Is minimalism the new black?

The new black. Whatever that means. I saw a reference to the saying recently with regards the trend of the minimalist lifestyle. Maybe "the new black" means it matches everything (or everyone), or that it's just the latest greatest trend.


Not so sure about either of those. Let's start with the "trend".

Certainly there are people who will embrace it for a short time, then go on to something else in their search for external meaning. Others, though, I think come to it as "simplicity," after decades of struggling against the consumerist tide, finally comes ashore as a wave of its own. I think that perhaps one offshoot of our general affluence is that at some point, many people come to realize the stuff in their life really does run the show: you have to have a house big enough for your stuff, you have to store it, you have to buy more of it when you can't find that what's-it you just knew you had.

And we downscale the stuff in our lives to make room for the living of them.

Minimalism is downscaling to an extreme. I don't mean that pejoratively, but factually. It's simplifying until you can't simplify any further.

To some people, that's probably going too far, but it's worth exploring as part of intentional living: how much stuff do I need to be happy? This is a question that comes up as part of the frugality and simplicity lifestyle considerations, too—but these three topics are not entirely interchangeable (perhaps 95%, so far as I can tell, but not entirely), so for now, we'll stick with minimalism.

First, it's about getting rid of the clutter. Our stuff. The stuff that makes us oh, so happy to see around us, until we realize it's just stuff. This can happen in a variety of ways. One friend realized how little her stuff meant when she had to put it all in storage for several months. And didn't miss all of it. (Of course she missed some of it.) In my case, living for the past year in a house that was big enough to unpack all my stuff for the first time in years, with nothing in storage except the things that needed storing: Yule decorations, camping gear, that sort of thing, made a huge difference in how I viewed my stuff. For example, I love my books. And other people's books. I've been reading since I was two or three years old. And my shelves were filled with books I'd loved...and hadn't read in six or eight years. Huh. I already know I don't NEED all these books. Maybe I don't even want them.

Minimalists will tell you they own what they need and nothing more. "Need," of course, is loosely defined here (see Miss Minimalist's couch post, for example), since I imagine some do take it to the extreme (we need food, shelter and clothing), while others define their needs to include art (although a minimalist will probably own just one or two pieces they really love) or other items that have some particular meaning to them. I think the important factor joining the minimalist extremes, though, is not being owned by their stuff. Often, the fact that not owning all this stuff makes their lives more flexible (choice of jobs, travel, etc) seems to play a part.

If you're interested in exploring minimalism, check out Becoming Minimalist for a wide variety of posts and articles exploring the different sides of minimalism, as well as the above links to some interesting websites (zenhabits.net is worth checking into for many, many reasons)