It's advisable for everyone to live simply. It allows us to be generous to others, it reduces what we require in order to be comfortable and content, it's a way of making our homes bigger so we don't feel cramped and can invite relatives or friends or people in need to share on a temporary or permanent basis. It takes a lot of the effort out of house maintenance, and makes frugality easier so our money goes further and anxiety is reduced. There's everything to be said for living simply.
But simplicity has a range of categories to suit different people.
There's just simplicity in the old-fashioned sense, like our family's grandfathers used to practice — they didn't go shopping much, they made their clothes last a long time and their furniture a lifetime. They didn't go in for gadgets. They drove (and liked) cars but bought them second-hand and maintained them carefully. They bought cheap food and lived in modest homes and tended their gardens, repaired and painted and looked after things. That sort of simplicity is the most straightforward and easiest to stick to. It isn't flamboyant, it's just humble and quiet and normal. Living simply in a world constantly tempted to excess.
Then there's minimalism — various degrees of taking simplicity a shade deeper. It usually means limiting one's wardrobe and frequently reviewing possessions; not letting anything accumulate. Minimalism may possibly be more consumerist than the old-fashioned simplicity just because the minimalist doesn't hang on to things — so if you got rid of your suitcase because you never travel any more, and then you get an invitation to accompany someone on a river cruise and you say "Yes, please!" without a second thought, you'll probably (though not certainly, depends how capsule is your wardrobe) need to get another suitcase.
Because in our house I have a very small room so we can all fit in okay — it makes the household work, and anyway I love my room, but I try hard not to let my belongings overflow it — I need to be more of a minimalist than an old-fashioned simplicity type.
In a shared house it's important to take responsibility for what we own. For instance, recently when Tony was without a car for a spell then replaced it, it became apparent we had some chamois leathers that the rest of us all thought were his but he had just inherited from some forgotten past event (perhaps when I sold my car?) and he didn't use or want them. It took a while to sort out because he knew they weren't his, so assumed they just belonged to the house — but I personally consider that a dangerous category. We do have things (cooking and cleaning equipment and furniture) that we all use, but everything belongs to someone which is important for ensuring that things no one uses don't slowly stack up — like the chamois leathers but a multitude. So I know what's mine and I keep it in my room apart from the things people like to share. The two clothes airers we have were both bought by me, and if ever we stop needing them it's my responsibility to move them on — but I wouldn't do so without checking first, because at the moment everyone uses them.
So practicing minimalism is what I do, but it's a lot less frugal than old-fashioned simplicity, because to fit my stuff in the boundaries of my room means I change what I have quite a bit because I get bored of it. I don't aim to buy nothing, just to keep only a little.
Then there's the upper echelons of simplicity — extreme minimalism, one-bag minimalism and voluntary poverty (like monastics). I think there's just a smidgin of danger in this path, in that it can feed into neurosis, and it's wise to understand that and be careful where signs of obsession appear. But that said, I do admire those extreme forms of simplicity. It's what Jesus did, and St Francis and the Buddha, and Gandhi, and Mother Teresa, and I learn a phenomenal amount from people who walk in these paths, but I personally am more materialistic than that.
I read, and watch television and videos on YouTube, and I think a lot, but neither my health nor my finances are robust enough for me to travel or do much in the way of experiences, so I'm pretty much based at or near home. There are even churches I can't go to because the seats hurt me, and I can't walk very far any more. I even have to limit how much I eat out because what I eat affects how well I stay. So I do enjoy swapping my possessions in and out shopping online (eBay mostly), because it's fun and interesting. Honestly? It's something to do. Keeps me cheerful.
What I hope you can draw from this is not so much information about me, as that though simplicity is a good idea for everyone, what it looks like in your life will be determined by your circumstances and personality. If you are a healthy, young, single accountant, you could be a one-bag minimalist living in hotels anywhere in the world, your professional activities all digitised. If you are the mother of three young children all taught at home, you will have quite a lot of stuff to curate in your family life, and your practice of simplicity will feature keeping careful household accounts, buying secondhand, and making heroic efforts to persuade everyone to keep the stuff mountain low.
It's not something you ever come to the end of, because your circumstances and your actual self change as the years roll by. You can learn and practice the principles of simplicity, but the point is that simplicity is flexible — it makes adaptation easier as the unknown and unexpected arrives in your life.
There are, I think, only three constants:
- It should work for you as a person. It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing. Comparison isn't very helpful. It should be an expression of the essence of who you are.
- It should be part of your loving — allow your money and space and belongings to help other people. If you need loads of space to accommodate loads of stuff that you don't use and won't share, that's not kind.
- It should be an expression of your reverence. God made this beautiful Earth and meant for us to honour it and love it and keep it beautiful. How we live should be responsible, sustainable and socially just — not living beyond the regenerative capacity of nature or dependent on sweatshops, injustice and slavery.
So here are two things leaving my life today.
An imploded water harmoniser.
I wear one every day, and have some earrings made of harmonisers too, but I had this extra one, so I gave it to a friend.
And a pair of leggings.
I find leggings very useful — the soft, underwear-ish sort, not the very tight trousers kind — but now I no longer wear skirts I really need them only for pyjamas or extra warmth under trousers in winter. So I've kept a couple of pairs and gradually let the others go — either to a charity shop or on Freegle.
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