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I’ve always been a minimalist – even as a teenager I had no interest in having lots of clothes, shoes, or other trappings of high school life in the 80s. That pull toward minimalism was reinforced during the 2 years I spent teaching English in Japan after college. No dedicated bedroom that sits empty and unused all day? My bed folds up and is stored in the closet? A tiny fridge forcing me to buy fresh fruit and vegetables every other day? Fantastic public transportation so I didn’t need to own a car? I was in heaven.
I’ve read with interest recent articles and comments about frugality – what it means to be frugal, examples of frugality, and what motivates people to adopt a frugal lifestyle. It got me thinking about my own spending habits, and their intersection with my minimalist lifestyle. I realized that while I certainly fit the definition of frugal, my spending, or lack thereof, is not motivated by a drive to save money. Rather, it’s closely tied to my desire to tread lightly through the world; I want to minimize my footprint (i.e. reduce how much of the world’s resources I appropriate for my use) and not be weighed down by ‘stuff’.
For me, minimizing my footprint means embracing habits like buying items used when possible, putting on sweaters when it’s cold, rather than cranking the thermostat, and taking public transportation when possible (sadly, that’s not too often in this country). While those habits save me money, other footprint-minimizing habits, like buying local and avoiding Amazon, Target, Walmart, and other big box stores, do not.
Not owning much ‘stuff’ checks both boxes: it reduces my footprint and doesn’t weigh me down with things I don’t need. I love the freedom this brings me. My partner and I left the Bay Area a few years ago and have been semi-nomadic ever since. Everything we own in the world fits comfortably in a 5×5 storage unit (that was the smallest size available) – I think of it as renting a closet! When we travel, we each bring a 22L day pack as our luggage, and even on a 3-month trip to Europe, we had room to spare.
I love that the concepts of frugality and minimalism both encourage a person to be thoughtful and intentional about how they are living. So many of the messages we are bombarded with daily are about consumption of ‘stuff’ that advertisers convince us we can’t live without. I think Wordsworth had it right when he said. “The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;”.
I know from reading this forum over the past few years that in answering the question of how best to spend our time and resources, we’d all come up with wildly different answers; there’s a reason Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors of ice cream! The beauty of taking the time to reflect and to make conscious choices, is that we can be more confident that our spending – of time and energy, not just money! – aligns with our values.
To each his own. Seems like you found what makes you happy. But that lifestyle seems like a lot of work to me. We retired and moved to a bigger house back up north. We have lots of cherished things that we have good memories about. We don’t keep a lot of junk but we also don’t worry about being minimalists. We are ‘content’, even though we do not have little.
The greatest wealth is to live content with little : Plato
Fun post. We do not get everything in a 22L backpack. Then again, for us it’s life, not just a long trip, so fitting four seasons into a 22L backpack is probably too much to expect of ourselves. No doubt we could be more efficient though.
I have really enjoyed reading about your nomadic life and would love to read more! We are semi-nomadic now (no fixed home, but family obligations keep me in one area of the country for half the year), but when the time comes our plan is to scale up to 40L packs – it should give us a little more flexibility in what we pack, while staying very portable.
Your post got me thinking more about “frugal packing” if you will. I think it’s personal, much like personal finance. While some think a latte a day or paying for business class is silly, others are happy to spend that money for their pleasure. Decisions on what’s important to carry are similar.
I couldn’t agree more. In the thru-hiking community there’s a saying I love: Hike Your Own Hike. It strikes me that it’s a perfect metaphor for life. We are all hiking our own hike and the approaches we take to travel, living arrangements, personal finance, relationships, etc will reflect what’s important to us.
This is a great post and I don’t know how I missed it. I have several questions, but the first one is pictures. Once you scan the picture, do you really throw it away? It’s easy to toss pictures of deer or a mountain, but what about your great grandparents or your kids when they were young? I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it. I have pictures backed up on a hard drive and another hard drive in a different location than my house, so I guess I’d never lose them. I would say I have about 4 boxes of pictures with old pictures, my pictures and my wife’s pictures. I haven’t used film since about 2000, so all my new pictures are digital. I’m not sure if my fear is losing them, or just if there is something special about the original. I’d like to know how other people think about this.
Since digital pictures are so low cost today, I have all my movies digitized and on a flash drive along with all my 40,000 pictures. And, if you so desire you can add all those old pics too. When we moved in 2022, I digitized a 4 drawer file cabinet, you really only need a few actual paper documents, like the title to your car, your Trust and Will, that is about it.
Like you, I’ve kept original family photos – especially the ones of my great- and great-great grandparents. They are scanned, so I have back-ups, but I can’t bring myself to throw away the originals. I’m not as concerned about digital photos that I’ve had printed, since those seem easier to replace as the technology is pretty much the same. But reprinting an old photo from a scan looks different. Also, for me there is something special in knowing that those photos have been passed down through multiple generations of my family.
I have been trying to be better about culling duplicate photos and in the process making sure they are organized and labeled. That’s helped a bit, but they still fill a box in our storage unit!
“Luxury is not about how much you have, but how much you don’t need.” -Pico Eyre
I’d love to know the brand of that 22L backpack and a “gear” or clothes list for 3 months in Europe. We also travel with a tiny luggage on wheels, basically a change of underwear, socks, pjs a toothbrush, rain jacket and layers of wool. Great article
I have the REI Flash 22 – super lightweight and comfortable. It sounds like we’ve got a similar approach to travel! Here’s my gear list:
Clothes:
2 Icebreaker merino wool dresses
1 Icebreaker merino wool skirt
2 tank tops
1 sun hoodie
1 cap
1 cardigan
1 scarf
1 light down puffy
2 pair underwear/bra
1 swim suit
1 pair sandals
1 pair walking/hiking shoes (usually Bedrocks, sometimes Hokas – if Hokas, 2 pair socks)
Toiletries: all fits in a 1 quart zip-lock (includes Sea to Summit travel laundry sheets, which are perfect for washing clothes in sinks!)
Misc: iPhone with charger, adaptor, cable, passport, credit cards, reading glasses and sun glasses.
My clothes are all mix and match, so I can change things up. If it’s going to be cold, I throw in a pair of leggings. Since the clothes are mostly merino, everything rolls up nicely and doesn’t wrinkle. I use zip lock bags instead of expensive compression packing cubes to maximize space. They work great!
It is such a joy to be able to hop on and off trains and buses with a small pack. And we did a lot of hiking on this trip, including walking along the Via di Francesco from Spoleto to Assisi, so it was nice to be able to just walk from town to town without having to worry about luggage service.
Interesting! My list is quite different, although a bit out of date. I wrote it before cell phones were really a thing. Rick Steves also has packing lists on his website.
My wife wants to know how you get the underwear to dry overnight if you have to wash it every night?
Like Kathy, I get Ex Officio brand from REI. They dry incredibly fast, as do my merino dresses.
For laundry soap I use Sea to Summit Trek and Travel laundry sheets – they are small (2.5 x 1.5 in) so perfect for handwashing in the bathroom sink.
You buy the right brand. In my case, Ex Officio from REI. I washed all my clothes in the bathroom sink, usually using the provided shampoo. I test-washed my clothes before they got to travel.
Not sure about others, but when travel, I packed three pairs. Just wear and wash in the shower. Most dry overnight, if not few minutes of hair dryer.
This is a great topic. As I have gotten older I am much less frugal. I buy more expensive plane tickets in higher quantity. I take an Uber instead of a smelly, crowded, late bus. I used to get pissed that my sandwich was $20 and would buy all the meats myself to build it, and now I don’t care. I grab my sandwich and sit in my chair at Harborview Park. It’s amazing.
However, I definitely am trying to rid myself of “stuff.” In my case, it’s mostly electronic stuff, kid stuff, and older furniture. I have 30 year-old couch I haven’t used in ages as well as my parents’ dining room table from their wedding in 1966, along with a credenza full of china. It’s all never been touched.
I have guitars I don’t use anymore, old laptops just stacking up, old monitors that are well past their primes. I have a ton of chipped plates that I can’t seem to toss because they are Crate and Barrel and cost me a fortune when I purchased them 20 years ago.
The moral of the story I guess is that I want to spend more money, but on experiences and making my life easier. I want to get rid of things that just take of space and serve no function.
It was a good article. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
I’ve been spending more on travel as well; for me it takes the form of better seats and reasonable flight times – no more 5am flights to save $50 for me!
When we were doing our final ‘purge’ of things before we embarked on our semi-nomadic life, it helped me to think about the joy my unused stuff might bring to someone. For example, I gave my electric piano, which I had stopped playing years ago, to a senior center. It felt good to put things (books, clothes, musical instruments) back into circulation.
And I love the moral of your story! Thanks for commenting!
I’m in serious trouble. I had one condition when I invested in my SIL’s 1-800-GOT-JUNK local franchise: “No pickups at my house. I like my junk .”
That was 22 years ago. He sold off that location years ago and now I have to pay.
In 2019, we sold our house with four bedrooms, a garage, and lots of storage and moved to a condo with much less storage. We agreed that we were not renting a storage unit but were only taking what could fit into the space in the condo. We made our adult daughters come get whatever they wanted of their stuff. We also promised each other that we’d go through spaces in the condo (kitchen cabinets, clothes) regularly so that we wouldn’t re-accumulate, having done all the work to pare down.
My particular weakness is not in the wardrobe but in the kitchen. I do like to cook, and I’m always finding a pan or a gadget that I “need.”
I also found when we were moving for the first time in over 20 years that because so many things are now readily available online/streaming, a lot of stuff had become unnecessary. Do I really need the “hard copy” version of that book/DVD/CD/photo album? It was interesting going through all of our stuff with that in mind. I also bought a shredder and did a lot of scanning of documents before we moved.
Having too much stuff can be like a boat anchor, I know, I have several. Now in retirement, one of my goals is to reduce the size and how many I have.
Having less stuff is also less for other people to steal. Last year my garage was broken into and I loss over $2000 in cordless power tools and batteries.
I’ve been a minimalist before it was hip…not sure why, but a quality over quantity lifestyle helps me mentally…becomingminimalist.com is a great resource for further insight.
becomingminimalist.com is a fantastic resource – thanks for sharing it! I just spent my ‘coffee time’ reading through a few articles. Lots of good thoughts there…
A life of purpose is a bedrock to existence. However, some who might be perceived as minimalists pursue a life of experiences, and these can be very expensive. We’ve observed and interacted with younger people who don’t own much of anything, eschew owning a home, don’t cook, prefer to live in locations with public transportation and spend freely on “experiences”, some as exotic as Dubai and Viet Nam as well as more traditional trips to Europe.
Cecilia, you recommended and I bought the book “The life changing magic of tidying up” in a previous post. I am slowly trying to go through the house to declutter. I lost weight last year and went down 4 sizes in clothes so my closet seemed to be the easiest place to start. And because I needed a whole new wardrobe, I “discovered” thrifting. It has almost become a hobby for me. It makes me happy to respond to compliments on my “new” clothes that I spent only $10! I now have several friends who join me on my thrifting expeditions. I feel good about the cost savings and the positive impact of recycling clothes.
I share your goal to have a lighter step in this world.
Oh how wonderful! I’m so happy to know the book’s been helpful! I also found clothes to be the easiest way to get started. And how lovely that you’ve discovered the joys of thrifting and that friends are joining you. It really does feel good to save money and to have a positive effect on the environment. It’s win-win!
Prudent, frugal and not being wasteful are fine. But think of the implication on the economy, on jobs, on the stock market if this extreme was widely adopted.
Just think of the employees working for Amazon, the small businesses selling through Amazon, the shippers working indirectly for an amazon and others in the entire process.
What works in isolation for an individual does not necessarily have the same positive impact on society. 🔻
Lower consumption would be of benefit to the world. Other countries don’t consume at the American rate and seem to be doing well. Bigger houses, bigger SUVs, more clothes, more toys – why?
Why? Not sure, but that does not change the fact that if we stopped or greatly cut back consuming stuff or buying services that are not necessary there would be serious economic consequences. Other countries have economies based on their lifestyles as does the U.S. You can’t simply plop one into another. Clearly we Americans don’t need all we have or demand, especially those SUVs
It’s all a bunch of junk except for iPhones. We don’t need any of it!
A kindred spirit. I think about use and maintenance before adding things to my life. It might look like I’m frugal but it is a lifestyle choice for me.
Cecilia, thanks for your interesting article.
Another benefit of a “light” life is that we don’t leave an enormous headache when we finally move one.
After completing clean up from relatives that passed in recent years, my wife and I have committed to making sure our kids aren’t left with great big piles of stuff when we’re gone.
Not leaving a house full of stuff for others to deal with is indeed nice benefit of living ‘lightly’. How thoughtful of you and your wife to not want to burden your kids with a big clean up. I feel the same way!
Yes! So many garages in our 55+ community are filled with ‘stuff’ and ‘things’. Inevitably it takes dumpsters and estate sales to empty them.
In my neighborhood, it’s easy to identify the households with too much accumulated stuff. They’re the ones who always park on the driveway or in the street because their car won’t fit in the garage.
I’m with you and Kristine on much of this, although definitely not on cutting my own hair! I’m currently wearing blouses I bought for work decades ago over L. L. Bean t-shirts, along with travel pants I bought in the early oughts. I gave up make up about the time I took early retirement, and I traveled light when I was traveling. Where Kristine has dogs, I have books, although these days they almost all come from the library.
I have a rule for when it’s time for a new pair of shoes: I step in a puddle and my sock gets wet.
Also, I’ve found that you can find nice T-shirts at the Goodwill Store for $2 or $3 each.
Thankfully I have completely straight hair, no bangs and I wear it all one length. So it’s ridiculously easy to maintain.
On a journey of life to who-knows-where, it is a pleasure to meet a traveler with bouncing steps, carrying a light backpack and a heart filled with the happiness of simple living – dropping little hints of joy along the way. At the end of the journey, no luggage is allowed, and travelers like us are practicing for that moment.
Thanks for this is an interesting post. There’s no way anyone would call me a minimalist – – – but in my mind, I’m working on it. I rarely every purchase clothes now, and wear the clothes I have until holes force me to throw them our or else use them as work clothes around the house. I’m slowly working to cut back on stuff in the attic and garage. I need to reduce my collection of camping/backpacking gear – I accumulated a lot of gear while I was a Scoutmaster. I still have all my CDs, LPs, and stereo equipment. I also still have all my tools plus the tools I’ve been given by folks who are downsizing. For me it’s a balancing act that causes a lot of internal discussions related to the old work adage of “keep, file, or pitch”.
I surely relate to that! I try to downsize the LP‘s/CD‘s/stereo equipment/cassettes but it is an absolute struggle!
I, “wear the clothes I have until holes force me to throw them our or else use them as work clothes around the house.”
I wish you could see the sweatshirt I’m wearing while reading this on my couch. It’s probably 15-20 years old Underarmour frayed at the cuffs (will cut them off when they get too bad), pattern is wearing off at the seams and elbows (but hasn’t worn through). T-shirt underneath is about the same age frayed at the neck and holes have been sewn in the armpits. The sweat pants however are new as the prior pair wore through the thighs. I wouldn’t the torso covers in public though but they probably have 5 more years of life then the T-shirt goes into the rag bag. Speaking of rag bags, my wife says I look like a raga-muffin.
What’s the saying? No one got rich by spending money!
Cecilia–what a lovely post!
I can relate to your lack of desire to own lots of ‘things’. I don’t care about having a closet full of clothes and shoes. I’m getting to the point now where I find an article of clothing that fits me and I’ll buy multiples of it and wear the same thing every day. I don’t spend money on make-up and I cut my own hair. I’m even starting to get to the point where I eat the same food every day.
Of course, when it comes to dogs, it’s a different story. I must own at least 100 dog collars and leashes and we won’t even talk about how many dog toys are in the house right now. Dogs are–and always have been–my thing.
I sometimes think about what I would take with me if I had to evacuate our house quickly. Besides the dogs, the only other items I would grab are the seven scrapbooks I have that are filled with the photos, accomplishments and memories of my dogs. Anything else is just ‘stuff’.
It might be a good idea to have those scrapbooks scanned and saved in the cloud, just in case!
That’s an excellent idea!
You do not need to pay for the Cloud, they have their own issues with loss and hacking. Just make a simple flash drive copy, copied daily on your computer, and every 3, 6 months or so, and keep that second copy at your daughters, son or friend’s house. It is highly unlikely, your computer, its backup and your backup at a different location will all fail, get robbed, or burn. Make sure the backups are encrypted and password protected. Just another idea.
are you saying that everything on my computer will fit on a flash drive the size of my thumb? a serious question, not rhetorical. you do this copying daily and it overwrites each time?
I cut my own hair, too! I started during the height of the pandemic and now wonder what took me so long.
Thinking about what to take if you had to evacuate quickly is a great way to identify what’s really important. It’s so clear from your writing here how much joy your dogs bring you, so grabbing the scrapbooks makes perfect sense!
I wish I had hair to cut.
I can’t believe it took me so long to cut my own hair–I have always disliked getting it done. I am a mega-introvert so any type of small talk with people makes me cringe. I would often go 12-16 months between cuts just because I disliked the forced conversations that would arise. Now I trim my hair every few weeks in the privacy of my own home. Such a joy!
I think the ‘evacuation’ thought experiment is a good one. The idea that you have no more than five minutes to gather up those things that mean the most to you makes you really think about what’s important.
I also try to live by the idea that if I haven’t used something (or read it, or looked at it) for more than a year or two, I probably no longer need it. It helps keep the clutter level down to a minimum.
I agree with your thinking-if you haven’t used an item for more than two years you probably don’t need it.Our garage is filled with such stuff.I have to get my wife onboard. She gives me a hard time every time I start to get rid if the clutter. My best bet is not to tell her :-).
Sounds like the origin of the famed garage sale.