So many people ask me why I am a minimalist. Typically I’ll give them the quick and easy most socially acceptable answer. I’d say “It was just easier when I was moving every year in college”. Which is true, but it’s not actually the core reason.
The truth is that I was raised to be a hoarder and grew up seeing the negative effects of clinging onto material possessions and that was really driven home when I was about 25 and got robbed. I came back to my apartment after Christmas holiday and all my things that I had left behind were gone; dvd’s, electronics, random odds and ends that I’m sure to this day I don’t even realize were stolen.
I realized in that moment how fleeting possessions were. How my huge DVD collection that I had amassed over most of my teenage and college years were instantly gone forever. Things I spent hours of my life working to earn disappeared and with it all my hard work. The truth is none of us are out of the reach of something like this. And while I could decide to repurchase all my belongings I can never get back the hours of my life spent earning them.
So many people have a hard time with minimalism because they can’t bring themselves to get rid of things. Too many trophies, too many memories they’ve attached to things who’s absence would threaten the validity of those memories.
The National Fire Protection Association states that about 475,000 structures are lost to fires in the US each year. Let’s now easily imagine that one of those is your house. You’ve got time to grab a bag and spend 1 minute filling it with around 15-20 items. The items have to be ones that aren’t being stored in boxes in your basement, they must be quickly accessible.
This exercise serves a couple purposes. Firstly, if you had items in storage that weren’t easily accessible that are now reduced to ash you must ask yourself. If they are so important to you why are they hidden away in boxes instead of neatly placed somewhere where they can be enjoyed. Second, you’ve now hopefully realized that outside of that 15-20 items nothing else matters. Because if you’re residence is one of the over 1,300 structures that burns down every day in the US, you won’t have any other possessions, or none at all. Don’t put yourself into a situation where your life and happiness can burn to the ground.
If you’re looking for help getting started on this look no further than theburninghouse.com a blog where people submit photos of what they would take with them if their house were burning down.
