(Note: This is the fifth and final post in a short series on minimalism. Please check the archives for the previous four posts.)
In May of 2005, I moved from Silicon Valley, California, to Portland, Oregon. All I took with me was what fit in a friend’s Ford Expedition — a large collection of file storage boxes, mostly. More stuff stayed at the same friend’s house until several months later when he came for a visit and brought it with him. At first I lived in one bedroom of a shared house, moderately crowded by my collection of stuff, but I never gave much thought to getting rid of things, and indeed thought often of the things I’d left behind in California and how to retrieve them or replace them.
After a year or so, I moved out on my own. I got myself a 700 sq. ft. one bedroom apartment close to my work. It was built in the 1920s, and it was clearly designed for people from a different era. There was no good place for a couch or a TV (which made it fortunate that I did not have these things), the living room was long and narrow like a bowling lane, and the bedroom was a postage stamp — there was barely room for my hand-me-down queen-size bed and a narrow space to walk around it. The kitchen was similarly tiny, but the living room and dining room were spacious (though, as mentioned, the former was oddly long and narrow).
I had little furniture, but living there I discovered that I really didn’t need much. A tiny computer desk, a bed, a table for the dining room, and a gaggle of chairs were plenty for my lifestyle there (though had I been the sort to have people over, I’m sure a couch and perhaps an entertainment center would have served me well). I still had stacks of file storage boxes containing the belongings I’d brought with me from California, but the longer I lived in Portland, the more I realized I could do without them. Nevertheless, there they were, stacked up around my dining room, living room, and bedroom, always in the way.
After several months of this, I decided to give minimalism a try in my postage stamp bedroom and see if it would make the room more comfortable and presentable. I stashed all the boxes in another room, save two empties which I stacked and covered with a colored sheet, turning them into a nightstand. Atop the nightstand, I put only a clock radio, a case to put my glasses in while I slept, my cell phone charger, and a small wooden box containing some personal effects. I removed everything from the windowsills, cleaned them, and placed a decorative candle or two on each one. And for the remainder of my time there, that was all that I kept in the bedroom: my bed, my makeshift nightstand, and a few candles.
This worked fantastically. The room was so easy to clean, so perfectly appointed to perform the one and only function it was intended for, so open and clear (considering that the bed occupied 80% of the available floor space). This was truly where I learned to love minimalism.
I never did finish giving the rest of my apartment the minimalist treatment before returning to Silicon Valley in August of 2007. When I came back, my apartment’s worth of stuff was mostly stuffed into a single bedroom. Ever since then I’ve had my heart set on once again living the dream of minimalism. Now that I have some free time for a change, I’m working on sifting through and figuring out what I can get rid of (lots of things), what needs to be dealt with before getting rid of it (about three boxes of books that I want to read before selling or donating them, for instance), what to keep, and what to add to simplify my life (such as the computer desk I mentioned in the previous post in this series). I still have far more stuff than I need, but I’m moving in the right direction, and I have visions of a room devoid of clutter, a spacious, clean, well-lit space where I can sleep, work, think, or play games unhindered by things, always in my way, always too close at hand, always underfoot.
I am still working on my bottom-up minimalism list, and I will share it when it’s done. In the mean time, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series on minimalism, and as always, your comments and questions are welcome. Till next time…