In the past I used to say that I never had enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Now, after having said it enough times through the years I realize how true that statement is. I will never have enough time to do everything I want to do, because it’s easy to scale desires. It’s impossible, however, to increase the finite amount of time I will have on this planet.
Yes, I can always increase my chances of living longer by living better. But it doesn’t take away the fact that my life – my life, your life, everyone else’s life – is limited. You have x number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and that’s it.
I’m reminded of something Paul Bowles wrote in The Sheltering Sky:
Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Continuing with the thought that not all clutter is bad, and not all decluttering is good, comes the natural thought that some things are worth taking up space in your life.
I love books. But I want more books than I have space to keep them, so I have to consciously curate the books I let into my life. eBooks are a growing option; volumes which used to take up an entire shelf can now easily fit into the space of an iPhone. But there are books I read for their content, and there are books I want to keep for their beingness. A book as not only content, but a book as an experience within itself, from the design of its cover to the smell of its pages, from the ability to read printed ink to the pleasure of flipping through paper leaves.
There are things that take up space and simply take the space, and there are things which take up space and add to the space around them. Not all clutter is bad, not all decluttering is good, and some things are worth taking up space in your life.
The beauty of minimalism is that by consciously having less in your life, you thereby give more space to the things you have, and they gain more consequence as a result. A yellow flower hung amongst a wall of flowers becomes a thing lost, but the same flower displayed against an empty wall becomes all the more striking.
Talking with a friend about her decluttering efforts got me thinking.
Decluttering is more difficult when it’s a one-off event rather than a lifestyle. Minimalism – a clutter-free life – is a a mindset as much as it is an aesthetic choice, and a lifestyle inasmuch the mindset informs your day to day choices.
But minimalism is a personal choice; do it because you want to and because it makes you feel better, not because you think you should. I love minimalist design, I’m particular about neatness and cleanliness, and I’m comfortable with the essential less, so minimalism suits me fine. My minimalism is also dictated by constraints; I live in a house with four other people, one of them sharing the same room with me, so I just have less room for stuff.
I’ve bought maybe two to three books since my girlfriend moved in with me, and not for want of desire. If I had a large house, I’d definitely have a huge library. But I’m constrained by the small apartment I live in, and because there are only so many books that can fit, I have to consciously curate the books that I buy.
What’s also important is that I recognize the limitations to this lifestyle. Where I have no problem throwing things out, I sometimes throw too much away and regret it afterward (I deeply regret throwing out my first manual Nikon SLR camera). I also recognize that sometimes there is great pleasure to be had in keeping things of sentimental value which you can enjoy years down the road.
My girlfriend was looking for a new place to stay, but instead of having her rent a room, I convinced her to come stay with me (yeah I know, big life change right?). It meant I had to completely re-design my room, which was really set up for just one to stay and work, not two.
I had two main goals for the re-design, which informed everything:
1. It had to comfortably accommodate the living and working spaces for two.
2. It had to be as simple as possible, in form and function.
The Old Room
This is what my room looked like prior to the re-design.
The wardrobe and single bed were really set up for only one.
The main anchor of the room was this bookshelf which took up the most space and attention. Unfortunately, I realized from the beginning that it had to go, it was taking up way too much room and I couldn’t maneuver anything new around it.
I also realized that no matter how much I tried, the new room wasn’t going to fit everything I already had and still have space left for hers. That meant I had to go through a heavy, nuclear-level de-clutter.
De-cluttering my books took the longest time. I pared down my collection to the ones I absolutely wanted to keep, and these were transferred to a temporary shelf in the living room (it was interesting how few books were really essential and how obvious which ones they were).
Whenever I come back from overseas, I like how much clarity I gain about what’s important and what’s not. I pack light, so sometimes all I have is a book to entertain me – sometimes not even that, so I’m forced to watch and listen to what’s around me, be present and to think.
I also make it a point to check and respond to email minimally if it’s a work trip, and to not use the internet at all if it’s a holiday. It’s refreshing how all the information that clamors for my attention, which seems so essential back home, just fades away into the background without consequence.
It makes me wonder again, how much of my digital clutter is really essential. I’ve become more keenly aware that there’s a real line between consuming and creating, and while I’m doing one I can’t be doing the other.