Minimalist Panic, episode one

Today's mood music-

For the last several years- well, for the last 17 years, roughly- I've been throwing things away as a winter practice. I think this might have something mildly to do with my synesthesia, but also because I don't think that hanging out in the basement going through things is a warm-weather activity. Short of basement flood of severe magnitude, I haven't had a good sort-out any time other than the colder months.

Except for last year. There was no sort-out last year. Last year I think I might have been suffering from SAD or possibly just short on Vitamin D and money. Or just short on money. When I am depressed, I stop functioning, except at the most basic levels. Work, I'll show up for that. Choir? You betcha. Lunch with a friend? I'll be right there. That part of the month when the bills get paid? Yeah, I'll avoid that, because it's depressing paying for two houses, particularly when one is empty awaiting sale. It's also depressing paying for an extra, empty house when you're trying to be a minimalist.

I started looking with a particular longing at all the tiny house blogs out there. I read stories about mortgage-less couples who had killed their student loans in three years living in their (very cool) tiny houses with their three cats. I read of people being able to work in areas they really enjoyed- for less money- because they had no mortgage, no debt, just their little house and freedom. I read of families traveling in an old school bus- totally refitted as a living area- and unschooling themselves across the country. I became a radicalized minimalist in my mind- while I tripped over eight million legos and swished my finger across my phone and kindle in a hypnotic trance, hoping for something to change.

The house sold. I got a full-time job. Things are changing- but I still, mostly, feel powerless. Because I'm meant to. This powerlessness- this waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop- is what we're raised to feel as normal. This is it, our lot in life, and learning to deal with that is, apparently "the dream" or something. Like in school- those who follow the rules and accept the expectations usually do better on this particular path.  The contrarians, those afflicted with any sort of defiance embedded in their character usually suck at it. That last category is where I have always found myself.

At work the other day- New Year's Day, actually- a thought crossed my mind watching people bound in for the third, fourth time for meaningless, silly things they just couldn't live without for one day. Potato chips, usually. With more and more businesses staying open on holidays, people are being trained into entitlement, and trained out of the ability to plan, to share, to sacrifice, to weigh the importance of their purchases. Why? Because our economy is driven with just these values.

Industrialization has had it's positives- but our complacency is not one of them. So many factors are built into these discussions- the religious influence and ultimate acceptance and defense of the business ethic, the reality of "better" technologies requiring a step-away from self-sufficiency in the home to obtain cash to pay for these technologies, the loss of skill through the generations, as children were raised with outside work as the norm. In her book Radical Homemakers; Reclaiming Domesticity From A Consumer Culture, Shannon Hayes writes,

The industrial economy altered nearly every aspect of home life. The rearing  and education of children was reoriented with the assumption that they would become employees, rather than owners of their own homesteads or enterprises. To hold a good job was the aspirational force behind their childhood training. The family's eating patters changed as well; traditionally, dinner was served midday, enabling the cook the benefit of working during daylight hours, and supper was a light repast, taken just prior to sundown, before the family would head off to bed. But once men were gone to factories all day and children were off to school, this pattern changed, and dinner became the principal meal, pushing the daily work of house-wives later into the evening. Most importantly, families came to think of "work" and "home" as separate places, with "work" most typically being the realm of the man, and "home" the domain of the woman. Before long, "work" also came to mean the "real world," where one's labors had value, leaving the home a site for thankless toil. 

And a place for powerlessness and pathetic meandering through an unplanned and yet, entitled, existence.

I don't get it.

I don't like it much, either. And I'm really good at feeling powerless, pathetic meandering and failing to plan, and yeah, entitlement, too. I just recognize that this status-quo doesn't make me happy.

Living in the world requires a lot of compromise for some people. I'm a changer in my core, but I get tired and I lack motivation. And of course, I know that change isn't easy, and sometimes what you begin, you don't see the results of. So- I get rid of things. I give them away, I throw away, I recycle- and I try hard to be thankful for what I have- because that's the real key.

We live in a place where having too much stuff is our burden. Imagine what that looks like to the outsider without enough food to eat, or clothes for her children? (Reconciling the protestant defense of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution and knowing a particular passage in Matthew 25 nearly by heart is an impossibility for me- and a frustration, because it does drag on.)

So, I plan to keep thinking about having too many things and working through that. I plan to keep my focus on ever-smaller- and yeah, I've seen the looks I get from some of you. Mom- talking to you here. The world is in need of balance. I have too much stuff, I know that it isn't sustainable, so I get rid of it and shift the balance toward an equilibrium I can feel decent about.