The Accidental Minimalist
Simple living has been top of mind for the past couple years. I love the concept of living a stuff-free spartan life but I also love my stuff. And when I became close with Liz, a minimalist with stuff, I became inspired. Liz is a regular around here - at times we even joked about renaming the blog Kathleen & Liz, Fabulous Friends Great Taste. You guys seem to like her too, so while guest posts aren't a thing I typically do around these parts I wanted Liz to share her philosophy on being a minimalist of sorts.
P.S. I'm only featuring images of her newest place in Durham, NC. Because I want to show you how she can even make a rental beautiful. But for more pictures please visit her Flickr.
P.P.S. I'm leaving in the parts where she makes notes to me, because I love it.
From Liz: 
“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” - William Morris
Some time in the last year or two I got the distinct reputation of being a "minimalist." Someone who could throw away her yearbooks without a second thought, and always seemed to have a bag of clothes that needed to be driven to Goodwill. Whenever Kathleen posts pictures of my home (thanks for the free fame, ladyfriend!), she always gets comments about how spartan it appears, which crack me up, because I have crap like everyone else. Stuff. And you know what? I love it. I. Love. Stuff.
It comes down to this, though: quality, over quantity. I simply only want to surround myself with stuff that I think is awesome. Also, cleaning/organizing is my knee-jerk response to any sort of anxiety or stress, so it's easy to throw a thing away when really you're actually trying to avoid conflict or figure out some Big Life Thing.
Plus, I've moved every year for the last 4 or 5 years, and nothing will make you re-evaluate what's important more brutally than having to move it from home to home. Those infamous yearbooks? Were all in a box that I had packed them into when I graduated from college. Three and a half years ago. I hadn't even looked at them, or thought about them, in years. And for a while, I struggled with getting rid of them, because I love looking at my parent's yearbooks, and how will my future children develop emotionally without seeing awkward pictures of me with braces?! But it came down to the fact that I measure value differently. Like homeboy's quote up there, which sums up my feelings on the subject far more articulately than I can, because I use words like homeboy to describe one of the forefathers of the Arts and Crafts movement.
It's a process, though. It took a few rounds before I worked up the yearbooks. It's easier to start with clothes you've owned for years but only worn once because they fit you weird. Why would you own clothes that you don't wear?! What?! Why would you want a wardrobe filled with things that make you feel anything less than awesome? (Also, please feel free to substitute in another, less juvenile adjective whenever I use the word "awesome." It's my go-to, but I promise I only keep it around because I know it to be useful and believe it to be beautiful. <-- LESSON)
You just have to keep asking yourself what makes something worth keeping, and let go of anything that doesn't make your heart sing with it's awesomeness. For me, a lot of my stuff just didn't live up to the standards I decided on. So I recycled/donated/trashed it. And didn't look back. Which is the other benefit of getting rid of crap- you realize what little value it ever held, and you start to apply the Awesome Test (yeah, that's what I call it) to other areas of your life. Priorities, friends, life goals. Or at least I did. Or at least, I hope I am. Ask my hopefully emotionally-developed children in fifty years.
They'll probably be packrats.
The quote is BEAUTIFUL. I now feel sufficiently inspired to trash more meaningless crap in my house. I did find a solution to some of the clothes I was holding onto for sentimental purposes though, It is now filling the pouf I bought and didnt want to buy stuffing for. You would be surprised at how much those things can hold.
-Angela
Wow. Her space is beautiful. I love the mid century mod couch and the jewelry holder in the bathroom. I'm truly inspired to be less of a clutter bug.
Maybe three or so months ago I moved out of my apartment and into a space that's 16x14, plus the bathroom and closet. I got rid of a lot... A lot, a lot... when I was preparing to move. All my neighbors ended up with furniture and random housewares and anything that I had had in the building's storage basement, I just left for simplicity's sake. I figured if it didn't matter enough to me that I had to have it in my apartment all the while I lived there, it didn't matter enough.
So, now, like three or so months later, I'm living in this single room and still haven't really unpacked. I shuffle around the boxes, for the most part. Lazy? Most def. Somehow backhandedly helpful? Yes. Because I'm applying the idea that if it's been in a box for three months and I haven't had to unpack it out of necessity, it's likely not something that I should own anymore.
For the most part, when I do unpack a little, I just rummage around through the box, pull out anything I feel I'd be bummed about if it caught on fire, and then just take the rest of the box to the Salvation Army.
It's going well.
The difficult part was when I came to the boxes of pictures, journals, random pieces of paper or plastic that I kept to remember obscurely important events.
I threw most of it out. I kept the photos that, again, I'd be bummed about if they caught on fire, and a couple of papers I wrote in college that I was proud of, and threw out all my other memories.
I did a trial run. I put them all in a suitcase and shoved it in the back of my closet, so I figured if I eventually decided I wanted to be able to read my angsty teen diaries, I could. But then it was more like this suitcase in my closet haunting me. So I threw it all out. Suitcase included.
This was a really long, drawn out way to tell you that I'm diggin' your posts; I've been a silent reader for a while. And your friend has way big balls for throwing out her yearbooks. I haven't done that. But now I feel like it's some sort of saucy dare staring me in the face.
I may give in.
1)Liz needs to start a blog so I can stalk her.
2)The flickr photos make me want to paint all my walls white. and buy white plates, and take food pictures. and shave my head. and and. and....
Nice post and very timely for me. Seems I am always in the process of re-evaluating, weeding out, bagging and donating. However...I also tend to accumulate as I cruise through the thrift stores. So that is the part that I truly need to work on. Love your homeboy's attitude and I need to adopt it as my own. Not a tattoo...but something I'll see frequently...hmmmmm...
I wish my rental looked this awesome!
I'm in the process of dejunking and it is HARD! The amount of crap we just hang on to is ridiculous!
With any luck, once I'm done my place will look half as good as Liz's (or yours Kathleen - which is also many kinds of awesome [a fantastic word])!
This post is saying everything I've been dreaming lately -- love it! Thank you so much for sharing!
Hi! I just found your blog through Pacing the Panic Room and I love this post! I live in a fairly small, 3-bedroom house with my husband, 4 kids, a guinea pig named Fiona, and a new puppy named Charlie. It can get crowded in here. And filled with stuff/junk/crap/debris. Thanks to the many years of tiny-apartment-living, I've become ruthless with my stuff. The Husband and I don't exchange greeting cards because they go immediately into the garbage (he's kinda ruthless, too). I keep a big plastic bin in my bedroom to fill with clothing that the kids have outgrown. When it's full, I donate it. I'm not as minimalist as I'd like (LOVE) to be, but this post has inspired me to get rid of the stacks of magazines I have in my bedroom. Cuz really....am I EVER going to re-read that Runner's World from August of 2008? Not likely.
Not at all a minimalist but I just love that white hand on the white toilet tank. Very striking!
Woah. I totally needed this article to inspire me to get rid of a lot of stuff. I have so much stuff that would not pass the awesome test, but I keep around for stupid reasons. Next weekend I am putting the awesome test in to effect! (BTW, best guest blogger entry ever!)
wow - i love this peak, i'll have to go and take a look at the rest over on flickr.
what liz says about moving often and re-evaluating what you have is so true. i just moved out of my (first) small one bedroom apartment to move back home for a few months before heading off to india...i rented a storage space that is 5x10. that's it. i quickly re-evaluated what was a keeper and what would be donated/recycled/thrown away. let's just say the local thrift store got LOTS of stuff I previously thought i needed....
I need that deer head sculpture.
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