Minimalism Won’t Change Your Life: You Will

Want to change your life? Minimalism can help. But you’re the one doing the work.

Increasingly I see that minimalism is being sold as some panacea. The idea is that this silver bullet will cure everything. Just get rid of your stuff and things will fall into place.

Tired? Try minimalism.

Broke? Minimalism will instantly fix that for you.

Out of shape? Minimalism will get you to the gym and make nourishing meals for you.

I see this simplistic idea around trying to live a more meaningful and less cluttered life and I want to scream. It’s not that easy. I know – we’ve been doing the work for years. You’ve been sharing the stories of your work with me for years. The ups and downs and usually non-linear journey you’ve taken to simplify.

Let’s be real here.

Feeling stuck in life? Minimalism won’t fix that. You’ll have to explore and do the work yourself to get unstuck. But minimalism might give you more time to do the work. Being less focused on stuff, the accumulation and upgrading of it, can give you more resources to put towards getting unstuck.

In debt or can’t make ends meet? Minimalism won’t magically clear your debts and increase your income. You’ll have to do the work of selling things to pay off debt, lowering your bills (if possible – I know wages don’t meet basic living expenses for a lot of people) and changing how you view and deal with money.

The lens of minimalism helped my family realign our spending and pay off debt but we still had to, still have to, do the work.

Feel overwhelmed with all the stuff in your house? The concept of minimalism can guide you but you my friend, have a lot of work to do. It’s not easy work as the before and after photos would suggest. It’s work that feels impossible at times. And when the big work is done you have to create new habits. Decluttered is a journey not a destination.

You’ve told me, and I’ve experienced, how hard the work of minimalism can be.

I’ve been writing in this space for eight years now. I wrote my first post in September of 2010. At the time I was a new mother with a high needs baby and a stressful closet filled apartment. We were in debt and I was on maternity leave. Minimalism sounded crazy but I was looking for something to make my home feel more welcoming.

The before and after photos of our big home purge eight years ago tell such a small piece of the story. It was so much work. Finding the right place to recycle electronics. Selling things, taking photos and listing them and meeting with potential buyers. Then when we had a lot less stuff we no longer needed so much furniture. So we sold that too.

Minimalism, this thing that was going to make my life easier, consumed me for months. I had to be obsessed to get that work done. I always had things to sort, choices to make and items to donate. It took a lot of energy and intention to get that initial work – the decluttering, the changing habits – done.

Decluttering your life can be a lonely pursuit.

The silver lining to my months of decluttering was that I had an ally and someone to keep my accountable. My sister, the one who originally sent me articles on minimalism and got me inspired, was also decluttering her stuff. We would help each other, encourage each other and commiserate over how hard the work was.

Minimalism came to me months after I had started to try and pay off debt. The two complimented each other. When I started to reign in my spending, we were able to pay off more debt. When I sold stuff we had extra income to put on my student loans. This other feedback look – less stuff meant less debt – also helped me keep pushing when it felt impossible.

Many years later I am so thankful I made it through that first stage, the really hard one, with support from my sister.

Minimalism is a beautiful and simple concept. But living that concept is challenging work.

Radical downsizing and tiny living is interesting and I love sharing those stories and the lessons from them in this space.

But my real passion is helping people live a bit smaller in whatever space and lifestyle they’re in right now. It could be a huge house or a modest apartment. They may be collectors and lovers of stuff or simply stuck in the rut of just having a bit too much. Whatever place they are in, a bit of minimalism can go a long way in giving them back time and space and lowering stress.

Minimalism won’t solve all of your problems but it can give you ideas and energy to start tackling them yourself.

  • Great post, thank you! And I couldn’t agree more. Minimalism is a journey, not an end. We recently moved into a tiny house and although we have much less space and stuff than before I still catch myself saying (or the) things like: oh, I need that. But I really don’t. I have to remind myself daily of my minimalist mantra: check what I own before purchasing anything new!

  • Excellent post! Creating space in one’s life, whether it’s physical, temporal, or emotional is a lot of work. But the other thing is that achieving “space” is not entirely a panacea either. I have come to believe that we allow chaos into our lives for a reason – usually it’s because it gives us something to focus on other than ourselves. Once you remove the chaos, there’s nothing to hide behind, and all of those uncomfortable little thoughts and feelings – the ones that we’d all rather not have to deal with – come bubbling up. I think this is a good thing, mind you, but I was a bit dismayed to discover that simplifying my life didn’t actually lead to the blissful world of champagne and bonbons that I had imagined. Instead, it cleared space for me to start focusing on “inner work” – the stuff I’d been avoiding through busyness and clutter. That work is totally worthwhile, in fact, I think it’s the most valuable thing in life – but it is most definitely work.

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