A Minimalist Journey

Molly Shanahan
Aug 2, 2017
4 min read

It seems I've fallen off the blog wagon a bit! This has been a summer filled with many yoga classes, preparations, and making sure to see as many people as I can before I make my move across the country to Colorado. It has been an exciting and exhausting process.

As I began preparing for my move months ago, I stumbled across the documentary Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, two normal guys who have adopted the title of "The Minimalists." They addressed the issue of compulsory consumerism in the US, the impact that it has on the world, and what it is doing to us, the people, as a result.

The idea is minimalism, a concept that has existed in many facets throughout history that has now been mainstreamed into quasi-popularity (depending on who you're speaking to). The core concept is living more, while having less. We've seen the spike in tiny houses and people living out of backpacks, downsizing their material items to tiny confinements in order to do x, y, or z. These are more extreme cases of the same mentality: stuff doesn't create happiness.

I, like many fellow Americans, believed for a long time that personal worth is directly correlated with personal property. A nice car, a big house, designer (enter fashion statement here). I specifically remember being in middle school and being MORTIFIED that the bulk of my clothes came from Kohl's and didn't sport a large, ostentatious seagull or special design on the jean pocket to let everyone know exactly how much I was worth. These were emotions that felt important and justified at 12 years old. 12 years old, and already consumed with status symbols.

Somewhere along the line, I started to feel a change in my outlook on stuff (in the physical sense). Functionality became my primary concern when it came to material goods. I no longer felt the need to have something simply because other people did. I sported a flip phone until it became much more impractical to function without it with my work and schedule. So as I watched this documentary, I felt myself nodding and "yes!"-ing and feeling a profound connection with mostly everything that was presented.

Flash forward to now: Many months later and packing for a cross-country move, I realize that I am not as "minimalist" as I once thought (or perhaps "idealized" is the better term). By now I've read one of the Minimalists' books, Everything That Remains, which led me through a stint of listening to their podcasts every day on my commute to work. I've been spending the last few months paring down my possessions so that I fit all of my worldly belongings into the back of my trusty RAV4. I get a variety of responses when I tell people this plan, ranging from very impressed to sorely incredulous. The process has been difficult, but I have honestly never felt more unencumbered by things than I do now. I donated half of my clothes, some of which still tagged, much of which no longer fit, all of which I never wore anymore (and yet survived through many a closet purge anyway, hanging in there on the premise of "just in case").

"Just In Case": These 3 words are what have ultimately kept me from cutting back in the past.

"I'll keep these old clothes from before I lost weight just in case I put it back on."

"I need 9 black-and-white striped shirts just in case all the others are dirty and I need to wear one for the 9th day in a row."

"I can't get rid of this box of knitting supplies that I bought in 2006 when I got really excited about knitting for 30 seconds and then never really committed to just in case I decide 11 years later that today's FINALLY the day I crank out a pair of socks."

These are obviously ridiculous scenarios, but we're all guilty of it. And worse yet, despite knowing that it's ridiculous, we STILL keep piles upon piles of unneeded things just in case of that one situation that may or may not ever come true.

The central idea is to keep things that bring value to your life. I had to come to terms with the fact that as much as I want to be a "book person," I'm just as happy having them on my Kindle. My best friend from college, however, is a middle school language arts teacher planning on a masters in Library Sciences. She is a book person if I've ever seen one. For her, her book collection brings immense value to her life, where as mine served more as a "Look How Smart I Must Be" monument to my own brain. Pat on the back, Molly, you can read! On the contrary, she would have no need for the abundance of yoga tools that I use in my day-to-day life. It should go without saying, but there is no need to covet thy neighbor's personal interests; it is much more valuable and practical to focus on your own.

With the bulk of my clothes donated and my books downgraded to a copy paper box, I'm starting to understand the feeling of freedom that the Minimalists reference in their quest to get the message out. Freedom to move across the country. Freedom to spend the $2,000 I would have spent on a U-haul on something more meaningful to me, like travel, experiences, or a little extra financial stability (never to be overlooked in your mid-twenties). Freedom to spend most of the time with my dad in my new state hiking or exploring instead of unpacking. Above all, I feel the freedom of not being tied to materials, and it's a beautiful thing.

This journey is a process and I am by no means done, but it's a process that I'm excited to continue.