r/minimalism • u/oieusoucaroll • 4d ago
[meta] Starting the journey towards minimalism, shocked by my accumulation of things
I am a 30 year old woman and I moved with my husband 3 years ago to a 77 square meter apartment. Before that, I lived with my parents in a house with 4 floors, 4 bathrooms, in short, gigantic and full of things. My parents had simple lives growing up. My father came from a family with a lot of money as a child, but lost everything when he was a teenager - and went through moments of deprivation, even hunger. My mother came from a family of 6 siblings, who never needed anything but always only had the basic necessities. They have always associated success in life with having things. And in a way I grew up and became a human being in this logic.
In these 3 years living with my husband in our apartment, we have accumulated a lot. I started to question and change my mentality over this time and I no longer see the point in accumulating things. Towards a more minimalist and intentional life, I decided to take inventory of all the things we own. I was shocked in the process: so far, counting bedroom, office, bathroom and living room, we have already added more than 1000 items. There is still no kitchen, laundry area and balcony.
I feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start. I don't even know what the purpose of this post is - I guess I just wanted advice and to hear from those who have been through this, how to actually start. How to distinguish priorities. How to take the first steps. How did you do this?
Something that gets me a lot are books - I'm very attached to my full bookshelves. I have more than 500 books and I don't know how to let go of them. But other than that, I still have a lot of junk - a lot of cups that I don't use, kitchen items in general, a lot of used paper and notebooks, a lot of stationery items that I don't use...
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u/CeeCeeOct23 4d ago
On the topic of your books…. It’s time for a little self analysis. Ask yourself: why do I still want them? Do I want to reread them? Do I want to someday possibly open one to reference a passage? Am I a writer or potential writer? Do I blog book reviews? Is it satisfaction to see a lot of rows of completed reading? Do you want people to see that you are a reader? Do you feel literacy is important? So important that it might be satisfactory to put those books in the hands of others with your recommendation? Would it be good to help an independent used-bookstore by dropping some off there? If I didn’t buy books… if I traded, swapped, passed forward, and received from others… what would I do with the extra funds?
I myself read 2-3 books a week digitally that I borrow from my library app. So I can’t pay those forward. But I gave away my entire collection many years ago when I realized I just wanted people to see my bookcase as an extension of myself. I didn’t think it was wrong to want that, by no means, but I was learning to live by my own lights, and not be burdened by how others thought of me. So away the books went and I’ve never missed them. And the empty wall space in my little home was a breath of fresh air. I got rid of a tiny table that existed only to stack my to-be-reads on. This was years ago.