Big Love

What I learned from Japanese minimalism

After reading Japanese author Marie Kondo’s Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up I was primed to delve deeper into the idea of purposefully designing your space for the life you want.

So on browsing my favorite section at the bookstore I was intrigued by the idea of minimalism and left with a copy of goodbye, things by Fumio Sasaki. I enjoyed reading about his journey into minimalism. He eventually lived in a home that consisted of one room that he kept bare. At night he brought out his bedding, in the morning he put it away. You can’t get much more minimal than that in my opinion.

Some things that I learned from reading goodbye, things:

• Embrace the uniform. Like Steve Jobs with his turtle necks, Sasaki found his way to streamlining his wardrobe, and needing less, by finding an urban uniform. It made his shopping needs very simple.

• Be ready to grab and go. Sasaki lives in Japan and needed to be ready to get up and go in case of an earthquake. With his minimalism, uniform, and bare necessities, he could be up and out of his house in something like five minutes.

• It can be freeing to let go of stuff. Sasaki collected old cameras as part of his identity, he thought it made him more interesting and cool. On letting them all go, he released that and felt more free.

• It is okay to keep more than the bare necessities. I have experienced a more minimalist lifestyle, as well as one with more of an abundance of things. Tidying author Karen Kingston says in her book Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui that each person has their own right amount of things, dictated by storage space, personality, and goals. Knowing what both ends of the spectrum feel like has helped me find my desired number of things.

A strange twist on clutter and keeping things just because they might be needed one day is that doing so can create a means by which one day, yes, they will be needed in your life. Crazy.

Keep only things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest.

Marie Kondo