Five Top Reasons to Embrace a More Minimalist Lifestyle

If you’re not weighed down by excess stuff, you might be amazed how much freedom of movement you will experience.

In a world that embraces consumerism as a religious experience, it’s little wonder so many people get overwhelmed, mentally and physically, with their “Stuff.”

We all have the things we need, the things we think we need, the things we want, the things we thought we wanted but realize we no longer do, the things gifted to us by others that we cannot part with for fear of hurting someone’s feelings, the things we’ve dragged along from our youth for no apparent reason, the things we bought to fill in the empty spaces in our living quarters so we can feel “comfortable” and “at home,” the things that come in the mail, from online shopping sites or cast-off items from friends and family, the excess chatter dumped in our brains from e-mail and social media. The things . . . The things . . . The things . . .

Did you ever stop to wonder how much you are weighed down by all the “stuff” and “things” in your life?

Are they really so very important?

I had a recent eye-opening experience over the last year when my brother passed away and I became the executrix to his estate. He was a relatively simple soul. His wife had died a year earlier and they had no children, so it was just me, my other siblings, and his stuff.

Easy-peasy.

Yeah, right!

I think I would be reasonably correct in saying that my brother brought many things into his home and his world in the 48 years in lived in his house. And, he NEVER, EVER discarded a single one of them. A comfortable, three bedroom, split-level home required two 30 yards dumpsters and a couple of dump trucks to haul away the excess debris and stuff he had accumulated. And that was after family members claimed nostalgia and whatever else may have been useful and functional.

Was my brother a hoarder?

Maybe.

He certainly had a lot of stuff and his organizational methods left something to be desired.

I certainly don’t intend for this to be an accusation against my brother. He was a dear soul, loved by many. His lifetime as a high school music teacher and band director created countless relationships with students who will probably sing his praises for as long as they live.

No, my point is that I have had a critical lesson in life reinforced with this experience being in charge of the disposition of my brother’s stuff.

Eliminating Clutter Now Will Free You (or Your Heirs) From Future Despair.

It’s a commonly understood belief that most of your stuff is important to you — and you alone. At the end of the day (or the end of a life), a lot of that stuff will be unwanted and unloved by anyone on the outside.

Knowing this, it only makes sense to purge regularly as you make your way through life. Take only what makes your life a comfortable ride. Leave behind or give away the rest.

Minimalism, at its extreme, reduces a person to nothing more than the bare essentials of survival. While that’s an extreme view embraced by some, you don’t have to go that far to free yourself of the physical, mental and financial burdens of life.

Consider some of the benefits of adopting even some level of minimalism in your life:

• Less stuff usually means more money in your pocket. When you are busy spending money on this you don’t need or even want you have less money available for the things and experiences that provide real value in your life.
• Your stuff can take on a life of its own relatively quickly. With that life can come anxiety and stress. The more stuff you have, the more anxiety it can produce. Whether you think you are a collector, have been accused of being a pack-rat or, horror of horrors, can be classified as a bona fide hoarded — sooner or later, your stuff starts to own you.
• Managing your stuff can be very time consuming — taking much and giving little in return. Cleaning, sorting, arranging, organizing . . . On and on it goes. If you have enough excess stuff (much like my brother) simply navigating around the space in your living quarters can be a challenge. And let’s not forget the wasted time needed to find something amidst the rubble when you have to sift through a mountain of stuff.
• As much as you may see yourself as a mere grain of sand on the vast beach of life, you have a vital impact on the environment. By applying some level of minimalism to your life, you are doing your part to help with sustainability of resources.
• Reducing your personal consumption level can open the door for greater levels of generosity to those who truly need more than they have. Generosity has an amazing way of opening your heart and freeing your mind, allowing you to embrace the life you live more fully.

Do you really need to add more to the already overflowing material world?

Stop and think about just how much freer, happier, less encumbered and open you could be without the weight of your worldly stuff suffocating you.

The person you one day deem as executor/trix to your remaining piles of stuff will thank you.

RECENT STORIES