Minimalist Musician

What Do You Actually Own?

In my continuing effort to become more Minimal and pare my life down to the Essentials, I recently decided to start a spreadsheet of every physical thing I own.

Years ago, Heidi was inspired to attempt a list of everything we owned to see if we could live with 1000 things. After she spent a couple of nights on it, she realized how annoying and unnecessary it was and promptly stopped the project. She wondered what value she would get if she even decided to finish it.

Since then there are a slew of Minimalism bloggers who are listing what they own and seeing if they can get what they own down to 100 or even 50 things. Most of these lists are just for their personal items and these bloggers are not counting family or shared items. For example, they are not listing each and every fork or pen but will list their personal laptop or clothes. In my opinion, this is a bit of a cop-out. If getting control of your stuff is so important, why not make all of it important and not just your ‘personal’ possessions?

Either way, I’ve become inspired myself to attempt this ridiculous task only because I believe it will help me become fully conscious of my possessions.

It’s one thing to see your possessions sitting in your house or just even know you own something, but it’s another thing to see it all listed on paper that you entered with your own hands and on your own time.

Why Bother Making a List in the First Place?

My personal philosophy behind doing this is, if I’m investing this much of my life in acquiring, owning, storing, etc. all these things, I may as well know what I own.

Seems kind of annoying, doesn’t it? Part of the reason I’m doing this is because it is very annoying. Just as many of my possessions have wasted my time over the years, I’m now reclaiming my dominion over them…and not one of them will escape my list. If it’s annoying to enter this data, I won’t want to do it. Hence, I will think twice (or thrice) about buying that next that I ‘must’ have.

My rule is simple: if I want to own something, it goes on the list. I have to consciously think about putting it on the list and then answer certain questions about why I even own it.

I’m not just listing every single thing I own in some sort of flat, one page list. I want to really dig into the reasons I’ve decided to own something.

So here are my current columns that I need to fill out for each item on my spreadsheet:

• Item Name
• Do I need it or want it? It’s perfectly OK to own something simply because I want it. But I better damn well really enjoy it.
• What do I use it for? In order to become fully conscious of my possessions, I need to know what the heck I actually use it for.
• Can I live without it? I’ve found filling out this column to be extremely enlightening. It’s not whether I enjoy it or not, but can I actually live my life without it?
• What other options are there? In other words, is there some other option, or something smaller or better I can own. I’m not about getting rid of everything I own.

I’ve also recently added a “Does this serve my life or not?” column. Big question to ask, right? If I took all the time, mental energy, and effort to acquire and bring something into my life and am going to take care of it like a pet, shouldn’t I know if it is truly serving my life?

If nothing else, this whole OCD-like process will really hone my ability to quickly determine whether or not something will truly serve me.

What do I expect to accomplish by this?

In the end, I’m not really sure how useful this list will be or whether I will keep it up. I just know that I need to do it at least once. I’m hoping that I’ll be hyper-aware of what I own and have very valid reasons for owning something that is Essential and will truly contribute to my life instead of just taking up space or plan to keep around ‘just in case’.

One more thing to mention is that I do have certain goals and desires in my life. Each and every item is now questioned in regards to those desires.

Now that I’m on a roll, I’m actually beginning to enjoy this.

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Brief Music update: I will be posting an audio snippet or two this week as well as integrating a better audio player and Music section into the site. Personally, I like the new piece I’m working on. Learning more about my software and like nothing I’ve done before.

~ JS

Photo credit

My History with Minimalism Thus Far

Since the year 2000 I have been on a quest to clean-up all the things in my life in order to get down to the Essentials. My desire was (and is!) so strong because I knew that I needed to do this to truly live life!  This desire was initially aimed at cleaning up physical stuff: all the junk I had accumulated over my life thus far. At the time I made the decision in 2000, I had a clear vision of what that looked and felt like.  It was a strong vision that filled me with a sense of freedom, expansion, and deep satisfaction.

I wasn’t sure exactly how to go about it, but I knew one thing: to take action and just get started.  I started cleaning my stuff up.

Now, I’ve never been a hoarder or a messy person. I have always been known to be pretty simple in my possessions. In fact, I would say I was just a notch or two below “average” in the amount of stuff I owned for one person, even back in 2000.  But to me, I’m not even close to where I want to be.  Even today when I say “I have too much stuff,” people still scoff at me.

In 2003 I got married to an incredible woman (no, the most incredible woman)…which instantly doubled my stuff.  Ouch.  This put me into a tricky situation where I could no longer make all of my cleaning and organizing decisions based solely on my desires alone.  There were now two people involved.  (I have no children and can only imagine how this would further complicate/challenge this path.)

Why ‘Your Stuff Owns You’ is Absolutely True

I’ve come a long, long way over the years the deeper I’ve gone into this quest.  The biggest lesson I’ve learned through all of this is this:  it’s amazing how much time stuff takes.

Even the good stuff.  Every little thing.  Every scrap of paper, rubber band, email, website, laptop, or car…it doesn’t matter, it must all be:

• Organized
• Cleaned
• Stored/Filed
• Thought about
• Used
• Packed
• Fixed
• Replaced
• Sold/Traded
• Given
• Displayed
• Admired/Hated/Whatever

The list goes on and on and on.

Each time you even look at what you own, that thing has stolen a part of your life away.

Ok, maybe ‘stolen’ is a harsh word to use.  But is it really?  Now, if something in your life gives you great enjoy, excellent!  You have spent your life energy (your focus and attention) in appreciating and/or using that item you love.

But if it’s something you only tolerate, hate, or just keep around to use ‘someday’, or just don’t know what to do with it, it literally owns you.

A lot of people will read past this and be like, “Yeah, I hear that!”  But they won’t truly grasp that incredible concept and probably won’t make any changes in their life.  I would even go as far to say that this very concept is essential to the core of life itself on this planet.

We live in an incredible world of abundance.  Literally almost anything we want is cheap to acquire or instantly at our fingertips (especially when it comes to knowledge).  The old ways no longer work.  We are no longer in ‘survival’ mode where hoarding, owning, and protecting our stuff is essential to survival.

We’re now in a society where the future will belong to those who are experts at Personal Discernment.  They will be able to take a massive amount of input (physical stuff, electronic information, etc.) and be able to quickly and easily determine not only what stays, but what is truly essential and important, now.

The goal is to be left with only those things in your life that truly contribute to your overall joy, needs, and supports your vision of Personal Freedom.

I’ve touched on this topic quite a bit on this site, originally calling this quest Extreme Cleaning.  To some of those who know me in the raw food movement, I’m well-known for talking about Extreme Cleaning and have already inspired a handful of people who wish to delve further into paring their stuff down to the Essential.

Speaking of the raw food movement, I find it equally fascinating how the world of inner cleansing seems to inspire a change in external cleansing.  And vice-versa.  Many in the health movement have told me that just taking a simple fast, cleanse, or even a colon cleanse have prompted them to clean their physical stuff up to an even deeper level.  I have found this profoundly true as well.  Clean on the inside, clean on the outside.  It’s all very beautifully connected.

The Next Step

As I begin to write about this next phase of my journey, I’m taking a bit of a different approach.  I’m not focusing much on ‘minimalism’ as most people think they understand it. A lot of minimalist bloggers are known for their goal to own less than 100 personal items. In my definition, a true Minimalist is actually an Essentialist. It means being ruthless about the things you bring into your life and the things you choose to have around you. This includes digital ‘junk’ as well, which I would argue is probably a worse problem than physical junk.

I’m sure most of these incredible bloggers would agree with me.  Talking about owning less than 100 or 50 things is probably going to turn the majority of people off.  I can’t blame them.  When I was in high school, owning a 100-CD changer was considered extremely cool!  Hey, I wanted the 100-CD changer too…

I briefly touched on this concept in a post a couple years ago called Baseline Your Life, in which I essentially defined what Minimalism is and means to me without using the term ‘minimalism’.

Since that post there have been a slew of amazing bloggers out there who are exploring the cutting-edge of minimalism, which I only recently discovered in the last year or so.  These blogs have had a major impact on me, such as Far Beyond the Stars and Mnmlist.  There are a lot of other quality Minimalism and Simplicity blogs and sites out there as well.  I became fascinated that there is even a group of people out there who are that into Minimalism, and I’m certainly inspired and have learned a great deal myself from them.

Part of that inspiration has taken me to move this site more into exploring and educating about Minimalism along with blogging about my Music and other personal topics.

What I hope to accomplish with this is not only to further my journey on this path, but to help inspire and/or educate those out there who are interested in opting-out of the consumption/storage cycle and opting-in to the discernment/freedom cycle.

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So, what exactly does Minimalism mean to me in the simplest words possible?  Essentialism.

The nice thing about this concept of Minimalism/Essentialism, is that Minimalism can mean a great deal of different things to a wide variety of people.

And they are all correct.

Let’s see where this goes…