What Minimalism Gets Wrong.
Sometimes Is Just Less.
Today’s post is the first in a series of posts where I look at various “lifestyles” that are popular in the 2020s and talk about where they fall down, from F.I.R.E to Minimalism. I don’t think these lifestyles are all bad: to the contrary, I think they have a lot of great ideas, but I think religious adherence to them is also problematic. Given that, I wanted to write some posts as a person who “mostly agrees” but has some hang ups.
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Minimalism is simple in theory — it’s just about having less things. To be clear, it is absolutely true that people consume too much, and that modern society has made being wasteful easy, from Ikea to H&M.
I really enjoyed the book Goodbye Things (I’ll reference it a few times in this post) which is practical, honest, and quite an interesting read.
But the more I think about minimalism and see people “practicing” it, the more issues I see. Excessive consumerism is bad, and I have a personal system of an apartment test — which is to suggest you probably shouldn’t own much more than will fit in an apartment with a storage locker (and an appropriate number of bedrooms for your household), keeping in mind that enjoying a kitchen and an apartment requires some things which do not scale with added bedrooms. But, when I see people living out of backpacks and the like, I think they are taking it too far (I mean, people are free to do as they please, but I think this is hurting more than it’s helping in lots of cases).
To be fair, more than with other lifestyles, minimalists insist that minimalism is what it is to you — it need not be prescriptive and look the same to everyone. And so in that same spirit, before I get into it, I understand that for all these things exceptions exist, and some people will probably suggest practicing minimalism in a way that protects you from some of this stuff. And yet, I still feel like it’s worth addressing each of these points, because I think they highlight where the principles fall apart. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
1. Getting Rid Of Things You Need
Overzealous minimization may well have you getting rid of things you end up realizing you need. Many people will tell you that you can replace these things, and sometimes that’s true, but it’s at a cost — possibly in time, possibly in money.
I think all that this point raises is that while you should carefully ask if you really need something, you should also ask whether you really need to get rid of something. A good example is probably small things, which minimalism will tell you are things just like big things, but which holding onto is a minor inconvenience.
2. Tools
When reading through the book I referenced earlier, I found it remarkable how there were no tools in the lists of things. Living in North America, it feels like most households (and I imagine this holds on other continents) have some sort of tool box or drawer that at a minimum has some screwdrivers and Allen wrenches in it.
I guess the principle is, you don’t need tools frequently, or use them everyday unless you’re a handy person, so why hold onto them. It’s certainly the case that you can generally get new ones or find someone who has them. I think the issues with this is that when you don’t have tools, you often find yourself buying things or bringing more things into your life — just having the tools and accepting that they are useful seems healthy!
Of course, there are also tools in the sense of “tools-of-the-trade”; we often have things which can seem superfluous for our work (sometimes they even seem superfluous if we stop using them regularly). I think it can be far too easy to dismiss these things (many people can go through life without say a tripod, and so it’s easy to see tripods as big wasteful things!), which are important parts of our work and sometimes lives. Many careers do not lend themselves to minimalism, and the reality of most physical objects among other things is that a jack-of-all-trades is a master-of-none. Objects that “replace” several others can often leave you wanting the others back.
3. Things Save Money
I understand that many of these points blend into one another, and I think that’s just the reality of a philosophy as all encompassing as minimalism. One thing that I think minimalism misses in a major way is that money is an important part of living in modern society, and often having less things means burning through it much more quickly.
One class of this problem is how you can replace owning many things with rentals or services — that’s nice, and is great for minimalism, but it’s expensive. I’m sure someone will comment on it, but libraries can be fantastic in letting you not own a lot of books and other media, but libraries don’t have everything and even ones that let you loan out tools aren’t going to have every tool. So, while you can optimize for minimalism, doing this is often expensive.
I guess the true minimalism would be eliminating ones need for various things, so that you don’t end up getting rid of something just to spend money on having people come help you with that thing, or renting it out — but this is easier said than done. It just feels like minimalism and logical personal finance are a bit at odds here. It’s certainly true that most minimalists wouldn’t suggest against owning a thing you will use super regularly, but there are a lot of things you could keep around for a small price that would save you money in a macro sense that… are extra items lying around.
And none of this is to mention time. If you can’t fix something yourself, you might end up wasting a lot of time going without it, and like spending a ton of money on rental services this feels wrong, even if it lets you minimize.
4. Not Everyone Lives in a Japanese City
This one is important I think, because you do see a fair amount of projecting, even in the book I mentioned above. Again, I’m sure people would be reasonable if presented with the reality of any given person’s living situation, but it really is that case that it’s hard to be super minimal if you’re not living in a city, and even harder outside of a Japanese City.
What do I mean? Well, many of the communal rental, sharing, and loaning services are immensely more available in urban environments, and Japan is a sort of leader on this stuff. In Japan, I think the seemingly unending convenience stores, but also omnipresent vending machines really do mean you can comfortably live life with less to an extent that isn’t possible in other places. To give a poignant example of this, homes without appliances or with extremely spartan kitchens seem much more common in Japan than in other developed countries (I understand this is not uncommon across East Asia), because people have so many food options readily available to them.
5. Other People
Living as a minimalist is easier when you’re a single person or a young person. You haven’t had as much time to accumulate stuff, and you don’t have a partner or family who you have to negotiate the idea of minimalism with!
6. The Price of Small
Small things are in and of themselves minimal, but again this comes at a cost. For example, compare the tiny Mac Mini Desktop with a huge desktop PC that could probably fit 20 or 30 Mac Minis within itself. Both of these things can certainly cost the same amount, so the price density of the Mac Mini is much higher! I think it’s generally the case, for understandable reasons, that small things are pricey. Miniaturization, engineering, and design are expensive! But, the costs go beyond the physical thing — a tiny Mac Mini (in part because Apple) is much less repairable than a hulking desktop (the same and more can be said for the minimalist friendly MacBook Air).
I think the expense and environmental footprint of some of these things, as well as other things like intensive transport utilization enable a sort of “personal” minimalism, but too often their societal impacts, or just their impacts on peoples wallets go under-appreciated.
7. Healthy Things
One of the most amazing things about living in a city are bike share systems (which Canada is sort of a leader in, woot!). It’s remarkable how universally popular these systems are among a range of people. And yet, I, a pretty minimal guy, am constantly telling people around me to just buy a bike.
Shared things are good, but having your own things lets you use them more, use them differently, and specialize. You own bike can be more comfortable, healthier to ride, and get you out more often — all pretty laudable things! The reality of so many physical activities is that you probably need something for them. Climbing shoes and harnesses, bike, bike lock, helmet, gloves, pull buoy, soccer ball, rackets, and a million other things. You could conceivably rent most of these things, it would cost you a ton of money, and probably make doing healthy things (for your mind and your soul) much harder.
So when I look at the corner of our shared garage that stores my various sports equipment, I shouldn’t have to feel that this is at odds with minimalism, certainly not if its keeping me healthy!
8. Impressive Books
The author of Goodbye Things mentions having all kinds of sophisticated literature that he mostly keeps around to impress the people (probably nobody) who see his bookshelf. But, he notes this is all performative because he hasn’t read them, and should just get rid of them.
Now, I’m not going to say you need to own all your books (though those who think digital is the answer should be weary with the policies of companies like Amazon towards digital good people purchase), or that you shouldn’t lend out, sell, or give away the stuff you’ve already read. But, I just find the “I have all these books I haven’t read... I need to get rid of them!” hilarious. (To be clear, I’ve certainly had this problem when I was younger.) You could just read them, and learn a ton!
The Quest to Read More.
The first section of this piece is about my history with reading; if you just want the practical stuff — how to read, what to read, & what I’ve been doing without the fluff, skip to the first heading.
9. One Towel
I hate to be picking on the author of Goodbye Things again, but when he talks about (either him or someone else) only owning a single small towel for drying themselves, their dishes, presumably their hands, and more. that just sounds like depriving oneself (and unsanitary!).
10. Depriving Oneself
And I think we can jump from that right into a bigger one … just depriving yourself. It’s good to own fewer things, but a lot of things do spark joy and other things are just nice to have around. I get that you can watch movies on your laptop, but it is legitimately a better experience, especially with others (minimalism with people is bad!) to watch on a big TV! So much of minimalism feels like its about cutting things down to the bone, and I think that’s unhealthy!
11. Furniture is Good
One thing that particularly concerned me was the talk of having almost no furniture. Trust me when I say it, I am not trying to sell you a couch, but it is absolutely the case that having an ergonomic workspace is good for your health, and not having a good desk and desk chair because you want to be minimalist is silly and bad for you.
As is often the case, I think it’s worth remembering that furniture isn’t free, and people have it for a reason. Watching TV on the couch is better than on a hard wooden dining chair! Kitchen surfaces and work surfaces are often different for very practical reasons! We shouldn’t be ideological about this — for example sleeping on a Japanese futon is not a bad idea, and pretty darn minimal, but not everything is like that!
Again, this is where something like the apartment test is helpful. Does a couple having three couches because they own a home with tons of rooms make sense? No (owning a house also probably doesn’t). But, having an empty apartment so you can be a “minimalist” also doesn’t make sense.
12. Anti-Hoarding
Like many modern trends, there does seem to be a reactionary element in minimalism, I think probably to things like hoarding.
People often see something bad, and decide that good must be whatever is furthest from that. It’s an understandable line of thought, especially if you’ve gone through the psychological havoc of hoarding, either in your own life, or someone near you. But, it really is the case that the correct answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Having almost nothing is probably not as bad as hoarding for a number of reasons, but having a few things is fine, and probably will let you live a better life!
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