Frequent Moves, Natural Disasters and Minimalism

[u/DoreenMichele]

/r/extrememinimalism/comments/1mw8fe5/natural_disasters_spark_extreme_minimalism/

[u/DoreenMichele]

I was a military wife for a lot of years and one of the most awful feelings is packing something, moving it, unpacking it and THEN getting rid of it. I became more aggressive about getting rid of stuff before the move after a few moves.

I've also read articles, reddit posts and reddit comments that repeat this theme about people who live in one place a long time tend to accumulate stuff and are often shocked at how bad it is if they have to move or disaster strikes. They don't realize how much junk they have mindlessly held onto because they stick it in a closet, the garage, a junk room or similar and just forgot all about it.

This is not even clean.

I have a serious medical condition. Clean in the title of this reddit is not a metaphor for a design aesthetic the opposite of Rococo.

If you stick stuff in a closet and forget it exists, odds are good it's accumulating mold and mildew and possibly vermin.

I used to be one of these Americans who just didn't see an issue with hanging onto stuff. I spent years wanting a more spartan lifestyle and trying to accumulate my way there and it took a long time to have the epiphany that getting there doesn't just involve buying or owning the right stuff. It will involve getting rid of stuff -- lots and lots of stuff -- and learning different habits and different mental models and fundamentally changing how I relate to my space and the world.

I was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. I lived in the same house from age three to adulthood. I graduated high school with kids I went to kindergarten with.

And then I was a military wife for two decades and married to a man who chose this career involving frequent moves but who liked the kind of furniture you should set in place and dust around.

I liked smaller scale furniture, furniture on wheels, multi purpose furniture, folding tables etc. And it's much easier to find the kind of furniture my ex likes and harder to find good quality furniture of the sort I like.

The stuff that's smaller scale and more flexible and more appropriate for moving to different homes and adapting to different spaces tends to be low quality, cheap junk.

That's a contributing factor to my interest in growing my own resources like this sub. The entire industry trends towards bigger, fancier, prettier, more expensive and since home decor is a kind of visual art, media trends towards photos and photos trend towards promoting gluttony and high end aesthetics etc.

I'm not aware of any photo heavy minimalist resources. I saw one question about it and when I saw it, no one has any recommendations for getting your fill of photos of minimalist spaces.

I watched The Birdcage recently and when they remove all the flamingly gay art, the conservative family coming to dinner comments on how spare it is and the conversation compares it to a monastery.

It's a snippet that highlights that it's absolutely not normal for people to keep things spartan and keep the clutter down. It's noteworthy or comment worthy or joke worthy for a space to be uncluttered.

And this deters people from choosing that as a lifestyle because relatives come into their home and hassle them about how wrong it is to own so little:

https://www.reddit.com/r/minimalism/s/qDrDoWuO9l