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.
This week, we meet Shelby Gonzalez. She purged her possessions for an around-the-world trip, and continues to embrace a minimalist lifestyle. Shelby tweets about travel, outdoor adventure and fearless living at www.Twitter.com/ShelbyGonzalez.
Shelby writes:
As a teenager, I favored what could be described as the “magical flea-market bordello” aesthetic, characterized by an attic bedroom bedecked with dark posters, old velvet drapes, and arrangements of dust-frosted candles and glass bottles studding every horizontal surface.Dirty clothes huddled under the fainting couch. (Oh yes, I had a fainting couch.) Half-finished collages and attendant scraps of paper peppered the floor. Piles of books teetered atop the overflowing bookcase.
Always well-behaved and a dedicated student, I had started college at age 16. When I turned 18, I decided to take a European-style gap year, funded by a settlement from getting bitten on the face by a dog at age six. I wanted a break to have adventures and find myself and smooch boys without having to worry about my mom waltzing in.
I planned a grand trip starting in New Zealand and zigzagging throughout southeast and central Asia. One of the tickets I bought was from Bangkok to Kathmandu, a word combination that seemed fairy-tale exotic to a Midwestern girl who had never even seen the ocean. But before I could go anywhere, I had to deal with my stuff.
My younger siblings–I have five of them–were clamoring after my room. I had no return ticket and no definite timeline and no illusion that my room would be held for me. So I carried up an armful of brown paper bags up the narrow stairs and started purging.
Witchy knick-knacks? Gone.
Books I’d bought at garage sales and never read? Gone.
Clothes I had outgrown? Gone.
By the time I finished, all my belongings to be stored fit into two small Rubbermaid totes. I had never heard of being “minimalist,” but I had become one.
I traveled lightly too, carrying just a school-sized backpack with two outfits, basic toiletries, a journal, a Discman (ah, 2003), a book, and a small stuffed monkey for companionship. I had everything I needed and had never felt so free.
In the eight years since my teenage world tour, I’ve acquired a few more possessions–it is nice, I’ll admit, to own more than two shirts–but my philosophy in material possessions and time commitments remains: “Have only what you need and love.”
These days, I am an adventure writer and editor living in an airy third-floor Victorian apartment with my fiance, who is even more of a minimalist than me. A minimalist approach to expenses, time commitments and entertainment (we don’t own a TV or go out to eat much) allows me to work in a low-paying but fulfilling field and spend time and money on the things that are truly joy-giving to me, like climbing, snowboarding, travel and “simple pleasures.” For example, every morning I sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and watch the sun rise over Lake Superior.
I’m writing this in the living room, which contains only a sofa, a floor lamp, my desk, and a bird cage–home to my spoiled and much-loved cockatiel. The bare walls and gleaming wood floors evoke a yoga studio. No more flea-market bordello for me.
Shelby’s apartment
{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.}
I loved to read Shelby’s story – what an interesting writer, with a great sense of humor :)
So glad you enjoyed it, Julia! Thank you for the kind words.
Very interesting, I’m definitely going to go check out her blog.
Great post, very inspiring–heading over to check out your blog! Love your apartment picture–very serene!
I love your simple way of giving up everything from one day to another. Your living room is impressing…mine used to look like that before the kids’s toys and arts&crafts. :)
“magical flea-market bordello” I love that! Great writing!!
I am not anywhere near this level of minimalism and I am jealous at the freedom this lifestyle can afford you. Not jealous in a bad way, but in a motivating way!
Going to check out Kiss the Rock!
Bernice
Speeding through Life
I love it! The previous poster is correct – kids will really change the look (and feel and sound) of that serene space.
My daughter, who is 28 has taught my granddaughter, who is 8 to be a minimalist. Since she could walk, my granddaughter has put her dish in the sink, has bins for her toys and when something new comes in, something old goes out. I am now a minimalist in the making. I love going to their condo…..it inspires me.
Inspiring! Thanks for sharing this.
I like her! And she has a delicious sounding recipe for chocolate-peanut butter energy bites. Who doesnt love that?!
Would love to see more pix of this spare, beautiful apartment!
I am looking for inspiration to clean up my room. Instead I found this!I love the bare space with a little style infused to it. Going minimalist is not about having an empty room.It is really beautiful furniture pieces :)
I’m amazed at how quickly you got rid of everything! I’m slowly getting rid of the excess but it’s taken me months.
Funny! And inspirational.. :)
I just came across this blog as I have intentions of becoming semi-minimalist. I don’t think I’m ready to be totally minimalist as I do enjoy some of the possessions I have — my tv, dvd, macbook, ipod, tennis gear — well, you get the picture. But I would like to own as little as possible, or just getting down the bare minimum. I need not have a bare room but I would like to have what I truly need and want in it. I draw inspiration from the stories I read here and hopefully it will help me towards my goal. I wouldn’t call my space disorganized or full of clutter. I’m fairly neat, and have been slooooowly dumping all things unnecessary. I keep some things, and then at a later time I go back to it and sometimes I decided t dump it. Shelby, how did just get rid of most of your possessions? I really admire how you managed to just let go.
I am from Swaziland in southern /Africa, I work with a ngo that works with orphans and really poor communiteis . we have 20 preschools in the really rural areas and are going to be staring 15 more. If anyone has donatons of pencils, toys, crayons. anything for preschools.
with love
I let go little by little and never had much. All my life I’ve been reacting to hoarding so even as a teenager and later, in college, I didn’t have lots of stuff. There is more I can get rid of, boxes in my closet from my husband’s aunts. Extra dishes and silverware for when my younger son moves out on his own. If I were to downsize to a studio apt. I would get rid of some furniture and my husband’s hobby equipment.
Back to purging, a bag or 2 a week. I have more books to give away. Been looking at pictures of tiny, empty homes. They look so good. There is more unexamined clutter to sort through. I’ve found I need little to live with. I am so glad over the years I never collected things, just got things given to me.
Been cleaning a basement for a relative. Stacks and stacks of papers. I could never live in a space this big. I’d be cleaning and removing clutter all the time. When we had a house it was a small ranch with 3 bedrooms. Now we have a 2 BR condo. It is plenty of space for 2 people, very big for 1 person.
We had 5 kids and 7 adults over for lunch the other day. I keep a box of kids’ books and a few small toys in the living room. The 5 year old enjoyed the toy dinosaurs and a book about how things work. The older kids read. I also keep crayons and colored pencils and paper. My own kids didn’t have many toys and usually found something to make or read. When I was a child and we visited my grandparents, a rolled up towel was a doll and my brother had 1 toy car to push around the driveway.
HELP I’m trying to find Shelby Gonzalez’s blog but the link does not go to her blog. Kiss the Rock is not her. Can you give me the real one?