I Was A Minimalist Before It Was A Thing

And still am, I might add . . . minimalist . . . but today I know it and strive to be one till death do us part.

Please, don’t pooh-pooh minimalism until you actually know what you are pooh-poohing.  Any movement named after Winnie the Pooh must be good, right?

I hope you all know I’m joking about that, but I can never be sure.

It’s funny, looking back, but I grew up a minimalist without even knowing it.  My parents, by the way, by definition which we will get to shortly, were not minimalists.

When I was growing up, during the 50’s, our family was lower middle class.  They purchased our home in 1953, and I want to say that home cost $16,000.  I know my parents had a mortgage, so they had somehow scraped together the $1,400 down payment to buy that brick three-bedroom and continued to make house payments until my father died seventeen years later.

Money was in short supply, always.  My dad had a full-time job, working in a sand and gravel pit, making if memory serves me $8.00 per hour.   He had limited medical coverage.  They also had a car payment on a used car, first a Mercury, then a Ford, then an Edsel, always a car payment. I remember twice a year my dad would go to the bank and take out a loan, once before Christmas time so he could buy presents, and once in June so we all could go on vacation down to Seaside, Oregon.  He would then spend the rest of the year working overtime to pay off those loans.

Clothes were mended.  Food was whatever was on sale that week, and oftentimes that was beef tongue or liver.  Lots of potatoes. Lots of pasta.  Beans, rice, those were staples, and vegetables out of a can.  Any extras we had were paid for by cash, there being no credit cards back then, kind of an automatic spending regulator back in the 50’s.  And that’s just the way I grew up.  My parents were always worried about money.  Dad worked far too often, even after his first heart attack, leading, of course, to his second and final one.  About the time I was ten, able to stay home alone, Mom got a job, and that’s just the way it was, quality family time decreasing as the bills became harder to pay.

I grew up not having surplus, but not missing it at all.  That’s just the way it was for us, I had no shortage of things to do, did not need a bigger television or the latest toy sensation, had a used bike, and I had two eyes to see what being in debt was doing to my parents and doing to our small family.

It’s interesting the things that stay with us after childhood.  Possessions never really had importance for me.  Even when I had money, a few years making six figures, it was my ex-wife who wanted nicer furniture and a bigger home and a newer car. I simply did not give a damn, thank you Rhett Butler. And when it was time for us to part ways, it bothered me not one bit to give her the house, the bank accounts, the cars, all the joint possessions, because, again, all of it meant nothing to me.

And so, fast-forwarding to last year, when it came time to make the decision, sell the house, buy a bus, I jumped all over that with both feet, hardly any thought to it, hell yes I can live out of a bus, sign this boy up, and I have, and I will.

So, what is minimalism?

My definition, not from the Father of Minimalism, whoever he was . . . minimalism is simplifying one’s life so that one can spend more time on things which are truly important.  To my simple Pooh Bear mind, the fewer things I own, and the fewer things I owe on, the less I will have to work, and thus the less time I will spend earning for those possessions, and by extension, the more time I will have to spend on things which really bring me joy.

Minimalism does not say you can’t own a car, or a house, or a large screen television; it does say, however, that if you are buying those things on credit, and some of your earnings are used to pay for those things, then you need to work more hours to pay for that foo-foo and that, friends, is silly.

Minimalism says if you are living in a cluttered house, spilling over with possessions you never will use, that clutter is also cluttering up your mind and your sense of priority.  Do you really need twenty pairs of shoes?  Thirty sports jackets?  Forty dresses?  Dishware serving for twenty? A television in the bathroom?  So many possessions that it is necessary to rent a self-storage unit for the overflow? And don’t you dare laugh at that; I know people who do it.

At what point is enough, enough?  I have given up hope that corporate CEOs and stockholders will answer that question with a degree of compassion, but I still hope for the average Working Joe, or Jill.  If you are working too many hours to pay for possessions you simply do not need, and sacrificing time with family to do it, it is my opinion that you messed up your priorities somewhere along the way.

But none of you reading this would ever do that, right?

Right?

So, who was the modern Father of Minimalism? It might very well have been Thoreau, that old scallywag I have mentioned many times before.  He valued time over money, and he was convinced that civilization would go to hell in a handbasket (thanks for that one, Grandma) if it did not get its collective priorities straight, slam on the proverbial brakes, and smell the roses.

Should we be worried?  Do some research on consumer debt since the economy recovered from COVID.  It will keep you up at night.  Seriously!  As a society we learned nothing from that last economic meltdown, and now we have, in the United States, between 40%-60% of households living paycheck to paycheck.

Lunacy!

But, and I say this without a hint of smugness, the economy could crash tomorrow and it would barely affect me.  I owe on a car I just bought. I have no mortgage, no rent. I live minimally. I do not use credit cards.  And something else about my minimalist lifestyle: I sleep like a baby. I have no worries. I have no major requirements of my time.  And that was a choice I made, really dating back to 2006 when I finally found sobriety.  Living simply . . . simple living . . . minimalism!

Is it too late for you? I hope not.  Maybe it’s not something you want to try.  But I felt it was my responsibility to run it up the flagpole and hopefully someone would salute it.