Simple living has been a lifestyle choice for humans effectively since the concept of ownership was first conceived. Though, in the last decade, we’ve seen a rapid resurgence of the minimalist lifestyle. This growth has been propelled by many things, some are quite legitimate. Be it environmental concerns, stagnant wages, or combating compulsive hoarding. Other times, it’s for a much simpler reason. In particular, social media clout; bragging points.
But this modern minimalism moment has never truly been challenged. Here’s what I mean. The Minimalists, known for their documentary, Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things, released in 2016, started their path to notoriety in Fall 2009. In one of their earliest blog entries, they give credit to blogger Colin Wright, who first posted in Spring 2009. The filmmaker that created The Minimalists’ documentary, Matt D’Avella, started uploading minimalism-focused videos to YouTube in early 2017, shortly after the film’s theatrical release. The popular #vanlife hashtag has been credited to Foster Huntington, a former fashion designer that moved into a Volkswagen Synchro and started using the ubiquitous hashtag in 2011. Very recently, minimalism has received a boost from Marie Kondo. Her book, first published in Japan in 2011, then in the US in 2014, has had an outsized impact on modern minimalism, even gaining her own virally popular Netflix series in 2019.
What do these popular names in minimalism all have in common? They all got their start after the 2008 financial crisis, during a decade of some of the greatest economic growth the world has ever seen. A time when taking risks, such as quitting your job to run a blog, donating 90% of your belongings, or downsizing to a tiny house, are all safe things to do.
(Author’s note: Full transparency, there is a bit of cherry-picking in the names I chose. For example, Tynan, who did an AMA in the OWM community, first posted to his blog 16 years ago. Though I maintain that to the average person that doesn’t actively follow minimalism, at least one of the names listed above are most likely to ring a bell.)
The question I can’t help but ask now is: Was this all a mistake?
We’ve jumped straight from the best of times to the worst of times, and as of writing this, over 14% of the American workforce finds themselves unemployed. The unemployment system in the United States is trying to keep up, but it simply wasn’t designed to handle a load like this. An individual with a well-paying job three months ago could have stumbled across The Minimalist’s documentary, felt inspired, and ditched the majority of their belongings. And… now what?
Where the opposite of minimalism is consumerism, the former has plenty of pros over the latter. But it unquestionably has numerous cons. I think we should start talking about both. The potential realities need to be discussed more if minimalism is ever going to survive crises such as the one we’re facing today. Up until now, minimalism has seen two representations online: Criticism and romanticism. Black and white.
While it’s natural to feel compelled to combat one with the other, this makes it impossible for the average person to see which is more closely based in reality. What this often leads to is said person making an uninformed choice for the story that makes them the least uncomfortable. This is what we should be trying to avoid. More reality, less extremity.
Let’s explore a bit of the reality of minimalism.
The Minimalists have a rule that they love to bring up from time to time known as the 20/20 rule. It’s meant primarily as a way to shed some of the items that you keep around “just in case.” Already, I’m sure you can already start to discern the position of privilege that this rule is founded on, but let’s take a closer look anyway.
The 20/20 rule states that any item you’re on the fence about that can be replaced with less than 20 minutes of effort and $20 spent should be disposed of without a second thought. While that seems like a reasonable thing to ask of people during normal times, “just in case” has just become a grotesque reality for tens of millions of Americans (not to mention hundreds of millions of people around the world).
In good times, twenty dollars times dozens of items is a massive risk for lower-income families to take in the name of “decluttering.” If you’re unemployed, twenty dollars could be what it takes to send your kids to school with a healthy, homemade meal or lunch money. In a global pandemic, though, twenty dollars is an impossible amount of money to gamble on simplifying one’s life.
Similarly, twenty minutes in a store is reasonable to ask of someone, unless paying for gas is a burden on the family finances. Now, in the age of social distancing, twenty minutes in the store is a potential hazard to your health and the health of your family.
Obviously, The Minimalists could not have predicted a global pandemic that would hurl the planet into a paradoxical state of simultaneous calm and chaos, but one thing COVID-19 has done well is shine a light on the failures and inequalities of our systems during normal times. Minimalism is a system like any other and, left unchecked, is dangerous like any other.
(Author’s note: It may seem like I’m picking on The Minimalists, but truthfully they just happen to be the ones with the most content on the subject of minimalism and largest following. As of writing, they have 165,700+ followers on Twitter, edging out Marie Kondo by only 300. Additionally, as content-creators selling a lifestyle as a product, they have the most to gain by romanticizing minimalism and downplaying its negatives.)
Anecdotally, I’m very fortunate that I still have my job, though in the past month and certainly in the months ahead I have and will come closer to confronting the notion of unemployment then I ever thought I would come. With that, I’ve started to think about what my backup plan would be. If I needed to do something else tomorrow, what would I do?
I settled on photography as my backup plan, though I only have this expensive, professional camera equipment and digital editing tools because I practiced photography professionally in college. Once I graduated, I was debating selling the cameras because they were collecting dust. That is until a friend of mine asked me to photograph his proposal. After doing that, I figured I’d keep the cameras for events such as this... until they began collecting dust again... at which point I again considered selling them. Now they’re my primary lifeline, one that I nearly cut off in a blind pursuit of pruning the inessential.
I can’t help but look back at all of the things I’ve donated or sold in the past that could help me if I needed them today. In addition, I think about the money I’ve spent on expensive, multi-functional items, each meant to replace multiple cheaper items I already owned, all in the name of decreasing the total number of items I own in a frivolous race to the bottom.
And here’s the thing, I’m not an aggressive minimalist. In the Only What Matters community, I’ve had the good fortune to be able to interact with a wide variety of minimalists, all of whom have a different definition of what minimalism is and how they apply it to their daily lives. While I have an apartment furnished with goods, some only have a laptop and enough clothes to fill a backpack. They might work for themselves or they might work remotely for a company. They are one economic disaster away from being stuck literally with the clothes on their backs, left to hunt for employment in a market in which nobody is hiring.
For many of these people, they’re financially independent and/or have a very comfortable safety cushion. But for many others, they got sucked into the romanticized image they saw on social media or read about on a blog similar to this one. And now they’re stuck.
Let the main takeaway of this whole story be that the be-all and end-all romanticization of minimalism has the potential to be incredibly harmful.
All of that being said, as I mentioned, this crisis has shined a light on major flaws with the systems we consider to be fundamental in society today. And, now that everything is paused, many of us are taking the time to reconsider if those same systems could be replaced. Consumerism, like minimalism, is an imperfect system. It’s my opinion that minimalism can be a solution — a counterbalance, if you will — if applied intentionally and responsibly.
We have now seen that capitalism, the predominant driver of consumerism, is fragile. A century of nearly uninterrupted growth is no match for a month of pause. While a system as vast and complex as the world economy will be able to recover from this hiatus, one’s personal finances don’t have the same luxury of elasticity. A lifetime of financial growth and the limitless accumulation of newer, shinier things (and worse yet, debt) is worthless when everything comes to a halt; when the paychecks stop arriving, when the companies stop hiring.
If you find yourself stuck right now, use this moment to take a mental inventory of everything you own. What’s missing? What would make you unstuck? I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but I imagine the answer is rarely — if ever — a thing at all. We wish we had more money in savings, we wish we had this amount of time with our children all the time, we wish we read more books, developed new skills, learned new languages, baked more bread. All of the “things” we find ourselves trending toward now were available to us before, but we were all blinded by a perpetual grind that only every led to more grind.
And now we, collectively, pause.
In this day of solitude, and the day that follows tomorrow, and the next day, and until we return to a life that resembles the life we lived a few months ago: Pay close attention to the things you want to do, and realize it’s rarely the things you want to own that are driving you forward in this quarantinable epoch. Life will eventually return to normal, and the desire to own more things will come back in full force (advertisers will make sure of it). At that time, remember the things that brought you joy in the months prior. Remember the things that weren’t physical things, and the feelings of delight, comfort, and/or freedom that came with them.
Life, like the financial market, fluctuates. There are more dips ahead; unforeseen bends in the road. The best thing you can do today is establish a lifestyle that preserves your optionality for when that moment inevitably comes. Minimalism is an imperfect means to an end. The end it aims for is a lifestyle that is flexible, sustainable, and that guides you toward having the freedom to do what fills you with a sense of purpose.
But it bears repeating, minimalism is an imperfect means to an end.
The bumps in the road of life are not going to disappear and it’s still important to plan for them to the fullest extent possible. A minimalist lifestyle can help you to plan and be prepared for those bumps, so long as you always keep in mind that they are still — and always will be — looming on the horizon.
As a closing aside, there are plenty of opinions online of how you should treat money and handle your personal finances, including on this blog. I don’t want to use this post to instruct you how to handle your money, but I do want to acknowledge that money is tight for millions of people right now. While living lavishly in the good times is fun, it’s worth taking a moment every once in a while to consider the worst case scenario and plan for it. For many, it’s easy to visualize: This is it; right now.
The shiny, new thing will make you happier today, but I promise the dusty, old thing will make you happier tomorrow.
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you and your lifestyle? We’d love to hear your story.