Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words. If you’d like to participate, click here for details. (Note: the schedule is now full until April — but if you don’t mind waiting, feel free to send me your submission!)
This week, Sarah gives us an international perspective on minimalism: she’s moved from Trinidad to Spain to the United States. She also shares what steps she’s taken to simplify her life.
Sarah writes:
I’m an international student from Trinidad and Tobago, and first got into minimalism a few years ago, having stumbled upon Leo Babauta’s blog, Zen Habits. I only began understanding minimalism when I moved from Trinidad to Madrid, Spain to begin my undergraduate degree. The airplane limit was always two suitcases, and in Madrid I moved from one apartment to another fairly often so I kept my stuff in check, ensuring that I never had more than two suitcases worth of stuff. This is something I try to maintain, although with some difficulty. One plus to living in Spain was that most of the apartments came furnished, so I never had to acquire any furniture, albeit this meant having to live with the skankiest sofas in the world!
Having come from Trinidad, a former British colony and an island, there were times when certain material items were not easy to acquire. This never really hit me until I left Trinidad for a significant period of time. My family – and many others practice some level of hoarding a result. Almost nothing gets thrown away, and this can be seen regardless of socioeconomic status. I never thought about it until I went home one year for the holiday and I was reading a really interesting book of letters written in the mid to late 1800’s, which chronicled life on the island from the point of view of a young female settler from Guernsey. One of the most striking things I learned was that they held onto so many things, as they had no idea when the next shipment would come in. Everyday things in England became prized on the island. Sadly, Trinidad isn’t terribly different nowadays. With the introduction of American cable television in the mid nineties, our society has changed a great deal and there is more of a want for stuff. Many people from my country buy into these lifestyles as a result, myself included, until after I left home. While some of the things advertised are available, they often cost three or more times of their cost in the United States From my tiny island, the United States seemed like a vast shopping mall, with amusement parks every few hundred miles, as in the past I had only been to the United States to visit malls or theme parks with my family.
When I moved from Spain to Austin, Texas in 2007 to be with my life partner (a Texas native), I had similar expectations. The natural beauty was shocking to me as was presence of culture, having never envisioned this beautiful country otherwise. While I have not yet seen even a quarter of the beauty and culture this country offers, it is certainly my goal. As beautiful as this country is, it is no secret that consumerism is thrown at us from every possible direction. As a result, my partner and I have been gradually attempting to make our lives minimal. Two years ago, we gave up cable television, and kept the TV and DVD, so that we could subscribe to Netflix. My partner was resistant to my minimalist mindset, but gradually, I got rid of a great deal of her stuff. I know it may sound mean, but she never cooked and had a kitchen full of gadgets, pots and pans that her hopeful mother bestowed upon her. In the last year, we have become vegetarian too – while not necessarily minimalist (and certainly not for everyone) – we also became much more aware of buying packaged foods with less than whole ingredients. We practice the rule of “one thing in, another thing out”, which has helped us to keep tabs on our closets especially. We also adore the minimalist aesthetic, having fallen in love with the work of the late Donald Judd. When we must acquire something new, we try to get it used, however, since aesthetics are of some importance, we must both love the item and if we are buying it, we get the best that we can afford.
Ultimately, we feel a lot better and are much happier. Of course, there are still some areas that need work. Some areas are prone to clutter, and we are working on nipping this in the bud! We recently moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota so that I could attend (more) school, and as a result, we’ve acquired a great deal of bulky, snow-related things. However, we don’t intend to stay here forever, and I know that these things can be donated or freecycled away.
{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
Sarah,
You touch on a couple of very interesting things:
– culture/background’s influence on our relationship to stuff
– reticent partners who are taken along on the minimalist path
I’m presently pondering much of the same…
Thanks for sharing your experience and progression into minimalism.
Hi Sarah,
I enjoyed reading your story. It is very interesting to see how you and your partner have moved to a minimalist lifestyle.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Hi Sarah!
I can totally understand your story. I’m from the Caribbean myself (Curaçao, the Dutch Antilles) and know what you mean with scarcity on the islands. ‘back home’ they still pay $5 for a bottle of Coca Cola. And there being no Ikea (or any other store that sells ready-to-go furniture) prices of these ‘everyday items’ are still very high.
It’s funny how you write about America. Again, I have the same memories. My father used to go to Florida a lot to buy equipment for his business or to buy things like small motorboats. We never get to see the nature or anything beyond the outlet-malls ;)
Keep up the good work, I really enjoyed reading your story!
Greetings from the Netherlands :)
It is interesting to hear how culture affects one’s thoughts about clutter and belongings. I am from a fairly suburban area in the south, and affluence is rampant. We visited southeastern Kentucky for a missions trip, fairly remote area. One thing that struck me was everyone’s yard looked like a garbage dump. Asking the local pastor (who was raised there) he explained that since it was so far to *town* (closest walmart and shopping over an hour over the mountains)people kept stuff never knowing if they could use the parts of it, or better yet, trade or sell something to someone. It was very eyeopening!
Great story you have, Sarah!
Bernice
Are you too busy to be yourself?
This is one of my favorite Real-Life-Minimalist posts yet. I love hearing about the culture and place differences. Also, I love the idea of keeping the amount of stuff you own down to two suitcases. Aside from furniture, it’s probably a handy way to easily assess what the state of your stuff is.
It’s interesting how you characterized America as “Malls and Amusement Parks every few hundred miles” I would suspect if you took a map and overlaid the malls and amusement parks, you’d find a lot less than every few hundred miles. I suspect you’d end up with a mall or an amusement park every 50 miles, on average. We don’t want for anything, really, here.
And that’s the kind of attitude and thing that has to change if we’re going to be sustainable in the future.
I’ll second Magnificent Minimalist – Sarah is my favourite yet. I’m an English teacher of international students so I can really relate to what she says about cultural differences and how it makes ‘natives’ see their own country through different eyes. I teach a lot of Chinese, and can see so easily how the modern well-off Chinese can’t forget their poorer recent past and embrace consumerism. It stops me being judgmental about people who fall into the trap.
Must go – I have my final teaching exams tomorrow and I’m procrastinating!
I think we are all biased to our own circumstances. It takes an open mind to re-evaluate where we came from. Great post!
Only just found your blog but it all brings me back a couple years, right about when the GFC first hit actually. I was out of work, running out of money and had to make one of the hardest and yet most forfilling decisions I’ve ever done. There was no way round the fact that if I kept going like I had being I would not only not be able to continue to afford Rent but i wouldn’t have money for food or basic necessities.
Everything I had was either sold off, chucked out or left out on the verge, all I had left was a couple suitcases with clothes, important papers and a few treasures I couldn’t bare to part with. I also had my laptop and mobil. Then I spent a month sleeping in the back of my car. Not the most comfortable place to sleep. Showers were done in a swimsuit under the cold taps they often have by the beach for washing off salt water and sand, laundry was done in public bathrooms in the sink, no money for laundrymats. The only form on entertainment I had was my laptop, which could run for about 3hrs before needing to recharge and my mobil which had a radio so I could listen to free music.
When I didn’t have a job interveiw, which had to be close by because I didn’t want to waste petrol and have to buy more, I often spent time at the local library, using thier power sockets so I could re-cahrge and use my laptop and re-charge my mobil too. It was tough but it was really enlightening too. It really makes you focus on what’s really important in life and how little you really need. As difficult as it was it still stands out in my memory as actually being a happy, forfilling time in my life. Perhaps I should try to re-capture a bit of that.
Hi, Francine
I wonder if you´d care to assemble a list of minimalist characters in fiction
Here´s mine:
Albert Hosteen (Floyd Red Crow Westerman) The X-Files (episode Anasazi) 1995
Angela Bennett (Brooke Langton) The Net 1998
Annie Pope (Christine Lahti) Running on Empty 1988
Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) The never ending story (adaptation of Michael Ende´s story) Die unendliche Geschichte 1994
Bodhi (Patrick Swaize) Point Break 1991
Bridget Gregory / Wendy Kroy (Linda Fiorentino) The last seduction 1994
Brill (Edward Lyle) (Gene Hackman) Enemy of the state 1998
Dalton (Patrick Swayze) Road House 1989
Elsie (Emily Watson) Gosford Park 2001
Emily Crane (Kelly Mac Gillis) The house on Carroll Street 1988
Frank Shore (Ed Harris) The third miracle 1999
Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) What´s eating Gilbert Grape ? 1993
Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) Jurassic Park 1993
Jack Dawson (Leonardo Di Caprio) Titanic 1997
James Atherton, Doctor (Julian Sands) Arachnophobia 1990
Jarod (Michael T. Weiss) The Pretender 2001
Jason Charles Bourne / David Webb (Matt Damon – Matthew Paige Damon) The Bourne Ultimatum 2007
John Clark / Mr. Smith (Willem Dafoe) Clear and present danger 1994
Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan) The matador 2005 (James Bond´s psycho twin brother, separated at birth, no doubt)
Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) Double Jeopardy 1999
Lilly Dillon (Angelica Huston) The grifters 1990 (con people)
Marie Helena Kreutz / Marie St. Jacques (Franka Potente) The Bourne Ultimatum 2007
Marion (Solveig Dommartin) Les ailes du désir / Der Himmel über Berlin 1987
Myra Langtry (Annette Bening) The Grifters 1990 (con people)
Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton) Mission: Impossible II 2000
Ruby Thewes (Renée Zellweger) Cold Mountain 2003
Sam (Johnny Depp) Benny and Joon 1993
September (Juliette Lewis) Dharma and Greg 5×06 Try to remember thsi kind of September 2001 – 1997-2002
Spiller (Daniel Newman) The borrowers 1992
Thomas Veil (Bruce Greenwood) Nowhere man 1995
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) Fight Club 1999
Wow, Lelia, what a fabulous list — thank you so much! I’ll have to share this in a future post… :)
I can relate … I’m an American living in a remote corner of Belize for the past 25 years. On the plus side, it has taught me to make do, to use and reuse, and w/o advertising, I am not into consumerism. That said, the urge to hoard is hard to shake off and I am doing my best to declutter!
Wow Sarah, I loved hearing your perspective on how another culture deals with their belongings. Your story of Trinidad was fascinating for me!
How wonderful that you got your honey on board with your decluttering/minimalism kick. It sounds like a great life your carving out for yourself up in “snow country”.
Cheers,
Tanja
I live in a suburb which borders Chicago. There is no reason to stock up on anything here because there are stores on every corner. Yet I see people with 24 rolls of toilet paper or 12 bars of soap. We buy enough for a week or two, not a year or a lifetime.There are always sales. And sometimes things are free.
I was talking about cleaning closets and how happy I am with less stuff. There is so much I can live without. I missed my grandsons’ Christmas play because I went to the dr. About an ear infection instead.
My first cousin died in his huge hoard. My mother was a hoarder. Growing up, my father would not let us visit any of my mother’s aunts or cousins because he said their apartments were filthy. My cousin was visiting from Boston, he had seen those relatives as a boy, he said they were what we now call hoarders and they smelled terrible. When I see a mess, I always have an urge to get rid of things. We are always filling bags for a charity or the veterinarian.