Minimalism, what do you think after hearing this word or about the topic? Is it like living with the less? Cutting down your comfort? Letting go of the things you may like? To me it was something like that in the beginning but actually it isn't like this, it's like having the things that we actually need in our life, not something for one-time use and letting that thing rot in a corner. There could be little differences in our needs and thoughts regarding minimalism but the ultimate goal can really be fruitful for us.
Recently I came across this Netflix documentary 'The Minimalist: Less is Now' and it showed how change comes, can be embraced, and their personal experience. Well, I will not be reviewing the documentary and that's why this writing is not in any movie-related community rather I posted it here.
The main idea of the documentary in short is that we all do have lots of things in our possession that we don’t use or are not in need of anymore. Maybe it's laying in our drawers for an eternity and we don’t even remember about its existence of it anymore. We gotta get rid of that stuff and from next be careful about what we are willing to possess. Actually, it's not bad to be practical as it could be life-saving at some point. In the documentary, there was a scene where they get rid of the unnecessary stuff from their houses. The First-person did that in a routine way where he get rid of stuff on a daily or weekly basis. The second one was incredible, he packed everything he had in his possession asif he was changing his house and for the next couple of weeks he brought out only the necessary items from those boxes and at the end of the experiment he realises that almost 80% of his stuff is still in those boxes untouched which means those are completely out of his regular need and he can easily get rid of those unwanted things. I know, those are really some extreme examples of minimalism but it gives us a glance of what the scenario could be.
For example, my phone storage, was huge in size in the beginning now the free space is barely available just because I have piles of media content that are just sitting there without any usage. I had freed almost 10% of my total storage within just 30 minutes, which was utterly useless and can be accessed within a few minutes from the internet. Same in practical life, we do have many things that are just rotting inside our drawers or in a corner of the house without even being noticed. Such things should be handed over to those who are in need or sold for something useful.
Nowadays marketing strategies to sell products has made a revolutionary advancement. All the sellers know how to target the exactly interested customers, you will be having ads only about the things you might be interested in somehow. Suppose I personally get ads and things about tech-related stuff and my temptation for them usually gets high and somehow I control myself. Now if I get ads about music-related stuff like a guitar or its necessary instruments then it won't affect me anyhow but one of my friends who are interested in this field would be tempted to grab it. At such moments we often end up buying extra things that we don’t need like that. We were fine without the product yet we end up buying just to satisfy ourselves and the next week another one seems more tempting and the cycle continues.
To be honest, I am not heavily burdened with extra stuff, thankfully I am somewhere concerned about what I am buying still there are lots of stuff without which I was fine and they didn’t add much value to my life. Recently I met with a friend and while discussing she end up revealing how devastating her shopping habit is. In 2022, she ends up buying more than 50 lipsticks, more than fifteen pairs of shoes, and almost more than a dozen of handbags. I was so surprised and asked why she purchased so much of stuffs, she was like, "Whenever I come across a new collection I can't control myself, I feel incomplete without the new products but it ends up releasing new items every week or month. Can't control myself from buying them." Well, a few months back I was somewhere like this when I had more money than my usual needs. Now that I am on a tight budget I can easily understand the situation and need for minimalism in life. Determined to maintain this in future too.
Well, from my perspective, minimalism is not limiting ourselves, nor will I limit myself from having the things I need, keyword: 'need' One of the biggest examples is the smartphone I am using right now. It's two years and six months old. Often I feel like changing this to an updated one and then I realize that this one can keep pace with the marathon still now. I can fulfill my needs with this pretty well. Maybe it lacks behind against the spec and ultra performance of the updated ones but as per my need that gap won't be more than ten to fifteen percent and it's easily acceptable. So yeah, I don't need to change my phone as it is still running pretty fast according to my needs. There are many things like this where this kinda realization is what minimalism is called. Cutting down unnecessary things and just embracing what we actually need. This way we can make the best use of our resources.
Let's do a thing, look around you or in your drawers, do you see anything that is not getting used for a long time, what is the stuff that is not serving the purpose it was purchased for? Lemme share mine that I am noticing within the first thirty seconds. 1) One ‘Rubic Cube’ that I purchased on seeing an online ad about six or seven months ago and haven't solved for once, just a couple of pictures perhaps. It was an unnecessary purchase. 2) A dozen of books that I purchased last year from seeing a huge discount and I have just completed reading one. So it didn't serve my purpose. 3) A pair of AirPods (not the apple one,hehe) that I purchased for portability while traveling and since then I have used them for not more than thirty minutes. Okay, it's just three in thirty seconds, if searched thoroughly then I can find such thirty items that aren't serving their purpose, and I could have avoided the purchase.
What else to say? It has gone too long already and I might have messed a few things in the middle, pardon me. It was like a thought or my opinion on this topic. Share yours, would love to hear from you too.