Minimalist home

Halfway through Lent, and we are persisting with our pruning of possessions.

We’ve been surprised to discover in our household’s pursuit of minimalism, the extent to which its benefits are not apparent in advance. The clarity and peace are phenomenal, and affect life broadly.

We’re also surprised over and over again by the way getting rid of a tranche of stuff leaves us thinking, “Right, that’s it; I couldn’t possibly live without my remaining possessions,” only to find ourselves thinking quite soon afterwards, “Why did I keep this? I don’t need it.”

In our Lenten clear-out, at one point one of us went up into the attic to fetch something down. There she found a couple of boxes belonging to her. Mystified she looked inside, and there found a collection of belongings she’d completely forgotten existed. “Oh, there’s my grey coat!” she exclaimed; “the one that was always too tight. And there’s my sunhat that I never wear because the wind always blows it off my head.” And so it went on. Another couple of boxes out of the door.

Then there were the boxes themselves. We rarely throw out cardboard packaging – and we have quite a lot because we do most of our shopping by mail order. Packets, envelopes and smaller boxes we tear up and use for kindling. We also put cardboard on new veggie plots to keep the weeds away, and that can go into the compost heap when it’s done its work. But large, strong boxes we stash in the attic – and the useful smaller sizes, like shoeboxes (some of those are re-used for Christmas shoebox appeals).

Then, O joy! In the notices at the beginning of the service where I was preaching last week, the steward appealed for cardboard boxes. He said the Young People wanted to build a wall. Perhaps Trump mania has reached Calvert Methodist, or maybe they just want to keep the politicians out? Anyway, they wanted cardboard boxes in large amounts and the bigger the better. We were right round with a carload by sunset. I don’t like to waste them, but I do like them to move along. Usually someone moving house sends out a call for boxes on Freegle – that’s where they generally go.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy a peek into some of the unexplored corners of our minimalist home; so one evening while some of us were out at choir I wandered round with my camera.

In one room, someone had already put her bed out ready for when she got home.

In another room, everything was quiet and peaceful. I didn’t put the Big Light on because I didn’t want to wake up our friend asleep in the armchair. Can you make out his ears?

Another corner of the same room.

And the nook where the Badger and I sleep.

That overhead light hanging down is a lovely Taotronics lamp, and the white stick thing on the right is my bedside lamp – it folds down and keeps the light out of your eyes for resting, and folds up to shine down on a book for reading. They're fab – we can charge them during the day when we have free electricity from the solar panels, then they last for a few hours at bed time. Which is handy because we have no electric sockets in our sleeping nook - just in case it's really true that electric current interferes with our brains.

We have a table the Badger made at the foot of the bed, and the wall-hanging his mother embroidered on the wall above.

So we continue our pruning and chucking – amazing where all the stuff comes from; you can see we don’t have much. This week we’ve lugged bags of loot to the charity shop. Good stuff, too.

I didn’t photograph it all. Here’s a representative mini-selection; True Junk (an empty perfume bottle, originally – when full – bought second-hand from a private seller on eBay) and an item of bric-à-brac. Out they go!

Meanwhile, outside in the Real World, the spring is advancing. Our front yard is in bloom.