Life – What Is Truly Essential?

I can’t say whether I am a minimalist or an essentialist. All I know is that mentally and physically, I feel better when I am not overcrowded with things. I don’t want cleaning to be a huge ordeal. I want to be able to relax, sleep, work, and live my life without feeling like I can’t because I am constantly surrounded by things. So focusing more on finding out what is essential helps.

I don’t want my choices and opportunities in life to be limited because I have so many things that weigh me down. Because owning too many things is stressful. It is overwhelming to look around and not be able to do what you want to do or use the things you love because there’s just so much of everything everywhere you look.

What you are looking for can only be found within

I have been decluttering for years now, and I have learned a lot. We give our possessions too much power over us, and yet we don’t value them. We rely on our possessions to heal us, distract us, and make us feel a certain way. But we treat our possessions as disposable and meaningless, and we don’t look after them. We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have. And then we either let them lie and collect dust until we forget we own them, or we throw them out and replace them with new things we don’t need.

The reality is that no matter what you are looking for emotionally, you won’t find it in any material possession. You won’t feel better by spending more, consuming more and overcrowding your senses. You will only ruin your finances and give yourself another thing to worry about. Now, decluttering is great, IF you follow through with actual changes in your life.

It’s like detoxing. It’s a good idea to start a new way of life with a clean slate, so to speak. But detoxing only to go back to eating a poor diet is useless. And similarly, if you declutter and then buy more things, you will be stuck in an endless loop of decluttering that will lead you nowhere.

We don’t need to buy more things

Yes, I have been decluttering for years. In the beginning, I did end up buying more of the things I love after having let go of the things I didn’t. But excess is not the solution. I realised that living like that only led to more decluttering. To move in a different direction, I started taking no spend months. Now, whenever I want to buy something, I bookmark it and re-visit it if I can remember to. But most of the time, I forget about the things I wanted to purchase soon after bookmarking them. They weren’t things I was meant to have.

Through every no-spend month and every decluttering session and minimalist challenge, I have learned more and I found more ways to live with less. Each time I found something that I had previously thought was essential but simply wasn’t anymore. I realised many of the notions I had come to believe about what we need as human beings and what we should be doing had been programmed into me by consumerism and capitalism.

The majority of the things we keep and are told to buy are things we don’t actually need. There are very few things we actually need. Wrecking your finances to purchase things that are “nice to have” or things you think will make you look a certain way… It’s useless. Trading time for money and then wasting that money to fund an act that will only bring harm to yourself is a waste of time.

We are so lost

Human beings shouldn’t need to pay to live. We shouldn’t need to pay for land, for water or air. Or pay to stop corporations from ruining our land, water and air. We’ve really messed this whole human existence up. Thinking what we do for money is who we are as human beings is depressing. Dedicating most of our lives to working a dead-end job while barely earning enough to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies is so wrong.

Modern society is sick. But we can choose to live another way. We can teach ourselves what matters and what doesn’t. And to do so we must decycle our lives and declutter our minds. Essentially we need to spring clean ourselves and question all that we “know” and believe are facts. The amount of nonsense we tell ourselves, are told and believe in is… We are solidifying our own shackles.

My April Challenge

This month I have been using up more material and letting go of a few more possessions every day. I rent a room and many of my things are in storage. Out of sight, out of mind… Thus I must go through my possessions regularly so that I can make sure that I am not hanging onto things I have no need for or have already let go of emotionally. And to make sure I am not hanging onto things tied to my fantasy self.

It’s no use holding onto a bunch of things just because you wish you were the kind of person who would use those things. It is better to know yourself and support your own growth as a person without trying to turn yourself into someone you’re not.

Progress

As I was decluttering in my room, I realised that there really isn’t much to declutter. But some things that I had kept and thought were essential or necessary for me, I could now see really were not. I hadn’t used them and would not use them. They were for another version of me, and I simply wasn’t that person anymore. So I filled “Maybe”-boxes. If I don’t go to fetch any of the things I put in there over the next few weeks, all of it will be donated.

There are a few things that I am keeping because they’re older and thus I can’t sell them and if I let go of them and find that I did need them after all, I won’t be able to get new ones. So for now, I will keep them. Who knows? I might be ready to let go of them in three months, or six months, or time will teach me they are just what I need. But they’re not in the way so I don’t feel the need to decide just yet.

Most of my essential possessions are kept in my suitcases and bags. But as I went through them, I realised that I could remove several items from them because I simply didn’t need them anymore.

Challenging myself to live with less

My goal is to fit all of my essentials in my suitcases and bags, and then the rest of my possessions would be food from my pantry, plants from my container garden, my fermentation vessels outside, one moving box with books and one moving box for my business. And a few furniture pieces, if I don’t decide to sell them. I haven’t found a piece of land yet, so I have time to minimise and simplify my life for at least a few more months. I imagine I will have far fewer possessions by then.

But for me, this journey isn’t about ego. It isn’t about owning as few items as possible or about owning a certain number of items. Instead, it is about being able to move easily. Being able to move abroad if that’s what I feel called to do. It is about living a stress-free life – as much as possible – and teaching myself that I don’t need money or possessions to be happy. Money is useful for some things, but most of what I need can be acquired without it.

The result

My room feels so open and clean. I know I will feel even more relieved when I have used up the last of the design material that I store in there.

In my room I have a metal bookshelf that my sister bought me from Ikea about eight years ago. I keep my yoga tools on it, a few books, a basket with my herbal teas and a few other items. In my room, I have a desk on wheels and on it, I keep my computer screen and my sewing machine. I have a small stackable shelving system that was intended for bathrooms but turned out to be perfect for a small home. I use it for my art supplies, sewing supplies and supplements.

There are also two wooden trays. One with my kettle and one with my cast iron teapot and matcha set. I have a TV, a futon set and then I have my suitcases and that’s it for my room. It is a furnished room though.

Storage unit

I have some possessions in my storage unit, some heirlooms, and then I have my pantry and my container garden. But even if I round up all my possessions, including all of my plants in the garden, I could still fit everything I own in a regular moving truck that you can rent for the day. And since my essentials are in bags and suitcases, I could move using only a regular car, and I could move to the other side of the country or even abroad if I wanted to.

I looked into it, and the rest of my possessions could easily be shipped to wherever I am going. The main thing to figure out would be how to safely take the fermentation vessels and the container garden with me if I move somewhere far away. I haven’t worked that part out yet, but I am sure there’s a solution to be found.

The health benefits

I don’t know where I want to go or where I want to live yet. Nor do I know what opportunities may pop up in the future. But making sure I keep my possessions to a minimum is a way for me to sort of be prepared for the unknown future. To make sure I can grab it with both hands when it arrives. And until then, it keeps me sane. It aids my mental health, reduces my stress, increases my creativity and it is good for my health.

One thing that has changed about my mindset is that nowadays I consider my lifespan and what kind of life I want to lead before I let go of something. I don’t want to use money unless it cannot be avoided, so “just buying a new one” is not an option for me. That’s why, before I let go of something I ask myself, “Am I sure this is something that I don’t need now and won’t need in the future?”

I take very good care of my things both because I value them and because I expect many of them to last me for the duration of my life. Such as my cast iron pots and pans, my perennials, my fermentation vessels and my knives. And if I do buy something, I make sure it is something that I need, want and love, because it will be something that will last a very long time or the entire duration of my life.

How do you feel about minimalism and essentialism?

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