I want to talk about minimalism as a mindset.
I wrote this last fall:
As my family and I are preparing to move to Italy, we are downsizing quite a bit. It’s interesting how we think we will need things that we don’t miss just one day after throwing it in the donation box. How we perceive our stuff when we’re looking at it is usually quite different from how we honestly perceive things in our mind. When we’re looking at different items, touching things, holding things — we think about the ways we’ve used it in the past, but if you’re trying to decide whether or not to get rid of it, you’re likely no longer using it like you once did. Just try the KonMari Method of decluttering and you’ll soon realize how few things you own that actually “spark joy” in your life.
I feel more strongly now than I did then about downsizing.
I don’t know about you, but we spend way too much time going through stuff.
Time that we could have spent together as a family doing something more worthwhile.
Let’s face it, attaching deep emotions to things is unhealthy.
We think we’re attached to our grandmother’s old lamp or our father’s coin from WWII, but the truth is, we are attached to the memories of them.
And those memories don’t go away when we get rid of stuff.
Honestly, we set ourselves up for failure all the time by keeping old things, and attaching more and more value to them as the years go on.
Then what happens when your 2-year-old knocks the keepsake off the mantle?
It breaks, because for some reason keepsakes are always breakable.
Why don’t we stop attaching so much value to things?
Let’s keep the value where it should be: with the memories we make.
I’m not telling you not to own anything.
I’m simply asking you to consider attaching less value to stuff.