also get over 6 hours of interviews. This is an absolute bargain. Go watch it now! Other people included in the documentary are Joshua Becker, Tammy Strobel of Tiny House fame, Colin Beavan (the Low Impact Man – another great documentary) & Patrick Rhone along with some neuroscientists, sociologists and other scientists.
Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things from The Minimalists on Vimeo.
Updated on August 16, 2016
Minimalism
I’ve been a minimalist in the making for many years now. I grew up in a house with an overwhelming amount of stuff. I always tried to have my bedroom as neat & tidy as possible as a child, and would often base my room on the IKEA catalogue. It was like a showroom for many years. As I hit my teenage years this all went out of the window. Hormones took over & I would rather sleep or spend time with friends than spend time organising and culling my belongings. It was only when I started living in rented accommodation that Minimalism started to appeal to me again. In the last 10 years I’ve probably moved house around 20 times. As a renter we tend to have a lease for a short amount of time and then move on. In that time I’ve also needed a storage unit for 2 years to store extra stuff, either while living in smaller properties or staying with family in between houses. This adds up to thousands of pounds in wasted cash over the years.
Back in 2008 I read Sold Out by Robert Llewellyn and it got me even more interested in the minimalist movement. The book is about Robert giving up buying anything for a whole year. It’s a great read & I even did this myself after reading the book. My wife also got on board with the minimalism thing & we started to slowly downsize our belongings.
We have kept this up over the years & while not hardcore minimalists, we where able to move house this time with a single van. Some of the things we have done are as follows.
Media – We no longer buy any physical media, be that DVD or Blu Ray, Music CD’s or books. Our collection used to be massive, we had over 1000 movies on DVD which took up loads of space. We donated a lot to charity & sold the rest of our DVD collection to pay off some debts. We now only use streaming media, be that through the Apple TV, Kodi on the Raspberry Pi or the various catch up TV services. This means we have cleared out a load of our belongings in one go, removing the need for storing it & meaning we can live in a smaller place. The same goes for books. We donated the majority of our books, only keeping our absolute favourites & now we tend to read ebooks on the kindle. Our music collection has been digitized for many years and we also take advantage of Spotify free streaming for any music not in our own collection.
Paperwork – With the exception of ID, such as Birth Certificates, Marriage Certificates and passports, we have pretty much destroyed our entire paperwork stash. We used to have a 3 drawer filing cabinet fill of bank statements and other paperwork. We switched our bank statements to online only, as culled the rest of the paperwork stash. We followed Rachel Aust‘s suggestion of keeping only essential paperwork in a small plastic wallet & either scanning receipts for business or throwing them out. We went from a massive filing cabinet to a plastic wallet. It saves a ton of storage space & the weight reduction is insane (you should try moving house with 10+KG of paperwork).
Magazines – Magazines used to be a real problem for us. I would buy tech magazines and car magazines whilst my wife was obsessed with fashion & beauty magazines. We spent a small fortune on them, they filled so many boxes when it came to move & we couldn’t throw them away due to some sense of value in them. We had over 100KG of magazines and we sent them all off for recycling. We now read them in coffee shops or stick to read decent blogs & news sites. Magazines are one of the biggest enemies of The Minimalist and quickly accumulate all over your home. They also cost so much money. If you can, drop the magazine subscriptions and source your information on free websites.
Clothing – We have simplified our wardrobe massively. My wife & I share a single clothes rail & a small 3 drawer chest of drawers for all of our clothes. Outdoor coats are kept on a hook in the kitchen & we only have a few pairs of shoes each. I normally have a pair of new trainers, an older pair of trainers & smart shoes. If I replace the new trainers, they become the old trainers and my old trainers are thrown out. The shoes are only used a few times a year & kept for weddings & special events. I used to own 90+ T-shirts, I now own 10. The same goes for underwear. I have 7 pairs of socks & 7 boxers. They too work on a one in one out basis. This saves me a fortune on clothes shopping and also means I can happily replace anything that is worn out without feeling guilty. It’s also much easier when your clothes as a couple pack into two suitcases.
Technology – This is still my biggest vice, but I have cut down a lot. I recently sorted through my old tech & donated 3 whole bin liners full of old wires, chargers, routers and similar tech items. I now have my iMac as my main machine, my X200 laptop as my Linux machine, iPhone 6 as my phone and an iPod 5th Generation which I adore. Apart from that we have the TV, Apple TV, Xbox one and Raspberry Pi media centre. My wife has her Kindle, Macbook and iPhone 4. Tech is the one thing that can really help a minimalist. My iPhone is also my e-book reader, my calendar, my camera, Digital wallet, Music collection using iTunes Match. Same with my iMac. I use it to watch TV, Movies, Listen to music & work. When it comes to Minimalism & tech I think as long as each piece of tech serves a unique purpose, and there is no overlap, you can keep it. But if you never use it, why not donate or sell it? It will save space & give someone else the opportunity to use it.
Furniture – We used to have quite a bit of furniture, most of the useless stuff was classified as ‘guest’ furniture. We had Spare beds, spare pillows, spare chairs. You name it we had extra stuff as if two more people lived with us. This had to change so a year or so ago we sold off the extra furniture. We sold arm chairs, mattresses, beds, dining chairs, plates, cutlery. In fact anything that wasn’t used by the two of us on a regular basis had to go. We now only have well used & functional furniture. This works much better for us & the rooms in our home feel bigger & lighter.
Cars – We used to own big, flash cars. The last car we owned was a Mercedes C class estate. It was spacious & luxurious. It was expensive & massive for the two of us. We decided to sell the car and try to live without one. We lived without a car for 7 months & it was liberating, but we decided a compromise was needed. Before we had cars we lived in City Centre Manchester. We did everything on foot or on public transport. It worked because we could get a taxi to the airport, or walk to the train station and get a train. We never needed a vehicle and it never seemed like an issue. Since moving out of a city it’s more of a requirement. For now, we live very rurally and it would take us hours to complete the most basic of tasks. We therefore bought a tiny, used, 2004 Fiat Panda. It’s bright blue & perfect for the two of us. It’s so cheap to run, tax & insure and it lets us do everything we could in the Mercedes for a fraction of the cost. We put perhaps £30 of fuel in each month and the Road Tax & Insurance is only £300 per year for both of us. When we move back to a city I’ll switch back to a bike or a scooter but for now, this is the best compromise.
There are loads of minimalist things you can adopt in your life. I fancied getting into the 100 things camp, where you only own 100 items. Maybe in the future I’ll pursue this, but the key is to find what works for you. I find I have more money to play with. We don’t tend to bring anything new into the house unless it’s replacing something worn out (with the exception of food & drink). It also means we don’t have to earn as much money to live this way, freeing up time for ourselves. That is one surprising benefit of minimalism. Living this way also means our physical footprint is getting smaller. We could feasibly move into a tiny apartment next time we move, and not even fill it. Minimalism becomes quite addictive. In the modern world, so much of what once was physical is now digital. This means you don’t have to do without your entertainment, you just don’t need to have physical copies clogging up your space. It essentially means we all have endless storage space for that kind of stuff (not that I’m advocating digital hoarding).
I’ll go into more detail in future posts on each of the above points. I have so many more to cover in the future.
I have many inspirations for this kind of thing, but my main 3 would be Robert Llewellyn, Rachel Aust & The Minimalists Ryan & Joshua
Let me know your thoughts on this post, also if you have any tips or advice, share it in the comments below. It may help out some of the other readers of this blog.
Updated on February 29, 2016
Finding value in yourself & not stuff
For a long time I’ve been seeking value & validation in the wrong places. I thought that to be successful you had to have a fancy job title, great salary, fancy cars & a nice house. I worked hard to educate myself to a high standard. I have two university degrees (A Masters & a bachelors). Up until a few years ago I lived in a four bedroom town house. I drove a Mercedes. I bought all of the latest gadgets & gizmos. Rather than feeling validated with all this stuff & achievement, I felt lost. I felt like I was living someone else’s life. Living someone else’s dream.
From the outside it would have appeared that I had everything. The truth is I was running up massive debt’s working harder than ever & not really achieving anything I initially set out to achieve. The strange thing is, I can’t actually pinpoint exactly when it all went wrong, but I think for me it was a combination of too much social media, FOMO (fear of missing out) and earning a little more money than I used to.
Going right back to when I was a child, I had very little. I would make do a lot & our family in comparison to most other families would have been classed as quite poor. We had money to eat & pay the bills but nothing extra. I never really had much but what I did have I treasured.
My first real computer (the one that got me into computing in a big way) was an Amiga 1200. I used to deliver huge bundles of news papers to pay for it. I saved for months. It would take me 2 nights to deliver 360 newspapers and I would make £6.50 a week. I treasured that Amiga 1200 so much and it really inspired me & got me started in the world of IT. The next machine I had was a 386 which was donated to me and then my big rig was a Cyrix 300Mhz processor powered machine. Cyrix are long out of business but it was a pentium alternative and whilst not the fastest machine it taught me so much.
Contrast this to later in life, when I had iPhone’s, iMac’s, Macbook’s and a plethora of tech. Most of which was bought on finance or on a whim and non of which influenced me as much as this early kit which I had to fight for. I put a lot of money into this kit but no value.
I have loads of examples of this kind of thing. As a student I lived on hardly any money. Without parent’s to help me through University I scraped by on a very minimal financial existence but lived a very full life & I was so productive & happy. Again I didn’t have all the latest kit but I would beg, borrow & make do with all of the computer kit I could get my hands on & I never felt like I was missing anything.
Somewhere along the way this all changed and I got flash. I went from only having a bicycle, to a lease car, to a 4X4 to a fancy Mercedes estate. The same with the houses, which went from a crummy one bed apartment, to a nice apartment, to a two bedroom house then a three bedroom and onto a four bedroom quasi mansion. I was still the same person as was my wife. We still had the same needs & the same passions, but we became distracted & started placing value in the wrong things.
Up until the point in which we got into huge amounts of debt acquiring crap we didn’t need, I would have placed my value in my eagerness to always learn, to always study & seek out information. I would also place my value in being a reliable friend, a trustworthy friend, a caring person & someone who always had time for others. I was the kind of laid back person most of us will meet along the way in life. I was always surrounded by people & I always seemed to be a social anchor, with people looking to me for leadership & organisation. Around 2008 when things started to change I had so many amazing people in my life who I would class as close friends. I had the best, real social network. Then things started to change.
Around the end of 2008 when I was finishing my Masters degree, we decided to move back to my home town. We moved into a 3 bedroom house (we only need one) and unfortunately we put distance in between us and our friends & also the things which I held value in (education & simple living). We now needed a car, so we had a lease car. Our costs started to spiral and we started feeling more disconnected. This pattern continued until around 2012, at which point we had already decided things weren’t right & to start to make changes.
The thing that happened next was both extremely difficult & life changing. My wife’s dad had a massive stroke. We aren’t talking about the kind which most people are aware of, where a little paralysis and brain trouble occur, we are talking Life & death, 4 days of a major blood clot on the brain followed by extremely dangerous surgery, weeks in intensive care & then months & months of daily rehabilitation in a brain injury unit. A stroke is always pretty devastating but this was the kind which people normally don’t survive. But he is tough & he did. We spent all day, everyday at the hospital. We lived & breathed his recovery, attending physio classes and all the other things that go along with it. We watched as bit by bit his friends, colleagues & people closer stepped away. His savings disappeared in care costs & 4 house moves later, into ever smaller properties we watched as his belongings had to go. This episode was life changing for my wife & I. An event like this can’t help but change your outlook on life. Seeing the other people in the Brain Injury unit was humbling. When people’s health suffers all of the trappings of consumer life go out of the window. The one thing money can’t buy is health & in that unit I witnessed determination, kindness and gratitude on a completely different level.
We are now years on and each day is still rehabilitation. Something like a stroke really highlights the inner strength people can find & the kindness of others. While most people are busy chasing their own dreams of wealth & success, there are people who selflessly, day after day, help others without any recognition. When you are exhausted from helping and a stranger offers help, even if it’s just a lift somewhere or a favour, it is a greater gift than money or any job promotion. People offer my father in law help daily & there aren’t words to say how thankful I am for that.
We now see the world completely differently. Unfortunately for me, this isn’t the first time I’ve been through a situation like this. I went through issues first with my dad as a young teenager spending months in Intensive Care, his subsequent death when I was 17 and various other family crisis as a teenager. I now realise that value can’t be attached to stuff or a job title. I’ve seen how it can all be lost overnight & when it is, people don’t mourn the loss of the stuff, they just hope to be healthy & loved. My father in law was always busy working before the stroke. Nowadays he is genuinely excited for us to visit. He values other people, kindness, being included in peoples lives & being loved. This is a man who spent a long time in the British Army, did tours of the most horrendous conflicts of recent memory as a medic & after leaving the army would often work 80+ hours a week.
I feel that if I didn’t look at this from the point of view I bring to most things, that of being a scientist, I would be wasting one of the most valuable lessons I’ve encountered. A new TV might make you happy for a few months, but a brilliant friendship & time spent with that person will make you happy for a lifetime. Working a job that pays well may top-up your bank balance & make you feel secure, but if you don’t love what you do you will never meet your potential. And if something life changing happens tomorrow, you wouldn’t want to regret not following your passions for the sake of a well paying job!
Since downsizing & minimising I’ve found I have much more time to dedicate to people & the things I love to do. I can spend a day doing a bit of work or I can decide to go off exploring with my wife. I can do a few hours work in the morning & spend the rest of the day pondering on an idea or reading a book. I can take time to learn instead of earn. I could earn a lot of money if I put my education to use, but the fact is that I love to learn. It’s the process I love, not the certificate at the end. I find my value in being able to become absorbed in new research, or researching things myself. I love learning about new technology or different ways to re-purpose old tech. I probably live on an average part time wage but I feel wealthy. I have time for myself, time to dedicate to things I love to do. That, to me is more valuable than trading my precious hours for cash.
I intend to downsize even further. By the time we move next, I’m hoping all of our belongings will fit into a single transit van. I find value in the ability to change my situation, move house, move country, change everything with ease. I no longer find my value in stuff. I write this blog on an ancient Lenovo thinkpad X200 laptop I bought on ebay for £50. That is the old me, the true me. I’m sat on the sofa, with a cup of tea, during the working day, writing for myself.
So my question to you would be this. If you didn’t feel the social pressure to be successful in the traditional sense of the word, what would you spend your time doing? And would you need a lot of money to do it? It’s time to stop comparing yourself to others. in most cases those people feel as though they are winging it just as much as you do, they just happen to take on more debt or work longer hours. Most of us could live with less & by needing & wanting less, you need to earn less money, which means you free up time to do more of the things you love.
If I could give you one piece of advice (which I would also go back and tell the version of me in 2008) it would be to always follow your heart & do what you love, no matter what it takes. Life isn’t all about how much you earn, it’s how much you enjoy what you do while still being able to afford to live. If I had the time over I would never have moved from my small city apartment & I would have gone straight into studying for my PhD. I’ll get back there, it just takes longer to right the wrongs of bad decisions & to get my mindset away from consumerism and back on living a full life.
The thing I value more than anything is friendship. I have the best friend in my wife. We have been through a lifetime of pain & joy in 16 years and we are stronger for it. I love spending my days with her and working towards our own goals. I value the friendships I have with my close friends. They are all amazing & would do anything for me. That offers me far more security than a hefty bank balance. Money can disappear in no time, but a good friend is more valuable than anything I know of. And if you are ever in need, you will feel the same.
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