In the interest of being more minimalist, I’ve combined this blog with my personal one. Posts on minimalism will appear there as usual, every Monday. Enjoy 🙂
Minimalist Insight from Jacobean Drama
For my tutorial this week I wrote a paper on inheritance and legacy in Ben Jonson’s play Volpone, which is basically about a greedy guy called Volpone (Italian for “sly fox”) who takes advantage of other greedy guys by pretending to be on his death bed, accepting gifts from those hopeful to be written into his will. Writing my paper felt like a blog post on minimalism (with slightly more academic and slightly less conversational phrases)!
In conjunction with the play I read Isabella Whitney’s poem Will and Testament, a highly entertaining satire of the detailed lists of random stuff people leave behind. She chooses to leave behind things like the buildings in London and her portion of meat from the butcher’s shop every day. A recommended read for a minimalist chuckle.
The characters in Volpone seem to do nothing but chase after money and status, neglecting and even sacrificing their friends and loved ones. Their focus on obtaining stuff dominates their lives to the extent that they cannot be identified in any other way.
Don’t be a one-dimensional medieval man. Think about the value of stuff and the value of things like the literature that makes us think about the value of stuff.
Robert Herrick puts it best in his Lyric for Legacies:
GOLD I’ve none, for use or show,
Neither silver to bestow
At my death ; but this much know,
That each lyric here shall be
Of my love a legacy,
Left to all posterity.
Gentle friends, then do but please
To accept such coins as these
As my last remembrances.
reflections born from illness
I woke up this morning with an aching stomach, and not really sure what to do, I spent most of the day asleep or lying down. I spent a lot of time staring at the room around me, the view from my window, thinking thoughts I haven’t had time to think in my structured day. I paid attention to my body, trying to figure out what it needed, calling attention to how little I do this on a normal day when my stomach is happy. When I get sick I can usually pinpoint the reason why – I was dehydrated, I was too cold, I didn’t get enough sleep – and then I pay attention to these things that I should be paying attention to before it’s too late. Take care of your bodies now, they’re what we live in.
simple strategy: breathe
Stressed? Uncomfortable? Confused? Scared?
Stop. Take a full deep breath. Exhale. Repeat.
In my practice of yoga and of rock climbing, I have found breathing to be the most effective strategy for tackling tension. It comes up again and again in the books and blogs and instructions. And, as is the case with most epiphanies reached through my activities, the advice is applicable to everyday life, in any situation.
Pay attention to your breath. It will ease your mind and remind you to be present, calm, and balanced.
Often when I’m stressed or nervous, I lose track of my breath and later notice that I am breathing too quickly or holding my breath unnaturally, and that’s only making things worse.
It seems obvious – yeah, breathing is important. I know. A lot of things that seem obvious are dismissed, taken for granted, neglected, and that’s when we mess them up. The hard stuff is often a lot easier because we know that it’s hard, so we are more focused.
Minimalism is about remembering those simple, obvious things and paying attention to them. Embracing them. Enjoying them. Focusing on the easy stuff before rushing on to the hard stuff.
So breathe. Your body and your mind will thank you.
ethical dental hygiene
Every purchase made is a vote for a certain type of product, so I do my best to make those votes count. Everyone needs to brush their teeth, so naturally a toothbrush and toothpaste are required. Sort of.
Introducing, my toothpaste substitute!
When I first saw Lush’s Toothy Tabs I was just as skeptical as perhaps you are right now. The idea is, you chew on one tablet, then brush your teeth normally. It feels weird and tastes weird at first (especially, if like me, you start out with the Atomic flavor, which is a spicy “clove bud oil” flavor), but my teeth have never felt cleaner. The best part is, you don’t have to stress about squeezing out the very last bits to make sure none is wasted since they’re packed into solid single-use tablets! Then when you’re done, the box is 100% recyclable.
My toothbrush is more conventional, but also ethical 🙂
Made by Monte-Bianco, this toothbrush has a replaceable head, reducing the amount of plastic discarded when you need a new brush. Even better, Oxfam carries them, so the money goes towards a good cause (For every £1, Oxfam donates 83p to emergency, development, and campaigning work, 10p to running costs and support, and 7p to generating future income).
a minimalist song and animation
kate nash’s music is so honest, stripped back to how people think. and in this video, musicANDmuffins illustrates the song with some simple drawings 🙂
what to do with knickknacks
We all have this stuff. Little objects that are emotionally valuable, but don’t serve any practical purpose. My collection looks like this:
And I have stored them in the same way since I was about ten years old. I love Converse shoes, so I kept a shoe box and put all of the things inside:
Every so often I will empty the box and sort through the objects, reflecting on the memories they represent and removing the ones whose significance I can no longer remember, or the ones to which I’m ready to say goodbye.
During the most recent declutter, I decided to part with my I Love NY pens. Every time my family visited New York City I would buy a new pen that I would use for nothing but journal-writing.
It was the age at which I was proud to have used up an entire pen’s worth of ink – that was a lot of writing then. Now I have this picture (and this blog post) about the pens instead of the pens themselves. Now when I run out of ink, to ease my frustration, I recall the sense of accomplishment that the same inconvenience made me feel years ago.
I keep all of my knickknacks tucked away in my special box. Over time I forget what exactly is inside, so when I open it up in a few months it’s a pleasant surprise. When the time comes to part with an object (or seven) I remember that it’s the experience attached to the object, not the object itself, that is significant.
redefine luxury
Luxury pour moi, daily life for Miss Blair
“The only way to really feel luxury is to go without it and then take a good long gulp.”
– The Art of More for Less: Savvy Chic by Anna Johnson
She is right. Luxury is only luxurious if we are not accustomed to it. Gossip Girl lifestyles seem luxurious to me, but they can’t possibly be as luxurious to the characters to whom a casual trip to the Chanel house before a $500 date is the only way to live (live. exist. whatever you want to call fiction. That show is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of “luxury” so I’m sticking to the comparison).
The quotation allowed me to realize that luxury is relative. It is different for everyone. It is different for me depending on my situation as well – for instance, after my tri-annual six-hour no-sleep flight to England, my flimsy dorm bed is all the luxury I need.
The first time I practiced yoga, the instructor defined the practice as “finding your limit and challenging it.” I’ve been hooked on the idea ever since, whether it’s increasing my flexibility through yoga, or decreasing the clutter through minimalism. As I become more comfortable with less, I also require less to feel luxurious. Since I usually air-dry my clothes, retrieving a load of laundry fresh and hot from the tumble dryer is a thrill. Reading most of my books on my kindle makes hardcovers, even paperbacks feel luxurious in my hands. Accepting a shiny pink Betsey Johnson bag with thick black ribbon handles is an indulgence, since I always carry reusable shopping bags.
However, depriving myself of pleasures just to experience it “in one gulp” is not the only reason I am a minimalist. In fact, many of the habits I have shed are not ones that I miss. Since I’ve been vegetarian, I have not craved meat. Since switching to Lush’s toothy tabs I can’t imagine going back to toothpaste. My home sock drawer seems overwhelmingly full compared to the easy-to-find pairs to which I have pared down (couldn’t resist that one) at uni.
So I tell myself: Live with what you need. Enjoy what you want. Keep challenging your limits.
essential thing: chocolate truffles
my name is xandra burns and i am a chocoholic.
i don’t know if chocolate truffles would be listed as an “essential thing” for any other minimalist, but hear me out:
truffles are a prime example of quality over quantity.
minimalism is about eliminating excess – what you can live without, what you don’t truly love – and i truly love chocolate. however, i don’t love all chocolate. i think i can say that i like almost all kinds of chocolate. i’m satisfied with the cheap sainsbury’s bars. but i would much prefer a champagne truffle, a rich slice of chocolate cheesecake from caffe nero, a triple chocolate bens cookie hot out of the oven.
so no more sainsbury’s. no more vending machine chocolate. no more packaged chocolate cookies. if i’m going to eat chocolate, i’m going to eat it luxuriously, with style.
an expensive habit? a bit, but ultimately, i eat less chocolate and i eat better chocolate. it evens out when i factor in health and happiness.
since my truffles are so exquisite, so cherished, i only eat them on occasion, and when i have earned them. i have made it a habit to eat a truffle only when i have accomplished a daunting task or worked solidly for a considerable amount of time.
i keep a jar of truffles on my desk as an incentive. when i limit the kinds of chocolate i eat and limit the amount i consume, it becomes more of a treat, which, after all, is the point of truffle-eating in the first place.
a little minimalist 