The back of my car.
My reality for many years was that I could fit everything I own
in the back of my car. Well, the back and front and whatever free space my dad
(a former loadmaster for the military) could find. It was first, a reality, and
second, a badge of honor. I wasn’t beholden to stuff.
Partly it was my nomadic lifestyle; I moved every two to
four years (hell, that is still true as I approach 40). Partly it was a meager
budget (that I have done amazing things with). And at least some part of it is that
I’ve spent so much time in places with people that don’t have an abundance of material
goods. It is difficult to feel justified in buying a new plate set when all of
the plates are unbroken and have the added luxury of matching when people I work
with cook with warped pots and cut with battered knives.
My first stint in the Bay my apartment was pretty big and
replete with storage space. “Don’t worry, you’ll buy stuff to fill this space,”
a friend assured me as she opened and closed empty cabinets. I didn’t have a
retort because her words were like a foreign language– actually they were more foreign
than any language I’d ever heard. I didn’t realize there were people in the
world who thought your belongings should be greater than or equal to the space
you had to house them. That wasn’t my perspective.
Seven years later and I’m not in search of “things” but my tendency
toward minimalism – before the term was trending and had websites dedicated to
the concept – is beginning to conflict with a desire to acquire things. All of
a sudden I want new plates because the old ones are ugly and I’ve had them
since college (I purchased them after much handwringing) and I want a food
processor because my blender (the cause of hand-wringing a few months before)
couldn’t handle my homemade veggie burger recipe.
The desire started small. I remember fretting over buying cutting
boards, “I cut on plates in South Africa, I don’t really need boards,” I rationalized. Ess, in Nigeria, told me to buy a
damn cutting board. And I did. But it hasn’t stopped with cutting boards…now I’m
looking at tiered racks to organize my spices and a pot the same size of a pot I
already have so that I can cook two different things at the same time (novel, I
know).
I haven’t purchased those things. I keep stopping myself. The
more things I acquire (a carry-on suitcase to trade-off with my travel backpack
when traveling for work, a throw pillow for my purely utilitarian couch, the
ruffle so you can’t see under my bed) the more I feel…wasteful, extravagant? Not
to mention less mobile. A food processor takes up a sizeable amount of space.
My minimalist ways appear to be fading even as minimalism is
a lifestyle choice is on the rise. I am intrigued by the
varied
reasons people become minimalists – the different ways it translates in the
ways they live. My sister pointed out a host of reasons for the shift some
people are making:
-
Spend less money
- Avoid consumerism
-
Take up less space
- The environment
I’d never really considered some of these other potential
benefits. Although I know that the
making
(and buying) of stuff is inherently waste-filled, I never really considered
how a certain type of minimalist lifestyle could combat that. Buying used items
instead of new ones, buying quality items instead of cheap ones. My sister
pointed out that the Le Creuset pot she inherited from her mother-in-law lasted
a literal lifetime and outlasted the nice pots she had purchased. When it
finally broke, the company replaced it.
That pot addressed two schools of minimalism: fewer
resources used to continue to replace an object and the money saved from not
having to do so. Of course those pots are expensive and not an option for
everyone, but…the reality is that sometimes we go cheap (not inexpensive) for
the short-term gain and lose out on long-term benefits.
I never manage to stay put long enough to warrant purchasing
high-end items; I haven’t made a habit of keeping most things long enough for
it to matter since I shed my life every few years and start over somewhere else
– often in a new country.
But slowly, things of quality have found me: the cast iron skillet
my mother seasoned and then passed on to me, the pot and knife I inherited from
my friend. These are things that I wrap up carefully and put aside when I move.
Minimalism has nuance for me now. There are various things
for me to consider other than the ability to cram four years (or 40) into my
car.
That doesn’t make me any more comfortable with purchasing things
I know are not remotely essential. Right now I’m considering a carrot string
peeler and a tiered spice rack…I’ll probably get the latter and ignore the
former. It isn’t about cost; instead, it is about the amount of use it will
get. And while I cook a lot, the ability to see my spices outweighs the novelty
of thin strips of root vegetables.
Whatever changes I’m going through, I am mindful of what I own,
what I should acquire, and what I might purge. On the floor in my home right
now is a television I never use, a bunch of clothes I never wear, and a hoard
of papers vaguely related to past taxes. Their presence makes me at least as
anxious as the idea of buying new things but infinitely easier for me to remedy.
Stuff for stuff’s sake is horrible but all stuff isn’t bad. A
minimalist by any other name (and for any number of reasons) I’m still
searching for the balance.
