Greetings!
If it's right to say I became a minimalist from birth, I think I would boast of that because, from what I know, I started practicing minimalism from a very tender age, and that’s totally due to the not-so-rich family background I came from. We were very poor, the only difference we had from others was that there was food in the house due to our farms, and even from that, we were never allowed to waste food unless we were ready to receive a twelve-month sermon on the importance of managing food. Lol.
When I came of age, i.e when I started living alone and sourcing my own money and food, I saw that there was a big need to fully continue with what I learned from home while growing up. Otherwise, things would be choky, and I might not survive calling home to beg for food or begging friends for food.
So that’s it. One of my major reasons for choosing a minimalist lifestyle is to avoid the shame of begging by properly managing every single penny that comes my way. This is done by always going with a scale of preference, which means going for the things I need most in a very economical way and avoiding unnecessary spending.
The 'economical way' here means that even when it comes to the things I need, such as feeding, I am very mindful of how I go about it to save some resources for future use....when it comes to feeding, I settle down to plan and make food that will last me a long while with just one cooking session. You can never see me cook at 9 a.m., another one at 12 noon, another one at 3 p.m., and dinner at 6 p.m. No way! I cook a very lasting meal and save up some gas.
I have a neighbor that always comes asking to borrow my gas cylinder because his own is exhausted. That’s because he cooks 'irrelevant' meals every now and then, and the funniest thing is that he complains about how his gas is always exhausting before the actual time it ought to, which he knows the cause but can’t just stop.
- Buy quality and rest for eternity:
I always use the belt I bought in 2018 as an example of this. Before I bought that belt, I was always spending N400 to buy low-quality belts every three months because they spoiled within that time frame. Before that, I had been advised to go for a quality one, which was four times the price of the ones I always bought. After a series of regular three-month purchases, I gave in and purchased the belt, and that has been the belt serving me since 2018 until now, and it is still in very good condition.
Buying a quality item once saves a whole lot of money in the future. Imagine how many belts I would have bought by now if I were still doing the every three months purchase. Not only this, but the price of the fake belts has also increased now, and I would have been spending a fortune to get a fake belt by now.
- Having less eases life:
Another reason for choosing to stick to a minimalist lifestyle is because life is simpler with less.
Doing away with unused items was never something I learned from home because, hey, my mom was never into throwing away things that were no longer in use. There’s a special joy she derived in seeing all her possessions, and my dad is no different because even today, our black-and-white TV is still functioning, though not in use, but it's packed somewhere in the house Lol.
Using clothing as a case study here, I used to have headache whenever I'm going through my wardrobe to choose what to wear and after passing through many shirts, still come out with nothing.
In the church department where I work, we have a dressing code for three Sundays, and on one, we can use any style. Before now, on the Sundays when we could use any dressing style, I used to have trouble picking clothes. I would flip and flip, passing many long-unused clothes, and have a hard time picking any. There were clothes still on hangers that hadn’t been used for a long while, so I made up my mind to do away with them and free up space to give myself less headache.
Now, it's easy peasy for me to pick wears with a just s glance. There are no longer many unused and not-ready-to-be used clothes.
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry to #Kiss prompt
Images are mine