Real Life Minimalists: Wally

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.

Today we have a wonderful story from Wally, whose new baby girl gave him a new perspective on life and made him ready to embrace minimalism.

Wally writes:

I’m a collector by nature and nurture. Growing up, I always had a collection of something on the go; be it keyrings, stickers, pogs, action figures and more recently in adulthood, books, games, DVDs and movie memorabilia. My parents also had, and still have, collections; stamps, pig figurines, coins, books etc. you get the idea.

I was very precious over my collections and anxiety set in if ever anything happened to one of my prized possessions. This got to the point where I had a near nervous breakdown when my wife decided it was about time my ‘Man Cave’ had a spring clean and took it upon herself to tidy up a little. Not get rid of things, just tidy up. My depression was getting out of hand and I was putting more value in things, than I was to my own well-being. It’s a massive cliché of a saying, but I no longer owned my things; my things owned me.

This period of my life lasted a good 15 years. I wasn’t constantly depressed, but things kept building and stuff was still bought, to breaking point, until I would have another break down and start again. I was always chasing the next thing. ‘When I get my new job, I’ll be happy’, ‘When I get my new computer, I’ll cheer up a bit’, ‘When we move into our new house, I won’t be depressed anymore.’ It was a constant plug in the dam and I only had so many fingers to bung the holes.

This all makes it sound like I had an awful upbringing. It was far from it. My parents provided a wonderful environment for me and my sister, growing up. We never wanted for anything and they both worked very hard to ensure that we had a good time and made awesome memories. The only thing wrong was that my brain was wired incorrectly.

Fast forward a few years and we had a beautiful baby girl. She was the first grandchild on both sides of the family, so it was like the second coming. She was bought all the clothes and toys she could ever want and more. As you can imagine, my wife and I were exceptionally grateful for all the gifts, but we soon found ourselves drowning in baby grows, soft toys and various other baby related gubbins. Our little girl gave us a renewed perspective on life and a realisation that there is more to life than accumulating stuff.

Funnily enough, a baby takes up a lot of your time; time which can no longer be spent on tidying and cleaning items that no longer hold much worth to you after creating a small person. Not to mention all the valuable space being taken up. We’d love to give our daughter free reign of the house, but there are some rooms/cupboards she cannot go in, due to an imminent stuffalanche happening and burying her underneath unwatched DVDs, unread books and seldom worn clothes.

I discovered minimalism by chance, whilst scrolling through Facebook. I already followed a couple of environmental pages and someone posted about a couple of guys who call themselves ‘The Minimalists’. Before I saw the post, I presumed that minimalism was all about bare white walls and black clothes with turtle neck sweaters. Although the minimalist movement does involve these things, to a degree, it is more about living within your means and only having things in your life which you find useful, or make you happy. It was a revelation. There was a group of people telling me that I no longer needed to be a slave to my possessions. This was what I had been looking for to get me out of my rut.

As soon as I mentioned this movement to the wife, she was on board straight away. We have been on our journey into minimalism for about a year now and still have a fair way to go. I have immersed myself in this new world; reading numerous blogs and books on the subject. All were downloaded to my kindle, naturally, so as not to accumulate more physical possessions. It has been an exciting time; selling huge amounts of DVDs, clothes, books, games and whatever else I could get my hands on in my house. Items which haven’t been used, or even looked at, in well over a year. Some items haven’t seen the light of day since we moved house, nearly 4 years ago.

I still have a slight problem with buying Lego. I see it as a hobby and also a good investment. I have stopped buying the smaller pieces and only buy larger/limited edition sets. I’m just making excuses here, but everyone’s got to have a vice. At the end of the day, the less money spent on stuff we don’t need, is more money going towards experiences with my family and savings for our new house.

My name’s Wally and I’m a minimalist…

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{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or joining my email list.}