Mind the Beginner

You’ll experience less stress, you’ll save more money and you’ll be healthier. Just a few benefits that you can enjoy when being a minimalist. But don’t just take my word for it. Here is what some other bloggers have to say about minimalism:

MNMlist

“Often we don’t really need those possessions as much as we might think, and even when we do have them, we’re not as secure as we might think.” A blogpost on the troubles with getting rid of your possessions. It’s actually by far the hardest thing out there in the minimalist approach: the initial struggle to reduce your belongings. Leo argues that your belongings give you a false sense of security. You’re prepared for all sorts of events. The idea of being prepared goes a bit overboard when you have a triple redundancy on your car, a stack of over 20 dinner plates and you just can’t get rid of that old tv. “What if the new one breaks down, I won’t be able to watch tv for a while”

Keeping stuff means you need a bigger house to store them all in.

The Everyday Minimalist

A 20 something blogger living out of a suitcase since 2006. Having lived in 1600 and 1200 square foot apartments and now living in a 600 square foot studio. Just imagine the difference in monthly rent! and immediately two benefits come to mind: the first being that rent, it’s probably going to be cheaper and secondly: you can vacuum the entire space without unplugging the vacuum. Cleaning 600 square foot while owning just a few things means you have a lot of empty floorspace. Enough space to exercise, lie flat on the floor and stare at the ceiling for a while or dance.

A smaller home and less stuff means easier cleaning

Far Beyond the Stars

You know about the 100-things challenge. Everett took it one step further and decided to go with just 50 items for a while! “The 50 things movement doesn’t count shared items like cooking supplies, bedding, and furniture. I was only counting personal possessions that only belong to me.” Give it a little thought, what if you could live with the freedom of having so few things that you could tuck it all in a suitcase. You’d no longer have to wonder what you would be packing when going on a holiday, you’d just pack every single thing you own!

Everett dropped the 50 things and went back to 75 after a while, to make life just that little bit easier (think laundry…) “Living with less isn’t for everyone, but I’ve discovered that it can make life a lot simpler when you decide to opt out of the endless cycle of consumerism.”

Less stuff means more mobility

Wake Up Cloud

“Having the latest gadgets is cool, but I also realize that it is largely unnecessary and something I’m going to grow tired of within a few weeks.” As soon as you realize this, you can start saving some serious money. Do you actually need that iPhone, iPad or high powered notebook? Or worse, phone, pad AND notebook. Thinking about needs versus wants will help you here. Will owning the latest thing seriously make you happy? And if so, for how long. Especially on the more expensive things, think about how long it took you to save up all that money and so where you will spend those hours of your life on you can never get back. And so Henri realized: “happiness doesn’t come from things, it comes from inside of me.” You can be happy with nothing, and unhappy with everything.

Less desires lets you find true happiness

Simple. Organized. Life.

Is there something wrong with you if you choose to own less? David has been told this countless times. Many people think an empty house is an empty life but they couldn’t be more wrong. For them it certainly is true because thy identify who they are and what they are worth by their possessions. Minimalists however find their worth not in the stuff they own, but what they carry with them in their mind and hear. Happiness really does come from within. So is there something wrong with us because we know where to find true happiness?

Minimalists are completely sane and have a full life

The Minimalist Path

Minimalism can be applied just about anywhere in life, and David points out that it’s actually fun! Yes, you know and I know, but do others know as well? Spread the word. You get perspective and control over your own life. There are less things to take into account when making a decision, less stuff to worry about. Although on the one end there are a few who think that going minimal actually costs more, David makes a clear statement that it actually doesn’t cost anything to get organized.

Sure, if you own just a few things, you’ll be inclined to make those few things the best they can be. If you can own only one computer and it’s essential to your income you’ll be wanting a very reliable laptop and those are expensive. If you have just one coat or one pair of shoes, you’re going to make sure that they will last. It’s still cheaper than buying something new every week or month and -maybe that’s just me- it’s fun to go hunting/researching for the best possible buy.

Minimalism goes great with frugality and quality

Step 1 minimalist

The final blog we’re visiting it written by Brett and gives you the absolute best reason to become a minimalist: Time. “Looking at every aspect of minimalism, it constantly comes back to creating more time to focus on and act upon what we love, while discarding the rest.” Remember that triple redundant car I mentioned? If you spend some time (and fun) on hunting down the single best car you can buy, you don’t have to work all those hours to buy the other two, work all those hours to maintain them, and have a garage that will fit them while you drive around in the first one. Bigger garages come with bigger houses, that come with higher rents or mortgages. Well, you get the idea.

Minimalists have more time to spend on the important things in life

Where it all comes down to

There are plenty of benefits to be had in living the minimalist lifestyle. It will save you time, money, space, stress and distraction among other things. You’ll be rewarded with a sense of freedom and control over your own life, and live green and save money at the same time! You want to live the minimal life? A good place to start is to take the one step towards a minimalist home.

One way to get rid of clutter in your bag

After a year of keeping track of minimalism it still seems to be a trending topic on the Internet. It’s not that hard to understand why, it’s a natural extension of productivity and mindfulness. It’s the effect of being focused, a single goal in mind. There is no place for useless things if you want to reach your goal in a straight line.

When you need your wallet or your keys, do you know exactly where they are? Can you grab them without even looking? Or do you need to dig around in a huge bag crying out “It’s in here somewhere” while you turn the entire contents over on a table.

Frustrating isn’t it, when you can’t find what you are looking for. Of course you have these situations every day. That piece of paper on your desk, that file on your computer, that bill, and where did that scarp of paper go with that phone number you needed to call for a job offer.

Small problems, small solutions

You’ve seen minimalist homes like these and these before, and there are many more examples out there. What they all have in common is that “there is a place for everything and everything in it’s place”. Your car is in the driveway, your TV in the living room and your bed in the bedroom. Huge things with their own clearly defined place. The smaller things get however, the harder it seems to give them their own place.

The reason for this is that smaller things have more places they can be stored. How many places are there to store your car? You’ll be looking in the driveway or the garage. Now, how many places are there to store your keys? A smaller home, room, desk or bag will solve issues like these for you.

Reducing spaces

Minimalism is easy in theory and that’s why the solution is easy as well. Reduce the number of places those small things can hide. How, you ask? Get a smaller bag. Have fewer coats to leave your keys in. Reduce the number of folders in your computer. Best would be to reduce so far that even the smallest thing has only one or two places it can be.

If you religiously hold to those places you can find anything and everything in just a few seconds. Make it a habit (Leo is an expert in this) to put those small things in place. I’ll give you the example of my keyring: it has exactly 2 places it can be: 1: My right front pocket 2: The drawer in my desk. If it’s not in either, I’ve lost it.

Sure, a keyring can be stored in many more places but it doesn’t belong there.

Answer me these questions

To help you look at these questions:

• What is it for?
• Do you need it?
• When do you need it?
• What is it’s specific place?
• Is that place suitable? (not to small but certainly not to big!)
• What other things will be sharing that place?

And of course  ask those questions for the other times found in the last question as well. Start small and work your way up. If you find something that serves no purpose, that you don’t need. Is there a need to keep it? That of course is the last step in applying minimalism. Get rid of anything that serves no purpose. A last tip: if you do not enjoy using an item, do not keep it!

Are you a collector of something? A huge collection of stamps, a secret collection of comic books or a coin collection so heavy you can’t carry it all at once. One of my teachers actually has a dice collection. As you can see, he needs two more to make his collection complete. It has to do with the orientation of the dots if you’re wondering.

Before a collection is complete it’s obviously incomplete just to state the obvious. Collection at this stage revolves around that which you do not have. Essentially the same as minimalism although in minimalism we look to expand that which we do not have.

It is the emptiness within the cup that makes it useful – Lao-tzu

Just like with minimalism you’re never completely content with the things you do have, you’re always striving to expand one way or the other. Different sides to the same coin but the same coin nonetheless. And you want the bigger coin.

Collecting Minimalism

Is it possible to collect minimalism? To expand that which you do not have. I’ve written about it several times already, Be it the 100 things challenge, the one-step to creating a minimalist home  or using a razor to cut away the uselessness, minimalism has become somewhat of a main topic on my blog. It’s also the search term that gets me the most traffic through Google. I’m slowly becoming an expert on minimalism through Zen.

Minimalism actually is to me a natural result from practising Zen. It’s not that I’m collecting minimalism, I’m constantly trying to expand usefulness and awareness and trying to reduce uselessness and carelessness. We humans are hunter-gatherers, gathering is in our genes. Building collections is what we do, no exceptions. And so I collect as well, but it’s what I collect that makes the difference.

Turning round

Given the fact that we must collect to feel satisfied in life it’s your choice to choose what to actually collect. The easiest by far (or at least most portable) would be to collect knowledge. Not the physical books but what’s written in them, what they are trying to convey. Now this isn’t a collection for everyone obviously. Some people just don’t like to read and learn. The least useful would be collecting coins, sigar bands or even those little toys you get with a happy meal. Yes there actually are people collecting that.

Combining minimalism with collecting severely limits you in what you can collect. I’d suggest you start collecting knowledge and true usefulness. If it’s not useful it doesn’t belong in your collection and applying this to knowledge; don’t fill your mind with useless knowledge. Of course you’re going to ask me what I mean by usefulness. And I’m going to leave that entirely up to you! The only suggestion I’m going to do is that you take a good honest look at your collection.

Take a step back and have a good look, what do you want to collect?

Before you read this take a look around…

Did you have a quick look around the room, your desk area and perhaps even your desktop? Is it cluttered? Are there things there that you haven’t used in 2009? Things collecting dust that somehow just keep put but have no actual use?

Seriously, is there anything there you just spotted that you didn’t use for a whole year? The obvious question to ask as soon as you spot something like that is “Why is it still here?”

At least, that’s what the minimalist would ask himself. Always striving to make things less cluttered and as an added bonus easier to keep clean and tidy. I did that very thing this weekend and it resulted in the removal of two bookcases from my room, books included. That’s 2/3 of my shelf space and of course a drastic reduction of things to dust.

To keep things from looking to empty I rearranged what was left and added a two-seat sofa. Although I live in a single room at least now I have proper seating which means that the bed (which was also my sofa) can now be used exclusively for what it’s meant. The TV is no longer easily visible when sitting at my desk and it’s impossible to watch from the bed.

What happened here is something that might seem very insignificant but actually is nothing of the sort. We humans tend to combine just about anything we do and most of the time it’s not very productive at all or at least we aren’t mindful of what we are doing:

• Eating and watching TV
• Trying to fall asleep and watching TV
• Studying behind a PC…. with Internet (social media etc.)
• Studying with the TV on
• Working and playing

Now all of those save one are things you actually don’t want to be doing to often. Very soon you’ll have the habit of eating while watching TV and don’t notice you’re emptying a whole bag of crisps. It’s just suddenly empty. I’m sure you’ve had that happen at least once. The same goes for trying to fall asleep with the TV on. Your retina keeps getting bombarded with light. A great way not to get restful asleep. Sure, most people claim they can’t sleep without the TV to “help them”. But that’s because they have a different problem: The bed is not the exclusive domain of sleep.

The Pavlovian Bed

Humans are creatures of habit and as such we associate things with one another. We get Pavlovian reactions to things. When I was young my parents didn’t allow me to have a TV in my bedroom. A very wise choice when I think back, of course at the time I couldn’t disagree more. You see, my bedroom was used for but a few things and my bed for only one. So as soon as I went to bed my body knew it was supposed to go t sleep and so triggered all the necessary responses. My eyes closed and I was asleep within 20 minutes or less. Reading wasn’t part of the sleeping ritual, or rather it was but not while having my body in a horizontal or half-seated position. Bed = sleep and nothing else.

In later years I got that TV I wanted, now I could watch TV from the comforts of my bed. How wonderful. My body disagreed of course because now it got it’s signals mixed up. Was the bed for sleeping or for watching TV? Or should it do both things at the same time, and not doing a very mindful job of either. The bed was no longer the exclusive domain of sleep.

Distractionless Internet

The same goes for your workspace, your desktop, your sofa. Is a sofa meant to be used for a quick nap? Why not use the bed for that one, at least you won’t fall asleep during the movie because sleep isn’t triggered by the sofa. Homework/studying and your RSS reader or Internet browser? Though far more subtle preferably these two shouldn’t mix either, unless you need the Internet to study. And be honest here (talking to myself) do you really need social media, IRC, music and the TV on to study? Nope, most of the time all you need is your textbook, a piece of paper to make notes, previous notes and in some cases a computer to write something. (or in my case, write code). There are but few reasons to keep connected to the Internet while studying and all of them have an inherent danger of distraction. Wikipedia for instance is a great resource to help clarify things, but it’s all to easy to become distracted and before you know it you’ll be reading about the history of bonsai trees. IRC is a great way to keep in touch with fellow students and ask questions when you are stuck. If you can use it exclusively for that purpose, brilliant. If you get sucked in to idle chatter and random uselessness, better examine what it is you had planned and if what you are doing is part of that plan.

It’s hard to keep things separated, to have a clear idea about what something is for. Is your bed the place to sleep? If your desk the place to work and your sofa the place to watch TV? Or is eating at your desk, sleeping on the sofa and watching TV from the bed the way things go.

Books and Dust Bunnies

So what do the bookcases I mentioned have to do with it? Well, the bookcases were not only holding books, there was other stuff in there too. And everything in there hadn’t been used for at least the whole of 2009 and I had the dust bunnies to prove it. Getting rid of the bookcases made room for proper seating and relocation of the TV. Now watching TV is a major time suck mind you. So what better way to notice that than to make it impossible to watch from anywhere but the designated seating.

Concluding I’d like you to have another look around for two things:

1. Are there things there that you didn’t use in 2009, if so ask yourself why they are still there.
2. Do you have designated (preferably exclusive) area’s for your most important your activities?

I challenge you: For this month, use your bed only for sleeping – if you’re not sleeping, don’t be in bed – and please do tell me about your experiences.

A lot of blogs I follow seem to be doing an end-of-the-year review. I myself have been thinking about this a while now and see no reason not to do one. When this year started I didn’t own a blog, I wasn’t active on social media and had never earned a single dollar through online sales (not counting ebay, but that’s not business).

Three small things but I started in all three and combined they made a huge difference. It began with reading the four hour workweek. As I have the habit of writing down the date on which I bought a book inside it’s cover I an tell you that I bought it on October 28th 2008. I read it the following days and reread sections over the following months. The first thoughts about lifestyle design were born and I started reading blogs. A few months later I decided to start blogging over at mindthebeginner.wordpress.com (March 13th 2008). You might recall the adres, it’s where I build this blog to it’s first 100 subscribers. I was doubtful about starting a blog for a long time, thinking I had nothing to write that people would actually want to read. I was wrong and Taking part in probloggers 31 days to building a better blog challenge helped me get into the ways of blogging.

Blogging is not the only thing I started as said, I also got into Project Mojave thanks to my friend Carl. Although I didn’t stay there it did open my eyes to the possibilities of inernet and that things really aren’t that hard if only you believe in yourself and your own capabilities. With so many people online there are bound to be people who want hear what you have to say.

Right now I’m still not completely happy with my blog though. The look isn’t to good and reader interaction isn’t what I’d like it to be. So there we have a goal for the next year. But there are many more goals for the new year. 2010 Will be a themed year for me: freedom. Freedom in many ways, and of course something this vague needs measurable goals so let me give you an outline of what I’m going to do this year:

The Goals

Most significant of all I’m setting the goal of a monthly income of at least $500 a month through online ventures to be reached by the end of 2010. Combined with this the total spendings for 2010 will not be more than the total income. I could try and do that on a monthly basis but I pay my tuition in one go and that will most certainly be more than my monthly income. Freedom of finance.

My second area of goal setting is this blog. I want to reach the 300 subscribers mark by the end of the year and give you at least 100 blogposts over the next year, spread evenly. (So no overload of blogposts in December just to reach this goal.). Also I want to redo the layout and provide you with a better blogreading experience. I might just start using “headway” but I’m still on the fence about that one. A blog to write about freedom, minimalism and zen-inspired life.

In the computer area I have three goals. First off, touch-typing in qwerty. I type a lot of course. Not only in blogging but I’m almost always behind my computer and touch-typing will improve my speed greatly. My education is training me among other things to be a programmer and it’s silly to have to keep watching the keys and be slow just because I use six fingers and cant’ find the [, \ , ; and ] without looking. Secondly I’m going to set up my desktop to be a Linux-only computer. Not because I’m anti-windows (actually I think Win 7 is very good) but because I want to challenge myself and I can see only advantages of knowing how to work with more than one OS. Lastly I want a laptop, so I can properly blog and work/study wherever I am. Something highly portable but capable, like a thinkpad T500. Of course this will run on Linux. The sidenote here is that I’m not going to pay for this laptop with anything else but the income I plan to make through online ventures. Freedom to work/study/play where I want.

In the category of brain-development and useless skills I have another nice set of goals. I want to be able to solve a Rubik’s cube in 60 seconds or less. (Of which I will be posting a video on this blog as soon as I reach that goal.) I know it’s completely useless but It’s something I’ve wanted to be able to do for a long time now and it keeps bugging me.
I want to be able to juggle three balls, yes it’s completely useless, or so you might think. But its a great way of training the brain and developing hand-eye coordination. Together with the cube it’s something from my childhood I never learned and watched others do. Who said every goal needs to be useful.
Speedreading, you’ve probably heard of it, is something I’ve also wanted to be able to do. Although I can reach roughly 600 wpm (words per minute) right now I want to raise this to over 1000 wpm both in Dutch and English. Thicker books will not hold me captive for countless hours anymore. Information is freedom and more information is more freedom.

The minimalism goals are next. A long long time ago I blogged about the 100 items challenge and I must confess that I’m still not there. Why would I want to do this? I want less clutter, more space and a serene living space. I will have to get rid of dozens of books, and all those things that represent cash value but are a total pain to get sold for a descent price. It’s to cluttered right now and have more things ties you down and limits freedom.

Last but certainly not least we have body and mind developments. Five points here, but three are things I’m already doing and need to keep up. (Okay, it’s more of a want but feels like a need)
I want to keep meditating daily for 20 minutes using the methods of zazen. Combined with this it’s always a good idea to take up physical activities so I’m going to run, continuously for an hour somewhere between two and three times a week. I’ve been running for a while now but it’s hardly consistent. The last physical thing I want to keep doing is continue training t’ai chi. Following a weekly class every Thursday evening and I will stay at that for as long as I can, which is probably until I finish university.
As mentioned there are five points, so two are new ones. The first is a huge things if you know anything about personal development and productivity. And of course…. it’s something I’m not doing right now so here it is: I want to become an early riser. Getting up at 6.30 Monday through Friday consistently. Seeing as I live about 15 minutes by bike from Uni and we never start before 8.45 am that leaves me with enough time to write blogposts and perhaps even go for morning runs and/or meditate in the morning as well. We’ll have to see how that goes.
The last goal on this extensive list is something I’m absolutely not sure about if I will be able to do but I want to take up Aikido. Again this is a weekly course but the timing is horrid. Mid-day somewhere and that might interfere with my roster. I just hope it’s possible.

There you have it, my 2010 shortlist:

“Freedom”

• Financial

*Monthly “internet income” of $500
*Live below means

• Blogging

*300 subscribers to this blog
*100+ blogposts in 2010
*New layout

• Computer-related

*Touch typing in qwerty
*Having Linux as only OS
*A laptop (Payed for with internet income)

• Brain development

*Solve Rubik’s cube in 60 seconds or less (and post a video of it here)
*Juggling with three balls
*Speedreading 1000 words a minute in Dutch and English

• Minimalistic living

*Complete the 100 items challenge

• Body development

*Continue meditating daily for 20 minutes (zazen)
*Continue training in T’ai Chi
*Run more consistently (2-3 times a week, one hour at a time)
*Become an early riser (6.30 am Mon – Fri)
*Take up Aikido if possible

An almost insane list to complete and I forgot one essential thing: Do all this AND get proper grades! In the new layout this list will get it’s own dedicated page so you can keep track of the developments. I’ll also be making a so called bucket list (Things to do before you kick the ..) and that too will get it’s own dedicated page. I’m sure this list will develop a bit over the year, but nothing will come off, if anything, things will be added.

With that being said all that is left is to say Thank You! for making 2009 an awesome year where I learned loads of things and finally found my path in life. I couldn’t have done it without you. Enjoy these last days and I hope to see you in 2010

Greets,

Christiaan

In English the quote below can with some imagination be interpreted as: “when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is usually the best”. Almost anyone who’s interested in math and/or logic has heard of Ockham’s razor. It’s a principle named after William Ockham (c. 1285–1349) , a student and later teacher of Theology at Oxford University (He never became professor, but that’s a different story which has to do something with Oxford’s chancellor John Lutterell). Although he wasn’t a sceptic he was a great critic and applied the principle later known as Ockham’s razor frequently and ruthlessly. An interesting combination with his Theocentric world view.

Although it’s origins trace back much further, all the way back to Aristotle (384–322 BC). According to Wikipedia the first time the principle was described as Ockhams Razor was back in  in 1852 in the works of Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856). It’s named after Ockham however because of the efficiency and frequency of use by him in his works.

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate – William of Ockham

That’s a bit of background for you, now on the the goodness.

With a slight adaptation you could apply the Razor to anything in life although I don’t know if my teacher would agree with me on that one. (I know he’s a subscriber to my RSS so I’m sure I’ll get some feedback *grin* )

If we interpret things a little more casually we could say that “having two ways of doing something, the simpler is the better choice.” Okay, very casually… Minimalists are always searching for ways to make things simpler. The power of less indeed. Applying the Razor to what I just wrote we get “Simpler is better” or “Simplest is best”.

Having several ways of doing things is an often occurring event in every day life. We could brush our teeth with our dominant hand and our subordinate hand but we always choose the dominant hand. That is, unless you might be thinking of this blogpost when brushing your teeth and deciding to switch for once. This is a very clear example and of course not all examples are that clear to us. It’s exactly this reason why minimalism blogs seem to be flourishing on the Internet. We need others to tell us where we can simplify our lives, where we can apply that razor and cut away the uselessness.

Cutting away useless things actually is very liberating in life. It saves time, money, space, stress, frustration. All well known and documented theories on why minimalism is so attractive. In these times of abundance we’re looking for those things that really do matter in life and try to experience them to the fullest.

Do you have an experience in the liberation minimalism has brought you? Please do share it and inspire others to identify where they can make a cut with Ockham’s Razor.

Not to long ago I got a mail from Jean asking me how I handled food and eating. She herself found that “a simple (mostly raw) seasonal consumption of food works best”

I have just one guideline I try to follow in all food:

Concerning food that I buy/prepare myself. If I can’t tell what’s in there I probably won’t eat it.

I try to stay clear from processed stuff, canned things and anything in a plastic bowl you need to nuke for a few minutes. Come to think of it, I have a disliking for nuked food in general. Yes it’s flaming hot, but it’s also limp, tasteless and most times if there is any flavor involved everything tastes the same. I don’t read labels a lot (the only time I do is because my girlfriend is a vegetarian and they put meat in the oddest things lately.

If someone else is cooking I generally don’t look to close, I’m not a fussy eater at all and will eat anything you put in front of me. If we ever meet face to face, just try me.

In general, I eat because my body needs it, either food because my stomach is growling or something protein rich after running. I hardly ever eat because I like to or as comfort food. Needless to say I have no obesity issues. A nice “benefit” is that if there is anything that’s the opposite of a sweet tooth, I have one. I drink a lot, a lot of water and tea, no soda’s for me… hardly any coffee. To make sure I don’t have to buy drinks while not at home I always have a 16 oz Nalgene bottle with me, filled with water. I top it up every chance I get. A simple but very effective way to save money and healthy too.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell for me. If you have more questions, please do ask them.

In the mean time I have a question for you: What is your take on food?

Yes, it takes just one step to transform your home into a minimalist living space. It’s huge actually and if you want to give it a go there are a lot of smaller steps to go through:

• Throw away everything you haven’t used in a year
• Get rid of paperwork/magazines
• Find a way to properly manage all the cable work
• “A place for everything and everything in it’s place”
• Stop yourself (and others!) from letting more stuff get into your home
• Get rid of anything with strong patterns (floral curtains….)
• …
• …

There are probably hundreds of tips you can find all over the net but in the end it comes down to my one step:

1. Keep every surface clear

Be it your desk, a wall, the floor, a table… Assign one (an only one) space in your home here you can “dump” stuff and don’t ever dump anything anywhere else. Everything has it’s own place and should be in that place and nowhere else. The simplest of examples that comes to mind right now is dirty laundry and the hamper. Dirty socks somehow have this tendency to land on the floor. Make it easier on yourself and undress in the vicinity of the hamper, or put the hamper closer to where you undress. The floor is a very popular storage place for all kinds of stuff. Just imagine the average dorm room, everything is all over the place and more often than not you can’t see the floor. The same goes for desks: stacks of paper, piles of books, (half)empty cups, maybe even your phone charger.

Take a look around your home and see all the surfaces, now imagine how they would look without anything on them. See the minimalism? It’s right there under all the clutter, just waiting for you to uncover it.

Why would you want to create a minimalist living area? Again, there are huge benefits. For ease of reading (and just because I can’t say it any better myself) I’ve copied a bit of a blogpost on Zenhabits

Benefits of a Minimalist Home
I could probably go on for awhile about this, but let me just list a few key benefits:

1. Less stressful. Clutter is a form of visual distraction, and everything in our vision pulls at our attention at least a little. The less clutter, the less visual stress we have. A minimalist home is calming.
2. More appealing. Think about photos of homes that are cluttered, and photos of minimalist homes. The ones with almost nothing in them except some beautiful furniture, some nice artwork, and a very few pretty decorations, are the ones that appeal to most of us. You can make your home more appealing by making it more minimalist.
3. Easier to clean. It’s hard to clean a whole bunch of objects, or to sweep or vacuum around a bunch of furniture. The more stuff you have, the more you have to keep clean, and the more complicated it is to clean around the stuff. Think about how easy it is to clean an empty room compared to one with 50 objects in it. That’s an extreme example, of course, as I wouldn’t recommend you have an empty room, but it’s just to illustrate the difference.

You don’t need modern furniture, a stainless kitchen and all those other fancy things to be a minimalist. It’s simply the byproduct of minimalist living: because minimalists don’t buy a lot of clutter they save huge amounts of money and can spend that on nice quality things. The few items they do buy tend to be highly functional and of a superior quality.

Go have some fun in your home, one room at a time clear all the surfaces and find a place for everything you want to keep. Good luck and above all, enjoy yourself and reward yourself at every step!

I just got back from a two week vacation. There were three of us and we had a car at our disposal. Although I consider myself a minimalist I still was packing a big weekend bag, a backpack (my laptopbag) and my mediation mat (even rolled up it’s still quite big). My in-line skates were thrown in the trunk as well as a jacket.

All in I had filed the trunk of the car for about 1/3

After everything was packed the three of us wanted to take along, not only the trunk was full, but the back seats were covered as well, leaving a niche for the backseat driver to fold in to.

Something went wrong there, don’t you think?!

Here I am, blogging (among other things) about minimalism and I need 1/3 of a car trunk to haul everything! That’s just wrong. Upon getting home I did what everything does when home: unpack. But I did it consciously. Not just stuffing everything back to where it belongs, but looking at it and asking myself “did I use this?” and in several cases following the answer with a second question “Then why the *bleep* did I bring it along?!”

Going through my bag this way took some time and served the dual purpose of being my meditation for the evening. Meditative unpacking, give it a try.

In the end I had a nice pile of stuff I actually didn’t use in the whole two weeks. Among them: a pair of shoes, two books, 2 shirts, 2 pairs of socks and a math book I’m supposed to be studying to get ready for University. Unlike Pareto’s law roughly 60% of the content of my bag got serious use, the rest was fluff. I used the skates, but only once. I used my meditation mat every evening and the jacket was used almost every day.

All in I could have packed a lot less and still be on vacation but I need to take this packing more seriously if I’m ever going to be truly location independent. After all, everything has to fit in a carry-on, even if the vacation lasts for  year.

If I dropped the skates AND found a portable solution for my meditation mat AND didn’t pack the fluff I think I could have gotten it all in a single bag.

Sorry for the rambling post but there is a message here, a lesson: Next time you unpack your bag after a vacation do it consciously. Ask yourself if you used it and if not why you brought it along. After a few passes I’m sure you’ll be packing far less next time.

Thanks everyone for the nice tweets and comments the past two weeks, I’ve been far less active than I was hoping to be but I’m back home now and read to start kicking again.

I’ve been looking into minimalist homes a lot lately and at how the Japanese tackle this challenge in particular. In my previous article on minimalist living I identified what it is exactly that we need to live somewhere, for convenience I’ll give the list again:

A bed

A desk/table and chair

A toilet

A shower

A kitchen

A place to store our 100 items

I still feel this list is all we need. We could simplify and make the bed a mattress on the floor and the kitchen a gas stove on the table but that would bemore like camping. Nobody said that minimalist living should be hardship right?
The Japanese have gotten this minimalistic living down to an art form. With the congestion of the urban area’s plots to build a home are getting smaller and smaller. They even have a name for it: kyosho jutaku (狭小住宅). If we let babelfish loose on that phrase we end up with the translation “narrow small residential” which does seem fitting. In proper English I’d like to stick with micro home or micro living.

These homes being so small don’t let you live a cluttered life. Anything out of place will become an obstruction somehow.

Now I was in the Ikea last Friday and they’re advertising with a 37 square meter home. To bad they had to stuff it with all kinds of “nifty storage solutions” which made it a tight fit. Storage was everywhere and everything had several functions it seemed. I never thought that in 37 square meters I could still feel like a sardine. You couldn’t swing a cat in there. I bet they never heard of the 100 items challenge.

These Japanese micro homes take living small to a new level. The Ikea apartment was 37 square meters. The plots the Japanese build these houses on are no bigger than 30 square meters. Granted they do get to add a few floors if they want but still. Some of these homes sacrifice a part of the plot to accommodate a parking space for their car as well.
To get an idea of pricing over there. The average-of-the-average Tokyo married couple may be looking to buy a brand-new 70 square meters apartment at a cost of ¥45,000,000 and above. (That’s over $456,000.- dollars). With those prices it’s not strange that micro living is so popular in cities like Tokyo and Kobe.
Although not all the homes in this list will fit in such a plot I found a few examples of minimalist homes that I’d really like to share with you.

The first one is Tadao Ando’s 4×4 house. A concrete tower rising 4 stories above ground and a basement below. It stands 13.4m tall. The “three cubes” that make up this house are roughly 4×4x4 meters in size. The top cube is offset one meter in both of the horizontal axis. Actually on this building the plot was exactly 5×5 meters. The total floor space is 117.19 m2
“Each floor of the house is used for a different activity: storage in the basement, access and service on the ground floor, bedroom on the first floor, study on the second, kitchen and dining room on the top floor. The spaces are almost completely enclosed on three sides, while they are open on the fourth facing towards the sea.”
The amount of light that comes in through the massive windows is staggering and the view is to die for. I can definitely see myself live in this house. More than enough room to store the 100 things. Park the motorcycle under the overhang of the top cube and enjoy sunsets over the sea with a good book and a glass of sake.

On to our second home, this one is bigger than the 30 square meter plot but I think it’s really to nice not to share:
The Garden and Sea House by Takao Shiotsuka
If white is not your color you’re in trouble with this one. Again, this house has a view of the sea. There is a lot of glass here, from floor to ceiling. Combined with a completely white “garden” this house has the feel of a sacred place. The total floor space is 237.14m2. Quite large actually, although it’s not living on a small footprint it definitely is a minimalist home.

The third home in our list is Satoshi Kurosaki’s Slit. A very thin house on a narrow and long plot squeezed in between two other plots. 85 m2 living area if I’m correct. Not much to say about this one. It was designed for a family of three who needed (job) to live in the city but on a tight budget. It’s simply amazing how much can be done with so little room.

I’d like to give you a bonus house toend this post: Ghost by Jin Otagiri. It’s white, it’s minimal, it’s empty. Either you love it or you hate it. No words, just a picture: