Minimalism vs. Hoarding

[notdavidlynch]

Where do you fall on the spectrum from spartan minimalism to day-time television featured hoarding?

Me, personally, I'm actually very disgusted by people who keep too many things. I grew up with a parent who was a borderline hoarder, and it always made life needlessly difficult. Excessive things makes me feel weighed down, like I'm not free to uproot myself because I have this pile of shit that I need to lorde over.

I try to not keep art that I make. If I can't find a home for it with someone else, then I'll destroy it or use it to make something else (after documentation, of course).

I even throw out unexpired food if I don't expect to eat it.

The items that I do hold onto are tools and/or valuable raw materials for creation. Even these, however, will be tossed or sold and reduced to the extremely expensive/precious (laptop, camera, water miscible oil, etc).

I even sold my Vitamix.

[lethe]

I might be more on the minimalist side than I think, but I'm hyper aware of the few sentimental items and unlikely-to-be-used craft supplies I keep.

I LOVE throwing things away and hate clutter. Clutter feels messy, dirty, like a chore hanging over my head. Even if stuffed in a drawer or closet. It's like I have to keep a mental tally of where everything is all the time. I resent the feeling I get looking at something I KNOW I don't need but for some reason must/should keep. Like the difficulty in throwing away a card or letter is some emotional manipulation.

Funny you mention it, I give and throw my art away, too. Also journal entries when I'm done with the notes. It's like once I've finished I don't need it anymore. It has served its purpose. I don't even want a reminder of what I did, since it was at a skill level lower than I am now (ideally).
Costumes are the only exception.

I think one of the greatest things about cooking as a craft is that you use it immediately and then its gone.

[Senseye]

I have difficulty throwing things away. But, as a counterbalance, I don't really collect things. So I am kind of in the middle. I'm getting better at tossing out old things that have been sitting idle for years, but I still need to work on it.

[Vison]

Growing up my inclination was always towards saving everything. I switched parental custody twice a month and filling my rooms with tonnes of things was a reaction to essentially living out of a backpack. My mother was also a poor housekeeper and for a time we lived with a hoarder, neither of those things had good effects.

These days I tend heavily towards minimalism. Repeat constant exposure to clutter I cant co anything about or keep up with has a huge impact on my happiness and anxiety levels.

[jigglypuff]

when i travel or am moving around a lot i'm a minimalist, but normally i'm pretty mixed. i'm sometimes motivated to donate a bunch of my old stuff representing my past life (did that recently), yet i tend to collect stuff esp in the form of digital files. my room is filled with stuff that isn't mine a lot of the time cuz other people need storage & i can't bring myself to care much.

[Faust]

I've adopted minimalism merely to be frugal at first, and because I had to stay mobile, but it's normalcy now and feels proper. I consider most items and media 'consumables', so once I've gone through a book or game once, it's gone and I move on to something else.

I've always been drawn to very large, mansion-like houses. I like to explore, and collectibles displayed as sort of museum pieces make sense in those places. But I like my own personal living space to be fairly small.

I don't like the fact that large architecture is usually associated with wealth. Even if one supposes that the rich shouldn't exist to such a level that they could afford these things, mansions should still exist. All these immodest, large edifices should still exist. I don't think this is in discord with minimalism.

[James]

I would like to think I live on the minimalist end of that spectrum. I sell or trash anything that has no use, and do not purchase anything that has no purpose. When I do make a purchase, it is well thought out and can serve more than one purpose if possible. The other side of this is that I do tend to buy/collect books but I see it more as an investment to myself than anything.

[Blorg]

I've always been a minimalist. I think it's because I grew up in an isolated area, far away from everything except grocery stores (which were about half an hour away). Plus, when I was a kid, my mom would usually take me shopping for clothes/toys at dusty, old-peopled thrift stores, which solidified my disgust.

So I dislike shopping and I don't really see the fun of "browsing" for things, except in the case of books (I enjoy browsing books but I don't see the point of buying any). I buy simple clothes in bulk every year or so and either give away or throw out old clothes, depending on whether or not they have holes.

I like the idea of decorating my environment but in reality it always seems like more stress than it's worth. Most surfaces in my current apartment are bare and they'll probably stay that way forever. (That pallet idea I made a thread about didn't work out...they're gone, sadly).

However, my internet life is much different. In fact, I tend towards the hoarding side of the spectrum. I rarely have fewer than 50 tabs open across multiple windows on my computer. I love Pinterest and I've hoarded hundreds of pins (I like categorizing them into boards like colors, moods, atmospheres, etc). I also have hundreds of books listed in my goodreads "to-read" list. So I'm a hoarder of potentials but a minimalist irl. Similarly, I like collecting and salivating over recipes online and in cookbooks, but when I actually go grocery shopping, I'll usually buy only one or two things-- maybe eggs or beans (plus coffee, cigarettes and hygiene things if necessary)-- for a week at a time.

[ACow]

There's definitely a level of minimalism below me, so I can't truly say that I'm the most minimalist, but its all relative.

I think I have/had an instinct to keep things "in case i need them in the future", but i learned that resulted in clutter/problems/resource expenditure which was an active dis-utility, and almost all those things I never needed in the future (and some of them became obsolete or worn over time anyway). I like my open spaces and clean lines, so that leads me to try to live in a minimalist fashion even if i don't always succeed. I do like books however :P Stylistically my desktop is probably bordering on absolute minimalism: I don't like icons being there. For some reason my laptop tends to have its desktop littered a bit more. I haven't entirely figured out why this is.

I've just moved about 700km, and moving is always a time to go through everything and make choices about what you need, and also time to realise how much fucking shit you've got.

I have a lot of shit. It horrifies me. The amount of crap we got out of a 1 bedroom apartment is just horrifying. What horrifies me more is the knowledge that me and the woman are pretty low on the end of consumption relative to peers/society. I think i've mentioned on here before that we don't have a car, and haven't for several years now, and i'll continue that as long as I can, or until I move to my rural retreat. I joined up with a car-share program here recently though.

Now, before I give you an inaccurate view, my life is not explicitly about anti-consumption. There's a difference between uni student "i'm minimalist because all i can afford is a milk crate couch" and "i've got resources and now I can chose how I live". I think i'd like an artistic studio/workshop in which I could store my artwork, i just can't afford that while living in a shit hot location in the city/planning for my future attempts at financial freedom. Unlike others, I think being a "professional" artist would be damn hard/impossible, because I create art mainly for myself and couldn't stomach giving it away to random people whom i know nothing about and whose character, life and values I don't have an insight into. Photography at least is kind of cool that way because you can copy it without destroying or detracting from the original in any way, but if i learnt to sketch/paint, it would probably only be to furnish my own space, inspire me, or as presents/commissions to people I knew.

My life is generally about trying to give myself as much comfort/time as possible to do enjoyable things, and part of this leads to anti-extreme-minimalism, though it is definitely not hoarding. Some people view this as extravagance/consumerism, so i'll discuss it here just so we are aware it doesn't entirely work on the minimalist-hoarding paradigm.

I view purchasing a $15,000 car and storing it somewhere/running it as extravagant/consumerist/too-much-stuff. Dito clothing. I've just dropped just over $5000 on appliances for our apartment however. Most people would view the later as extravagant in our society, and argue that the former is "necessity". Part of that was because we didn't want to ship our 10 year cheap ass shit to a new location. The other part is i guess part of my life philosophy. The fridge now lives in a cupboard. The washer and dryer stack in a cupboard, are about as water/energy efficient as you can get, and the dryer doesn't need an exhaust vent. They're also far gentler on the clothes than our old shit, which means yay, less hoarding/buying of clothes.

Stuff that is "out in the open" is stuff that is used: Couches, kitchen equipment, my study, my books, the TV, some plants. Alas there's limited scope for much art in the little rental. The labor-saving devices are all basically behind closed doors and in cupboards where they run or stay relatively out of sight and out of mind.

And about once every year or so, we try to go on a cull of throwing away/give away/sell everything that we can.

I've gotten some funny looks from people at work who don't seem to be understanding of why I would be giving things away at all, but they're happy to take it...

[stuck]

I don't like stuff, but have a hard time throwing things out.