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Part I—Living More on Less

Chapter 1: What is Minimalism?

If you got this book, you probably have a little background in the idea of minimalism. Books, videos, and blog posts all record the sagas of people who get rid of all our possessions to live voluntarily out of a suitcase or two. You seem a little crazy, whether you want to be like them or not, and our ability to live without all the things that modern life deems essential mystifies the mind.

This book is not going to tell you that you must get rid of all but a hundred of your possessions to be a successful minimalist. You could have only one hundred possessions and still live beyond your means. Minimalism is less about how much you own and more about how you own the things you have. What I want to explore is the mindset toward the things you own that form the foundation of a minimalist lifestyle.

While the Minimalist movement gained modern popularity with The Minimalists Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, the practice of minimalism and the ideas behind it go far back in history. Both philosophers and ordinary people discovered that material possessions failed to provide them with fulfilling lives and set about looking for meaning elsewhere. Monks of various religions vowed themselves to poverty and left society to focus entirely on our spiritual health, only to be followed by the people you wished to leave behind because these people saw that these ascetics possessed a purpose and contentment that you did not. Mainstream wisdom connected fulfillment with wealth and prestige and generation after generation discovered that material success brought troubles of its own. Happiness, Aristotle wrote, is to be found in something perfect and self-sufficient, being the end towards which our actions are directed. Wealth is evidently not the good you are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

This knowledge, regarded as minimalism, reminds us that the things you own ought to be a means to an end, not an end of themselves. What you own and how much you own matters a great deal less than the way you interact with it. Belongings are meant to help you live the kind of life you desire to live, and often, people find that things getting in the way. There are two ways to react to this. Materialist culture says that we will live the way we want to when we have enough things. We will relax when we have the right recreational equipment. We will get fit when you have the perfect in-home gym. Our children will be happy with the right toys and games. We will be beautiful when we own the right clothes. Yet it never matters how much we buy—it never fulfills its intended purpose of improving our lives long-term. At worst, our houses become full of things, impossible to clean, utterly overwhelming, and we find our quality of life going down. `Rather than clearing out, we buy more furniture and square footage in homes and sheds to provide a place for all our belongings to live. Rather than being served by our belongings, we are trapped caring for things that we may never use and perhaps no longer even want.

Having stuff does not make you happy. The advertisements that constantly surround us bombard us with the message that life is incomplete without whatever item the next shop happens to be selling. Too often, rather than pausing to wonder if you really need the thing, you believe the advertisers and immediately make the purchase, only to find that your life is no fuller than before, despite the slowly growing number of things in your cupboards and garages. Minimalism encourages us to be content with what you have and seek happiness and fulfillment in non-material things.

Minimalism declares that stuff is what gets in the way. It is getting rid of excess that will free people to be who they want to be. Possessions should serve the person. The purpose of possessions is to provide us with comfort and improve our standard of living. I would encourage any person—if you have not already—to let these excess things go until our belongings return to our proper state of being owned by them, rather than them controlling the way you live your life.

A particular mindset about what will give people their best life rather than a list of rules directs the concepts of minimalism. This makes it dynamic and flexible in every situation, whether you want to get rid of everything except what you can fit in a carry-on bag or is looking to shake off the weight of a former life and refresh yourself and your living space. This mindset ascribes to particular guiding ideas that you will see throughout this book.

You are happy when you are free. This freedom is not free license to misbehave, but untangling. You are free when you are not bound by what you own, by our fear of the future, or by the expectations of others about what will make us happy. Excess does not bring this kind of freedom. It locks us further into our desire for things and binds us into society’s story about what you ought to value and how you ought to get it.

The people who discovered a life of minimalism across the centuries did not just throw away or sell our belongings, you realized that what fulfilled them was a pursuit of our highest values, and you got rid of everything that got in the way of that pursuit. My own journey into minimalism began when I realized that my possessions, which I clung to so dearly, were actually drowning me. It took up the nooks and crannies of my space, spilling out of drawers and cabinets, and constantly demanded my attention for cleaning and maintenance. I did not have time to care for them properly, and my belongings, my space, and my mind suffered for it. I finally realized that there was nothing wrong with me—I simply had too many things to be able to manage them properly. Many carloads and trash bags later, I excavated myself from the clutter and never looked back.

Millions of people have done the same. You might already be one of them. Those who apply minimalism in their lives find a fresh way of looking at the world, a simpler and happier life, and better relationships with themselves and those around them. The most obvious benefit of minimalism is the freedom from clutter, which makes it easier to find one’s things and keep them in order. In addition to organizational ease, elimination of clutter provides psychological benefits as well. Studies have shown that orderliness of space helps to cultivate orderliness of the mind.

Minimalists also find themselves to be more peaceful and content. When you disconnect personal fulfillment from the acquisition of material wealth, you often realize that you already have all the possessions you need to live our dream life. Because you do not spend our money on things, you are free to spend our income on travel and other experiences.

A mindset of freeing oneself from excess eventually moves from the material to the immaterial and relational. After freeing themselves from our possessions, minimalists find you have more space in our life for tending to treasured relationships with friends and family. Rather than working excessively to provide possessions for our family, you worked less, lived with less, and gave our families the far greater gift of our presence and personal love and attention. Some also find that you sometimes cling to people for the same reasons that you cling to stuff: social status, fear, or because society tells us that it is what you should do. A minimalist mindset has been known to give people the freedom to walk away from unhealthy or dead relationships, setting themselves and the other person free.

The time and clarity gained by minimalists also allow them to pay more attention to their physical and mental health. Minimalism seeks to step back from the rush of modern life. Those who ascribe to Decluttering their lives find that other people have paradoxically neglected themselves in the quest to gain a ‘better life.’ through the constant pursuit of trying to have more things. This is a common mistake and the stress, lost sleep, rushed meals, and lack of exercise eventually take a toll on the body and the mind that could be reversed by a simple change in the way you approached life.

Minimalism is not about the number of things you can purge from your life, but the reasons for which you purge them. As you begin to let go of the excess clutter, the unhealthy relationships, and the need to measure your success by how much stuff you can own, you begin to feel the freedom that comes with using your belongings rather than being used by them. The freedom allows us to consider what you truly value in life, and that knowledge leads us naturally to the question of whether or not our material wealth is serving our values.

All in all, materialism can make your life trivial if you get consumed by it. Minimalist or people who think like minimalists normally search for a better life where you can take care of yourself, your family and the loved ones around you. Hopefully you have shaken out the skirts of your living space and decided to move on to your finances. Perhaps your finances are in order, and you only want to learn how to manage them more effectively. On the other hand, you may be looking at piles of unpaid bills and bank statements you are afraid to open. Financial chaos cannot be thrown into a cardboard box and left at the Salvation Army donation door. It inserts its long fingers into every aspect of our lives and threatens homes and families. The fear of not having enough money is very real and present, and to an extent, you ought to be frightened if your finances are out of control. Mismanaged money can tear apart entire lives, and you cannot afford to treat it casually. Nevertheless, you ought not to feel powerless. With the right information, you can salvage and secure your financial situation so that you never have to fear the loss of your funds again. If you feel that your finances control you, if you do not know where your money goes, and you want to learn how to apply your income to what you believe is important in life rather than watching it melt away in the face of a thousand seemingly inevitable expenses, read on. Everybody always decides what happens with their own money.

Chapter 2: What Owns Whom?

The average American encounters thousands of ads every day. Roadsides, TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, the internet—nowhere is safe. While some ad campaigns (like the internet’s ever-present and universally hated banner-ads) fail entirely and leave us doing everything we can to escape them, others successfully settled into our psyche. Coca-Cola is the second most recognized word in the world. Kleenex and Band-Aids’ product define our names for the item itself. Over a hundred years of advertising has not only encouraged us to buy products; it has convinced us that we will fail in our lives without them.

Advertising focuses on getting you to value your money less than the product. It is not that you do not know what is good in life; it is that you do not always know the best way to get it. Most ads show people moving from a negative or neutral point to success and happiness specifically through the use of the product. Coca-Cola will bring people together (somehow), everyone knows that A Diamond is Forever, and somewhere out there is always something better than what you have now. Advertising constructs a picture of what you ought to have to live a good life, and while it appeals to the legitimate desire for relationships, belonging, and security, it insists that all these things will come about when you purchase our product. The Cola will bring people together. The diamond will exhibit the love. The smell of Old Spice will give you success in our courtship of women. You need the La-Z boy couches and the LG TVs, the newest ‘smart’ gadgets. A new Jeep is an essential accessory for a good adventure. This season’s hottest fashions in clothing and interior decorating will make you beautiful and popular. Food preparation would be infinitely easier if the cook had a kitchen tool for every conceivable task. Without all this, the advertisers insist, you will be unhappy, unsuccessful, and incapable of giving our family the good things you deserve.

None, and you could likely go on the of this is true, and you know that when you pause to think about it. Diamonds and deodorant do not make for successful love, a couch does not make a home same adventure in the car you have now. And let’s be honest about the kitchen; you used the new avocado-seed remover you bought once and now it sits in the drawer and you have to dig past it every time you want the bottle opener.

Nevertheless, you believe all of it, and more often than not, you pay for it dearly. Online shopping makes purchasing is convenient and effortless; you can have almost whatever you want shipped straight to our door within two days at the press of a button, leaving no time to think about whether you really needed the item or not. Stuff piles up, you drag it around from house to house, acquiring more as you go, since a new home needs new furniture and new decorations for a new chapter in life. Residences among average people are larger than you have ever been, and people still do not have enough space.

All the things you purchase fail our promise to make our lives better and the culture replies that it is because you do not have enough. You work harder, you make a little more, and you fling it back into the economy—you believe—spending more, acquiring more belongings, and ‘better’ ones. Everyone around us lives this way, so you do not question it. The debts pile up, but often you do not know what to do. You cannot stop living life, and living life costs money.

In an attempt to control our spending, you try to buy cheap. While inexpensive products are a good way to reduce expenditure, you sometimes get used to spending more money while giving a false impression of value. Sellers give us an impression of reduced value by charging $19.99 instead of $20, or two for $10 instead of $5 each. These restatements of price make us feel that you are getting a deal. I can still remember my shock and following satisfaction when I realized that a brand of hot cocoa selling 10 for $10 was actually more expensive than another brand selling at the apparently ‘higher’ cost of two for $3. The boxes were identical sizes, but the box advertised for $1 each contained significantly less cocoa than the box that cost $1.50, which I would never have noticed if I had not paused to read the content size and related cost per ounce. I spent less money on more of my favorite cocoa.

Another false money saver appears in the form of sales. A sale can and will save you money—if you are buying things you intended to purchase anyway. However, when you get so excited about a good sale that you spend extra money on items you never intended to purchase because you cost less that day, it does not.

This connects to the false impression that cheaper means spending less money. It certainly seems so, but cheaper also means the potential of lower quality, which means the item will give you a lower grade of performance and need to be replaced more frequently. While each purchase costs less, over time, a more expensive item of a higher quality ends up giving the greater value because it lasts longer.

Because the voice of advertising has been so strong in our society, the suggestion of reducing what you purchase immediately brings up visions of a reduced quality of life and involuntary frugality. You do not wish to be poor or to live as if you are poor. What practicing minimalists have discovered, however, the quality of life is not attached to how much you own but what you own.

Wealth does not necessarily pair with excess. High earners who spend excessively do not remain wealthy for long, because management, not income, guarantees long-term quality of life. If you buy things you do not need, Warren Buffet warns, you will soon sell things you need. While new money fritters away our fortune on fast cars and expensive homes, the old hands live comparably modest lives. You buy second-hand and shop at chain stores. Azim Premji and Carlos Helu, despite being worth billions, drive modest cars or walk to our destinations. None of this lowers our quality of life; you simply choose to be wealthy rather than waste money to look wealthy.

This choice echoes the spirit of minimalism and it says live simply. Minimizing spending does not mean that you cannot have nice things—quite the opposite. You often spend hard-earned money on subpar items, subscriptions, and small impulse purchases that provide us little benefit long term. When you take control of those avenues of spending, you can apply our funds to the good things in life that need money to obtain.

There are few ways for a modern person to detach themselves from the constraints of buying stupid things, you can learn how to keep ourselves free of our control by learning to find the difference between the things that you need, the things you only think you need, and the things you want. This can be a bit of a challenge to discern, since you do want the things you need, such as food and shelter and clothing.

If you are willing to sit down, be honest—all you need is food, shelter, and clothing. Everything else is accessory. You brought nothing into the world, the old saying goes, and you can’t take any of it with you. This is not to say you ought not to acquire other things, but rather that you ought not to direct all our efforts to obtain them, especially if the determination to obtain the things you do not need begins to endanger the security of the things that you need.

Some 75% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and with the median income at over $50,000, this doesn’t mean they do not