Dreamer's World March 21 2017 - Daily Prompt "Minimal"

The Daily Prompt is “Minimal”. How much do we really need in our lives? Is there a point at which we accumulate so much that we finally will scream “ENOUGH”? I begin to doubt this because we are living in a materialistic world and are constantly being bombarded with messages describing what total and complete failures we must be because we don’t have the latest and greatest of this or that.

I know of people my age who have pursued the “American Dream” as much as they possible can. Now in their early 50s, many of them have houses that they are still paying for and so much shit that their garages are overflowing and they cannot park their cars in them. I asked about the situation and was always told that they kept what they needed. I find this extremely hard to believe, and it flies in the face of what “Minimal” is all about.

We are drowning in stuff we don’t need. I always enjoy watching the TV show “Tiny House Nation” because this is always the toughest part of the show for the people who are willing to downsize their lives. They quickly come to the realization that they simply cannot account for everything that they have in order to justify keeping it. This is a good exercise that we can all go through from time to time. Because I have never bought a house, I always go through a purge of items whenever we move from one apartment to another. Items that haven’t been used or unboxed from previous moves are always the first things to go. I find that the 6-month rule is a good one to follow:

If you haven’t used something for 6 months, what is the justification for keeping it any longer?

For this reason “Minimal” is a dirty word for too many people. The association of material possessions with success is a hard one to break, but the freedom that comes after the effort is truly amazing.