Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words (click here for details).
Today, I’m pleased to introduce you to Emily. She shares with us the lessons she’s learned living in Indonesia and Paris, and her current progress in her minimalist journey.
Emily writes:
Emily's apartment
My upbringing was split into two parts – the period of plenty, and the period of frugality.
When I was very young, we lived as expatriates in Indonesia and got used to a life of luxury. Buying what we wanted when we wanted seemed completely natural. I remember finding it difficult to think of presents to get my Dad for Christmas because every time he wanted or needed something, he would just go out and buy it.
But then in my teens, my father was made redundant and frugality became the buzzword of the household. During this time, we still lived very well, but we definitely had to make choices. Each purchase was considered in terms of its true value, which meant we quickly came to exchange possessions for experiences, and scale down luxuries. We would choose visits to the theatre over new clothes, and holidays would be to visit relatives rather than stays in expensive hotels. I would love to say that I embraced this new frugal way of living, but to be honest, I was too concerned with what I was missing out on versus my friends.
Having experienced these two different worlds, you would have thought that I would have embraced frugal living in my adult life. But when I left home and had my own money to spend, I did so recklessly. I think I thought it would never end. I bought books, thinking that the more I owned, the cleverer I would become. I filled drawers and shelves with DVDs that I would watch only once. I felt a real desire to own things, and for my possessions to reflect me and my personality. I subscribed to endless magazines that I never found the time to read.
At the beginning of this year, I finally felt the need to reverse this trend. I came across the blog Zen Habits, which lead me to several other minimalist blogs including Miss Minimalist. The lessons from these blogs offered me a lifeline.
I had moved to Paris 6 months previously, and as my company offered to pay for shipping, I had brought everything with me. After 6 months in a tiny Paris apartment, falling over and drowning in my stuff, I finally decided it was time to start pairing down. I started with the easiest things – kitchen equipment, accumulated junk and the clothes I never wore. I sold my DVD collection on Amazon and signed up for the local video store. With every item that left the apartment, I felt a little lighter, a little more in control. Photos were scanned and stored on my computer, along with important documents. I saved my books until last, knowing they would be the hardest to part with, but now, 3 bookshelves down, I feel great! My library card takes up significantly less space, and I never have to feel guilty about not having read the books I own. I am also buying less, and have managed to get debt-free and even start saving.
But all this is only the first stage. The next step for me is decluttering my time commitments and learning to say ‘No’. My current job, which is certainly not my passion, takes up around 60 hours every week. In February I’ll start a part-time Master’s degree to lead to a career change, which although will take up more time in the short term, should lead to having a more fulfilling career in the long term. So, in the meantime I need to cut out all the unnecessary commitments to be able to focus on the things I love to do like writing, reading and exercising. This is my minimalist goal for the following year!
{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.}
What a great goal, Emily! I wish you luck in your minimalism journey. :)
Yay! I am excited for you! We also hold our library cards very dear. I have two kids that go through so many books. I used to have 4 book shelves just for them and now we hardly have any of our own and just use the library. Much better selection, and much less clutter :)
Lorilee I am minimal in all other aspects except my children’s books. They probably have half of what they used to one year ago but still at least..maybe 70? One is 9 and reads novels and the other is 5 and enjoying picture books. The 9 year old is an avid reader and reads her favourites again and again. These include a complete selection of Roald Dahl, the Wimpy Kid and alot of Enid Blyton and Harry Potter. I would love to pare down and rely on the library but I don’t know how to balance the two?
And to Emily – I love your story and how paring down had helped you move towards a career you will enjoy. Congratulations and enjoy your journey!
Hi Emily,
Great story! I very much enjoyed reading it. I too, have had both periods of frugality and plenty and were also surprised to find that after the frugality, I felt compelled to ‘own’ things that defined me. I am still struggling a little with that and hope to find my true self amongst all these posessions. Slowly but surely getting there..
Good luck on your continued journey. :)
Thanks for you sharing your story with us, Emily! Very inspiring :)
I too hold my library card close to me. I think that buying books can often lead to promoting our ‘fantasy’ selves. I use to buy so many books and I’d never get round to reading all of them. By going to the library and reading them there I spend more time reading and less time looking at my bookshelf thinking “I want to read all these books!”
Good luck with your goal and may you find new inner peace in your journey to minimalism :)
Great post. It is nice to hear that you are working towards something you really want to do. It is hard to pare down stuff, but as you said in your post you feel great when you do. Books were a hard one for me too, but the library is great. If I read a book and feel like I have to own it, then I can buy it knowing ahead of time that it is one I really value. I haven’t bought hardly any books in the past 5 years, so the library seems to be working well. It is just nice to know that I can buy something if I want to. It makes it easier not to buy it because I am choosing not to buy it, not too poor to be able to choose.
Kindle and NOOK are great replacements for a personal physical library.
I too have a lot of books but I have decided to go for ebooks in the future. I am very happy with Kindle as its easy on the eyes as compared to other ebook readers.
I love the way you’ve linked up decluttering to saying “no” to time commitments and obligations that you don’t have energy and passion for in this season. I really believe that as we clean up one area of our lives, a domino effect can take place so that we start saying a clearcut “no thanks” to things like excess technology http://creeksideministries.blogspot.com/2011/07/we-are-so-out-of-control.html and other energy drainers http://creeksideministries.blogspot.com/2009/09/6-steps-to-reclaiming-your-energy.html that keep us from being all that we were created to be.
I wish you all the best Emily.
And thank you for sharing your story.
I am so inspired by your story! It’s always hard for me to turn down people’s request. But we gotta learn to do that in order to excel in doing what we love the most. WORK IT OUT!
Thanks Emily for sharing your story. In actually started with books because I knew they would be the hardest! I figured if I could do that, I could do anything.
Good luck, Emily. It sounds as if you have really found some balance in your life. :)
This post is exactly right — many of us desire “for [our] possessions to reflect [us] and [our] personalit[ies].” What a waste of effort!
I remember buying a car a decade ago that I thought reflected my personality. It was a sporty two-door coupe. Of course, shortly after I bought it, I met the man I would marry, and just a few years later, we had a child. What good was a two-door car? It was difficult to get a baby in and out of the backseat. Still, I am frugal and used it nonetheless.
My family and I recently donated the car (our only) to charity and it has been a huge relief. We are fortunate to live in a city with excellent public transit, a car share, and a bike share, but we walk almost everywhere. Now guess what? I think NOT having a car reflects my personality better than any car could.
The idea that all our possessions should reflect our personality is something I’ve seen growing in recent popularity. Just this week, I watched a talk show where the guests had their front door renovated because “your front door should reflect your personality.”
Really? It’s a front door. Last time I checked the only way to know a person’s personality is to actually talk to them.
It seems that not only must our clothes be a mirror of who we are, but our home, our kitchen appliances, our shoe laces, everything. It’s not acceptable to buy something simply because you need it and its efficient, it must also fit your “lifestyle.” Imagine all the time and energy it takes to cultivate that fantasy self. Even something as inconsequential as a front door has to be a microphone screaming “This is who I am! I am funky/urban/chic and this door proves it!”
That’s why I like being a minimalist. It’s so much easier to buy something when it’s used as a tool, not a reflection, of me.
Tara, that’s such a funny anecdote about the front door.
Also I think your comment that “the only way to know a person’s personality is to talk to them” is a great observation and very well put!
Ashley
My front door DOES reflect my personality. It is there, like I am.
Very philosophical, MBOL!
I recently discovered (during a remodel) that our front door wasn’t actually attached to the house – it wasn’t nailed into the wall! The door frame was just wedged in, and when the workers started to pry and push, it just fell out. Not good on many levels – esp. for my personality :D
That’s really scary Ashley!!! Bet you felt really unsafe! Glad you managed to get that sorted out…
Touche Tara! For years and years I bought into the home decor Psycho-Babble, trying to achieve my dream of having a perfect house. It was a source of drama for me to try and achieve this…pouring over home decor magazine after another, repainting room after room, but not wanting to lose financial sensibility in getting there. When I discovered minimalism and realized this spoke to me at the very core of who I was, I realized that it was not all about form, that function and form can exist together, there was not a perfect way of decorating, nor why should I waste so much time on an unachievable quest?
Edith,
I always thought I wanted to have a house that looked “just so”. I did not grow up like that, my mother was a hoarder. I have worked through the years to have my decor to be nice and decent, although I have not spend a fortune on it.
Hubby and I saw a movie the other night, and it dawned on me that the couple in this movie had a fair amount of things sitting around, but it was things they loved and used. There place was not “decorated”, like you see in a lot of movies. It was an eclectic collection of the things they love. As I get older and “wiser” I believe that is more what I want my decor to be, things that MEAN something to me, not there just because it “looks good”. Does that make sense?
Bernice
Do your actions match your values?
The front door story is hilarious, however fundamentally this is something I really continue to struggle with. I think my attitute to interior decor is fairly healthy – I put time and effort into making my home how I want it, sometimes getting it ‘wrong’ and replacing things until I get it ‘right’. However my aim is to create an environment that I find beautiful. My home expresses some of my values (I have mainly antique furniture because I find it the most beautiful and because I much prefer to continue the life of old furniture than buy new) but I’m not using it to deliberately express my personality – although it may end up doing so.
My wardobe however is a different matter. I’m constantly torn between an instinct to wear simple, casual, functional clothes that are comfy for my life, and an urge to more obviously announce my personality through what I wear. It’s not really about aesthetics – I like my surroundings to be beautiful but I’m not very vain about myself. It’s purely a desire to send out a certain message. Madness, but one that I can’t seem to quite shake off! And of course it’s my fantasy self that is screaming to be announced. My actual self is perfectly well expressed by the things I actually find myself wearing.
Tara, I’m a translator and regularly translate marketing material, and I have noticed this trend as well even though I have only been in the business for 7 years. It used to be that the vacuum cleaner or coffemachine had qualities that reflected your need and superseeded the previous/competitors model, now the not only superseed the previous/competitors model in terms of innovations and efficiency, they also reflect your personality! Sorry, my new vacuum cleaner might be of the ates model, but that is because it suits my needs and is reasonably small and discrete, not because pear shaped and dusky green reflects my personality!
I love your apartment, Emily. There have been many discussions in the Positive Psychology movement that experiences make us much happier in the long term than things – planning an experience, anticipating it, the experience itself, and reflecting on that. The best part is that you carry each indelible stamp of an experience with you wherever you go. Experiences truly are the sum of of what we are – “you are a part of all that you have met”, to paraphrase Tennyson.
Great story Emily! Thank you for sharing it with us. As a graduate student, I know how important it is to simplify and pair down time commitments in order to do the things you love. I too love exercising and reading. With work and school and family taking up so much of my time, I have to be very careful with what I say “yes” to.
Great story Emily, I am definately in the frugal period of my life after many years of spending to achieve my fantasy self. Declutterring and minimalising is a great relief, I am finally finding who I am- this site is providing great inspiration.
Keeping a journal is a fantastic thing to do. It is very difficult to go through them and get rid of them since they are a part of you. I have started to go through my old journals and have retyped the comments and memories I want to have others know. The rest I will keep private and get rid of the journals. I don’t know if this is a good strategy for others, but I think there are things that we don’t need to pass on and there are days when there isn’t much worth keeping that we wrote. It takes time, but at least you will know what you are leaving to others.
Well done Emily! It was a heartening read because I see so many people simply accept their situation as “the way things are” and they don’t try to change things. A good example of this is how you are doing a Master’s degree to improve your income and career prospects. Good to see someone who doesn’t accept the status quo and sets about making a difference in their life!
Life is about change. Having fewer possessions
means you can take advantage of opportunities that come up.
We don’t have very much and yet every week I find at least 1 big bag of stuff to give away. I have more dishes promised to the historical society. As much as I love beautiful china, it was never used so I kept a piece or two from each set. It is much easier to store a sugar bowl and creamer or a platter than a service for 16 no matter how beautiful.
I was given a service for 24. I gave away some plates and bowls immediately. I will keep a set for 8 and give away some china I don’t like at all. Bags and boxes of books are gone. Most were bought at library sales.
I never buy souvenirs when we travel. They are always available at rummage sales and thrift shops.
My home reflects my personality. It is neat and clean. Two cats are around somewhere.
We got water damage from our upstairs neighbor. How easy it was to see. How easy for damage repairmen to give us estimates so we could get our insurance involved. People with stuff everywhere have no idea how much trouble they are making for themselves.