Why More Minimal Is Back

I began writing More Minimal almost exactly three years ago. In retrospect, it was the precursor to Lighter Footstep, though I didn’t know that when I started. And now Lighter Footstep has re-birthed More Minimal.

To be honest, when I first began batting around the term “minimalism” in the autumn of 2006, I wasn’t very precise. Minimalism meant everything from efficient industrial design to running a low-energy household, with quite a few stops in between. But the more I thought about keeping things lean and aesthetically pleasing, the more neatly they began to dovetail with my love of the environment, and Lighter Footstep was born. I retired More Minimal and moved on.

Today, we’re coming full circle, because I believe — more passionately than ever — that the root of our environmental ills is our society’s love affair with stuff. The cure to what ails us isn’t just climate legislation, hybrid cars, or buying smarter, more eco-friendly products. It’s learning to find happiness beyond the constant urge to do more, accumulate more, and consume more. We must collectively become More Minimal.

So please allow me to again offer you this site. More Minimal is not a replacement for Lighter Footstep, but a companion. It’s an extension of some of the things I’ve been doing in my life for the past couple of years.

Pressing the reboot button

If there’s any upside to the current recession, it’s that we finally been confronted with the state of plenty in which we’re been living. Nothing focuses on the essential more than need. Those who have jobs have less time, and those who aren’t working have less money. Choices must be made.

I had a head start. Employment in the industry where I spent most of my career — radio broadcasting — has been contracting since 2003. While I remained well-paid, corporate mandates required me to cut our staffing from year to year. My turn came in January, 2007.

As the money dried up, it was hard letting go of things. I never realized how much I was eating out — but I learned to cook. It became impossible to pay for all those cable TV channels — so I turned them off and used the time to begin writing. Gas money was precious — I started cycling again. There were dozens of other changes, large and small.

Stuff doesn’t make you happy

It was a difficult way to learn something our grandparents understood: Plenty is found in the essential. That’s because the more things we have, the harder we must to work to hang on to them.

You want a bigger house, so you move out to the suburbs. Distance means you’ll need a car. With the car comes insurance, upkeep, and time spent commuting. Now you’re buying most of your meals out. That’s not good for the waistline, so pretty soon there’s a gym card in your wallet (scratch another five hours or more each week). It goes on and on. Never mind the old working to live, living to work conundrum. You’re working to maintain your stuff.

And this is Consumerism, the doctrine that you and your stuff are really the same thing. It’s a powerful ideology that causes us to tear down mountains for the coal they conceal, rip precious metals from the earth, flatten forests, and pump our air and water full of waste. The bad news is that this process is ultimately unsustainable. And the good? You can choose to step off this treadmill anytime you want.

It’s time to get more minimal.

Bonsai image by Flickr user rofi / CC BY-SA 2.0