appreciationofspace-blog

[appreciationofspace-blog]

How Did I Find Minimalism?

Lots of people have asked me this, and even though I have known the answer for a very long time, it's only now that I have decided to actually share it with people. It’s not one of those soppy, motivational stories that everyone loves to hear about, and well, to be honest, the story is very long, complicated, and a little... odd. Originally it all started when I was about nine or ten years old. At this time, we lived in a average sized three-bed home, on a small cul-de-sac on the top of a hill. Sounds very picturesque, am I right? Yes, indeed it was. On the outside. But inside of my house, it wasn’t very picturesque at all… don’t get me wrong, it was clean and all, and somewhat tidy, as my parents were never dirty or messy people, they were much worse, they were hoarders. And they knew they were hoarders, and still do to this day. Anyway, back to me, when I was about seven or eight years old, my sister moved out of the family home for good, and I decided, as a small child, and now the only child in our somewhat large home, that I wanted to claim my sister's old bedroom, as well as my own, and of course, as the youngest and most spoilt child, I got my wish. My sister's room was the smallest of the three, so I decided I was going to use that as my ‘sleeping chambers’ and that my now old bedroom was going to be used as a large toy room. So that’s exactly what we carried out, I had bunk beds and my few favourite toys in the small room, along with a small TV and a VHS player, and the bigger room held most of my toys. And that was all great, I had my large wooden doll house and my many dolls with toy cots and prams, I had my bratz dolls and barbie dolls and my large collection of Build A Bear animals with wardrobes and clothes for them, and boxes of polly pockets, my toy box full of the happy land play sets, and that guitar I never learnt how to play. And yet, there was still more, there was miscellaneous objects that were, well, kinda just… there. But that's how I was brought up. I thought that it was normal to harbour dust on everything because half the stuff you have, was never used. Having two bedrooms made me accumulate a lot more toys for myself, my parents would notice empty space in my toy room, and, just like any other materialist, would want to fill it, so that they could say that their child had the most toys, or the biggest doll house, they wanted their child to walk into a room and see their own personal toy store, except everything there was all theirs. And wasn’t that every child’s dream? Of course, it was mine, too, until we made a decision. My sister who had moved out of the home all them years ago, had just given birth to her first child in early 2010. And me, along with my parents were very close to the baby, so we decided that she needed her own room for when she came to stay with us overnight. So we made the decision to turn my small and cluttered sleeping room into a spare bedroom again, along with a travel cot for the baby. But then we had a problem. Over the years of me having two bedrooms, the amount of things I had almost doubled, so moving all my things back into my old, medium sized bedroom was out of the picture. So what did we do? Did my parents make me sell or donate some things that harboured dust? Nope. we simply moved me... and my many dusty belongings into what was my parents bedroom, and not only the biggest bedroom, but also the biggest room in the entire house. All my items seem to fit in there well, and everything was great for about three years, until one day, I was lying on the bottom bunk of my new metal bunk bed when I looked at my room, and realised that I didn’t like all the mismatch drawers and cupboards that kept my clutter under control, and I didn’t like the piles and piles of DVDs and VHS tapes that took up all my floor space, and I didn’t like my wardrobe full of clothes that I didn't even like. I didn’t like that my top bunk was unusable due to the amount of stuffed animals there were on there, as I simply had nowhere else to store them. I realised that the amount of stuff I owned didn’t bring me joy, and in fact, 80% of it was an inconvenience. But of course I was so young, how could I know what I wanted when I was only twelve or thirteen? I automatically started my decluttering process. It wasn’t too extreme, as at this point, I still had sentimental attachments towards almost everything. I was a vulnerable kid, with not many friends after all, and my weekends were usually spend hosting lonely tea parties with myself and my other fluffy inanimate friends. But I did downsize my stuff a considerable amount. Let’s fast forward another year, and I was going through a terrible phase in my adolescent life. Where I had enough of everything, my annoying parents, the bullies at school, homework, and well everything that would irritate a teenager at that time. So I had decided I wanted to run away to go and see a friend that recently stopped talking to me for reasons unknown. But then the thoughts ran in my mind… if I were to leave home, what would I do with all my stuff? Sell it of course. Most things were trash, and I threw away about twelve bin bags worth of stuff, and sold the rest. I was left with, well ,not much, my large hat collection, and a lot of clothes. But that was pretty much it. I still had that guitar that I still didn't know how to play, though. But after I had ran away, worried everyone, got found and returned home, I was happy. I was happy that I had accomplished not only my mission to board 4 trains and travel 200 miles, but also, realising that I didn't need anything other than myself and the clothes on my back. It was at that moment, when i was in the car on the way home from my long adventure, and when I arrived back into my empty bedroom at one o’clock in the morning, that I realised that I wanted to travel the world. It filled me with a feeling of pride and adrenaline, that I had never felt before. But for now, I had to stay in school and live a normal life, so I wouldn’t get bullied any more than I already did. But it was when school and college had both ended that I really dived into minimalism, once again, by accident, after another planned trip gone wrong. I made another friend, except this friend was further then two hundred miles, this friend was almost ten thousand miles away, but I thought they were great, and I wanted to meet themI I was almost eighteen at the time, and after dropping out of college a year early, I had more time to shop and accumulate stuff, mainly to fill the void that was inside of me, due to nothing more than sheer loneliness. I first decided I wanted to meet my far away friend was about a year ago, I told her I would get my passport and I would fly over to see her, but then she said, “Alix... If we move in together, what would you do with all your stuff back home?” And then the little minimalist button that had been stored away in the back of my mind had resurfaced. I’ll sell it all, and this time, for real. By this time we had downsized to a two bedroom flat due to my parents getting made redundant, and everything I had still from college and the last few years of high school were still boxed up in my bedroom. And then one day I got a pair of scissors and a large rubbish bag, and I ripped, cut and chopped up anything and everything, I was determined that I wanted to live with my friend on the other side of the world, and after being housebound from anxiety for so long, I quickly realised that this was my lucky break. All my clothes went, and yes, I mean all of them. I went out and bought two t-shirts, two pairs of pants and two hoodies, and that was it. And I owned one pair of shoes, after sellings or giving away about thirty other pairs. I gave unused colouring books and notepads to my niece and her two little brothers who loved to draw. I sold the computer I never used. And what's the point of an iPad when you have an iPhone? I sold my iPad and my two of my three 3DS’s… why would you need three DS’s when you could only play one at any given time? I sold all my dusty ornaments and game merchandise, I finally let go of my large hat collection, only keeping one baseball cap for the summer, and a beanie for the winter. And why did I have a separate laptop for ‘gaming’? I don't even ‘game’. And that guitar I never learnt to play? Mother had to sell that without telling me, I could never bring myself to do it.Because i would always say “Nah, I’ll keep that, I’ll learn to play it some day.” ‘Some day.’ I had 5 pairs of black underwear and 5 pairs of black socks so I wouldn’t have to spend hours trying to match them up. I kept my one doll that was helping me through my anxiety, and that was all my owned, I could fit everything into a medium sized tote bag. But then the unthinkable happened, the friend I had done all this for left. For reasons I still don't know. At first my heart broke… But, not at the fact of her leaving, but at the fact I sold my whole life away to be with her, and then she left, even after knowing all this. And amongst all my heartbreaks, I still had the desire to declutter, and even when I had nothing to declutter, I would find something I no longer needed. The clutter that my parents had was irritating me more and more each day. And that's when I found the word, the label, the meaning, of minimalism. I watched one documentary and I was hooked. My heartbreak from the girl I had never met seemed to disappear instantaneously, and I realised, this is what I was searching for my whole life… I wasn’t looking to leave home, or to find a friend, I realised that the though of packing up into one bag and leaving, and wanting to be homeless, made my heart happy. Knowing that you’re not tied down to a two storey house with a front and back garden with a mortgage to pay made me feel happy. Knowing that I didn’t have to work in a dead end nine to five job, five, six or even seven days a week to pay petrol for a car I now know I don’t have to drive. All the expectations I was getting told as a kid, “You have to study well to get a good job” or “You have to save up all your money to get a good car” were all wrong. You didn’t need the poshest car, or the fanciest home to be happy, I wanted the stars to be my roof at night, and the earth to be my bed. I didn’t want to sit at a table and eat with my parents, I want to sit around a campfire with different people every day. I didn’t want to go back to college to then work ‘till I died to pay rent for a house I could never own. I wanted to explore. I didn’t want to be prisoner in an office nine to five, every. Single. Day. I didn’t want to be filling out taxes. I didn’t want to spend my life watching TV. I wanted to write about my experiences, and I wanted to take photos and selfies of everyone and everything around me. You can’t do that when you're still paying for your house to hold all your stuff back home. If you had no stuff back there, then you wouldn’t have to still pay rent on your house, or on a storage facility. Everywhere I go, my house will come with me, because between me and my backpack, I am my home. Home isn’t your collection of candles, or your wardrobe full of clothes, home isn’t owning seventeen towels for a family of three, home isn’t all the meaningless things on shelves that serve no purpose. Home is you. Home isn’t the bricks and cement you live amongst. Home isn’t the tiled roof or the shed in the garden. Home isn’t the poshest dining table or the fanciest cooker and fridge. Home isn’t the novelty chocolate fountain or carrot chopper you got as a housewarming present from that neighbor you don’t really know. Home isn’t a personal toy shop for your kids. They don't want that. They want a few special things, but most of all, they want their parents to play with them. Thats home. Not four hundred barbie dolls of every size shape and race. Home is colouring with your child, not buying them too many colouring books that they’ll never even finish them all. My home is me, not where I live. My family is the experiences and memories I’ll make, not the people that raised me. They’re cool, but they’re not me. They’re my parents, but they’re not my family. I’m me, and although my parents could never understand how I could live without seven thousand pieces of clothing, and they’ll never understand why I literally ask for nothing for Christmas, and they’ll never understand the peace and harmony I get from seeing empty space. They’ll never understand why my shelves are now bare. But it’s okay that they don’t understand. I’m doing it right. I’m happy, and they’re not, and I think that explains everything. Maybe one day, when they’re old and grey, they’ll realise they didn’t need all them bed sheets or candles, or two freezers for too much food that got wasted anyway. They’ll realise that they didn't need fifty cans of baked beans at any one time, or that seven sweatshirts are too many sweatshirts, but even though I have tried to tell them how happy minimalism has made me, and helped heal my heartbreak, depression and my anxiety, but still, they refuse to believe that minimalism is nothing more than a bunch of loons living in a wooden shack in the middle of the forest. Maybe they choose to stay sad, I don’t know, but I’m going to live my life the right way. And as I’m sitting here writing this, wearing already half of my entire wardrobe, I have never felt more happier, and richer than I do right now. I have found myself, and I now know this is the best way to live, why anyone would want to live differently I’ll never fathom out, and that’s why I no longer associate or talk to people who are not minimalists. As they’re simply not me. And that's why I didn't find minimalism… Minimalism found me.

[appreciationofspace-blog]

My mother still doesn't get me.