An Epic of Removal

I didn’t always exalt in the excellence of less. I once reveled in the many, choosing to pull things in rather than shying away from the thought of excess. My discovery of minimalism was a slow and staggered one. Before I began my apathetic journey, I discovered minimal aesthetics and enjoyed the artistic value. Gradually I began to accept other forms of minimalism and moved ever closer to accepting the lifestyle of less. Then, roughly a year ago, I made the decision to begin removing

I commenced. It was, at the beginning, an exhaustingly enjoyable affair for in my younger years I had made quite a bit of furniture with a strong rustic look. Years after they remained in my room ensuring I had a shortage of space and a surplus of handmade chests filled with little bits of disorder. I dealt first with these boxes that littered my carpeted room. Sorting out the pointless, the chests soon found themselves crackling merrily in the fireplace. A large majority of the expendable fell to my fire in those early days of removal. After a few days of slowly expunging clutter I managed to get all of the furniture in my room down to a bed, a chest of drawers, a bookshelf nestled in a nook, a floor mirror, and a clothes rack. No more was I a navigator amongst clutter in the night. I could move about with ease.

While my floor space was more organized, I still had an excess of clothing cluttering my rack and piles of belongings occupying my closet and the darkest corners of my room. So again I started, with my furniture smoldering I had the top priority of my bag to take care of. Before I turned to minimalism my bag was often a maze of disorganization. For in the mornings before school I’d frequently toss in reams of paper, with an excess of pens which had a marginal chance of ever writing a word. In went little notebooks meant for writing down homework, although I never did look back upon them. Unto this plethora of confusion the actual pieces of my schoolwork and essential papers managed to fit themselves. For the most part to be lost among the avalanche of the useless. So I began once again sorting the contents of my backpack into neat piles, one the essential, another bound for burning. The latter of which soon grew towering over the other, the majority of it being pieces of paper I had scribbled illegible notes upon or homework long since due. After I’d reached the bottom of my bag I decided to continue forth with pillaging piles of paper for their unneeded and useless bits and scraps. So I reached into my closet where ceiling-scrapers of paper had accumulated. Ruthlessly I began sorting once more, feeding the pile for burning. Paper cuts stung and my eyes smarted from sweat and tears as I leafed through those frightening reams looking for anything worth saving. Finally, after days of thorough struggle, no hills of paper remained unsorted; my hearth shone with merry flames fed from the expendable.

Then it was the seventh day. I looked down upon my nearly empty paradise and decided I was not done. The clothes rack nested in the corner of my almost bare area remained clogged with garments. Still boxes lay around, stuffed into my closet. Although perhaps the worst offender was my solitary bookshelf.

I stood before it, stretching up to my ceiling it stood seven shelves of dreadful agony. You see, I’ll take a solid collection of pages above the cold glare of an e-book in any situation. So minimizing my modest collection was a worrisome task. I started at the bottom, which held the largest books, and began the laborious process of slimming and sorting them into tidy piles. This lowest of shelves also happened to carry those pages I had lost interest in long ago. Therefore the stack for donation grew quickly. It took me only a few minutes to clear the first level of my shelf. I moved to the second. Soon I realized that I, inadvertently, had prioritized my bookshelf according to which books I enjoyed the most. The second level of my shelf held only one book I deemed to be worthy of saving, the remainder added to the pile for donation. On the third shelf, however, a collection of Hardy Boys novels had assembled. They were gathering lonesome dust as I had long ago moved onto more mature selections of reading material. Nonetheless those small blue books held a certain amount of nostalgia as I had relentlessly read and re-read their relatively simple story lines. Consequently, it was with a slow hand and heavy heart that I pulled the volumes from the shelf, (I had nearly collected the entire series), and gently placed them in the ever taller mound. Then the third height was empty. However the fourth layer held the books I enjoyed most and still hold special. Where Herman Hesse rubs dust jackets with Fitzgerald and Twenty-One Balloons. After a quick glance I moved upward once again. Following the fourth lay the fifth and upon this shelf was set a selection of novels written for younger people. The words were printed in a large size and the words themselves were simple, soon these books too found themselves among the other unwanted writings. At this point only two shelves remained, the rest, aside from the fourth shelf, were barren and dusty. The second to last of the layers had a few books I wanted to keep, including a selection of Tintin stories certainly worth keeping. Soon it was empty and I looked, with quiet apprehension, at the final shelf. I had to reach just above my head to run my finger along the spines, tracing a path through dust. Deliberately, I began to pull volumes forth and glance at their covers. A bright red hard-backed analysis of the Soviet Union. I recalled having gotten it from a free donation-fed-book-collective-exchange-cafe-type hipster shit, many years before. I kid however. I doubted I had read it more than once since I brought it home. I laid it gently in the pile now reaching my mid-thigh. The next item I pulled out was an old Tintin story, again I quickly put it in the lower of the two heaps. Remaining on the top shelf included a few stories that were uninteresting and I condemned them to donation. Then it remained, the final book, lying on its side having no compatriots left to hold it vertical. It’s cover dusty and cracked. Slowly I slid it from the shelf and glanced at the faded cover. Across the top, in faded letters, it read: Fahrenheit 451. I smiled and tossed it in the tall pile.

Now it’s a while later. I still have some boxes lying around. I ended up taking one or two books from the donation pile. I did this because, minimalism isn’t about having a completely barren room and a wardrobe consisting of two whole outfits. It isn’t about never buying anything. Minimalism is removing until you are content.