(originally posted on 17/6/20)

Introduction

Everyone who identifies as a minimalist usually has a story, no matter how dull or boring. Each one of these people has at least one passionate reason for why they became a minimalist or why they practice intentional living.

This is somewhat of a follow-up essay from my last ones, mentioning things I had forgot to mention in post essays. While past ones were on how I became a minimalist, this one is a collection on reasons why, over the years, I became a minimalist.

It may be cliché and a no-brained, but I really hate clutter. And it really, really, REALLY stresses me out, and always has done, for as long as I can remember. Actually, one of the first times I realised how much I hated any sort of mess or clutter was when I was at a sleepover at my best friends house, back when I was a kid.

I was staying with my best friend, at her dads house, as I usually did every Friday night. Her dad lived alone for most of the week- but in a house so big, it would suggest that a family of six or seven lives there. He had recently divorced my best friend’s mother and was now incredibly lonely, and had too much spare time and money to know how to spend either of them wisely. He was the polar opposite of my best friend’s mother.

My best friend’s mother’s house was far from ‘minimalistic’ in the stereotypical sense of the word. Her home was clutter-filled but everything was tidy, clean and beautiful. Lots of intricately designed books filled the shelves, along with glistening vases, gorgeous ornaments, and carefully placed nick-nacks and trinkets. She was a very calm and collected person. Although her home was full of stuff, it was also full of love. Her small cottage was warm and inviting, even at the worst of times.

She identified as a Buddhist, and she was the person who first got me into meditation, back when I was small- which was something my best friend had no interest for. Though, meditation is a practice I still keep close to me today. My best friend wasn’t really into anything that her mother was into and as a result, she saw more meaning in physical stuff more than anything else, a lot like her father.

My best friend’s father was never really passionate about, well, anything… or anyone. He always looked so solemn and empty wherever I saw him. He had weird sleeping habits- being awake all night and then would sleep until early afternoon the following day, with my best friend very rapidly following in his footsteps. From about aged five, it would be a Friday routine where my friend’s half-asleep-father would pick us up from school ready for our sleepover. Which was just before my tidying… tendencies began.

Back then, I never really had anything exciting to do, other than play Animal Crossing: Wild World on my lime-green Nintendo DS Lite. Weird colour choice, I know. The second half of my sleepover at my friend’s house was downright boring. Her father knowing I was an early bird, gave my two rules I must follow on Saturday mornings, when I was the only one awake:

• Don’t wake my friend unless I was dying

• Don’t go into the kitchen

My friend never woke up until at least one in the afternoon and I, however, was up and dressed by about half seven in the morning- yes, even on a Saturday. I used to sleep on a twin-sized mattress in the floor at the foot of my friend’s queen-sized bed, with the mattress being stored under the queen-sized bed for the rest of the week.

As I was laying awake, on my twin sized mattress one early morning in late 2007, staring at the ceiling, as per usual, I thought to myself “Hmm, I might as well attempt to put the mattress back under my friend’s bed…” so that’s what I proceeded to do. Silently, I made the bed and slid it under the bed, with somewhat of a huff and a puff and a struggle, with my friend still snoring away.

Then, as I sat cross-legged in the empty space where the mattress once laid, the many glossy celebrity magazines that my friend loved to collect caught my eye. “I could put all of those into a pile.” I pondered to myself, still out of breath from dealing with the mattress moments before. I collected all of the magazines and put them into a semi-neat pile, which was almost up to my waist, and I pushed them to sit near my friends bookcase- with another huff and a puff.

I found the plastic shopping bag that my friend and I had used to discard our cookie wrappers from our movie night, the night before, and I proceeded to tiptoe around the entire room, picking all other bits of trash up (and believe me, there was a lot). I found broken pencils, used wipes- you name it, I found it.

I found it disgusting, even back then. It was right in that second, a metaphorical switch went off in my brain. Then, being around really any mess or clutter repulsed me- and later on in my life, would give me intense anxiety. The week, months and years went by and every Saturday morning I would clean. It started with only my best friend’s bedroom, but then, the tidying tendencies rubbed of on all other aspects of my life, but I’ll go more into that later.

I still remember my seventh birthday as if it were yesterday. Like most children, I had asked for a considerably long list of items for gifts, but unlike most children, I had asked for:

• A ‘cleaning spray’

• A rainbow coloured cloth (trust me, I don’t know either)

• An orange slide for the garden

• An ‘old-fashioned bell, with the clapper and rope’.

For those who aren’t knowledgeable on the components of a bell, the clapper is the little ball inside of the bell that bashed against the sides, issuing the rope to control it… Its safe to say, I was a strange kid.

I wanted a slide so it wouldn’t “clutter up my bedroom” and the bell was for my outdoor playhouse, as was the cleaning spray, as “my mother always forgot to clean it, so I wanted to do it instead” as I would tell people. As my parents did for all my birthdays, they threw me a party and invited everyone from my school class over to my house. I hated it so much.

All my classmates arrived, and as they were having fun on the bouncy-castle or having a water fight, I was… with my new cleaning spray and duster, of course. My parents obviously gave me the whole “don’t spray it near your face” talk. Though, by halfway through my party, all my ‘friends’ were angry with me, as I wasn’t letting them on my slide. My ‘friends’ were also ringing my new bell too loud, so when I wasn’t looking, my dad took the clapper out of it until the party was over. No one was impressed that I was storming around the garden blaming everyone for “stealing my clapper”.

Long story short, my birthday resulted into me being in a bad mood with everyone, and my parents letting my friends on the slide after I had left it unguarded for longer than thirty seconds after cleaning it. I spent the remainder of the day alone in my bedroom, surrounded by the piles of gifts that my friends and distant relatives had got for me. But, they weren’t bringing me any joy.

Since that day forward, I would go to my Friday night sleepover- with my new cleaning supplies in hand. As my best friends her father didn’t own any. As the years progressed, as did my cleaning tendencies. When I was seven and a half, I taught myself how to change bed sheets and pillowcases. When I was eight, I put my best friends ever growing mountain of glossy magazines into chronological order. When I was eight and a half my best friends father let me vacuum the entire house- excluding the kitchen of course. I also got to polish the house too, with my new colourful dusting cloth.

I was never allowed to clean that way back home. My OCD-diagnosed father had to clean things in a specific way, so the freedom for me to clean things this much made me happy. Eventually, with the help of my nine-year-old self, with my best friend holding the trash bags open for my convenience, her father cleaning his kitchen. No wonder I was never allowed in there before, so many dead BUGS!

When I was ten, I stayed overnight at my uncles house, with my cousin, for the first time. They lived in Wales and I was always too homesick in the past to stay there, as it was too far from home. But, I knew in my heart, as long as I had something to clean, I would be okay. And trust me, I know how that must sound, but it was about taking my mind off upsetting thoughts more than anything else.

I loved the clean something and then see the end result. It calmed my anxiety- it always has and I’m guessing it always will. From that day on, my Saturday and Sunday nights were spent in the wonderful country of Wales, every weekend, until a few years into my teens.

My uncles home was always extremely clean, and wasn’t cluttered at all. But despite that, I always found something to clean. Some of my favourite things to do were: getting cat fur off the beds with a lint-roller, cleaning the fish tank, organising the toys under my cousins bed and cleaning the rocks in the back garden, yes that may sound strange, but it was so satisfying.

Thinking about it now, my uncle’s house was VERY uncluttered, even from my point of view. I remember the cupboards being sparse- but not in a way that would suggest that they were poor. More in a… show-home kind of way. There was never really any dust, and the house always smelt… new. It was very strange.

By now, years had passed, and I had realised how much cleaning calmed my anxiety I had dealt with for as long as I can remember. As soon as my mother realised the intensity of it, she had a worrying suspicion and took me to see a doctor, who diagnosed me with Asperger’s Syndrome (High Functioning Autism) after many months of testing, at the age of twelve or thirteen. But despite my declining mental health, I remained an optimistic and happy child.

In one of the earlier podcasts from The Minimalist’s, they spoke about how we have the opportunity to make over one hundred decisions in one single day. But only about twenty of those will be classed as good, logical decisions. This is because after a while of making decisions, out brain exhausts itself. So The Minimalist’s pretty much say that we should stop wasting our twenty good decisions each day on useless things like what socks we want to wear, and then we can use our non-tired brains on more productive things.

I really like this mindset as it makes you consciously think about what’s important to you and what your priorities truly are. If anyone believes in the butterfly effect, you’ll know that each one of your choices has a consequence. It’ll be an outcome, whether good or bad, and only you can be in charge of your own destiny.

Making logical decisions is one of the reasons why I identify as a minimalist and why I practice intentional living. I’ve always been the youngest sibling in my family, with four older siblings. My sister is the closet to my age, but there was still a decade age difference. Back then, she wasn’t a good influence for me. She misused alcohol by the time she was fifteen. At age sixteen she was kicked out of the family home, which I have briefly touched on, in my past essays.

I was only six at the time, and I was too young to know the devastation my sister was causing, or what was actually going on. I was probably too preoccupied with cleaning something anyway. I just knew how sad my sister was making my parents feel. I knew I never wanted to make my parents feel like that. I never wanted to put them through anything that my sister had put them through, no matter how much they annoyed me.

I wanted to be the total opposite of my sister, and I wanted to spark joy in other people life. Although my sister was a bad influence while I was growing up, she was fantastic motivation for me whenever I wanted to give up. I know that may sound harsh, but it was so different back then. I wanted to make my family proud and I wanted to be a good influence for any children born within my family in the future.

Ironically, I shaped my sister’s first born child, Lexi, into the intelligent eleven year old she is today. Although she is almost twelve and had started to pick up some of her mother’s bad habits and toxic attitudes towards life, back in Lexi’s toddler days, I taught her a great deal. And as she finished primary school, she was top of her class in every subject and was excelling beyond her years. I’m so proud of her, and I’m also proud of myself.

I was able to do this because I practiced intentional living. I had realised from a young age that my sister, and the people in her peer group. We’re not the kind of people I wanted to be like. Her and her friends only cared about themselves back then, and even though she turned her life around and is now a wonderful person, back then she would hang out with people who would steal money to buy clothes, and they had no respect for anyone. Why would someone want to ruin lives, just so they could have a new piece of fabric to put on their body? I never understood it, and to this day, I still don’t.

I realised that what you put in to life, is what you’ll get out, and knowing my sister was now an adult, it was too late to change the past for her, but I still had a chance to make life good for Lexi. I was never tied down with silly decisions, I never cared about what I wore each day, all I wanted to do was throw on the first clothes I could find, and spend the rest of the day being my usual productive self. I was able, even as a child, to eliminate the distractions and focus on what really matters to me.

So within all of that, I spoke on my past and what lead me up to choose minimalism. Though, over time, I’ve come up with many more reasons for why I became a minimalist. These are mostly all from my perspective, and I hope it’ll be a guide to help others that may feel stuck or unmotivated that the moment. At uncertain times like this, people may feel deflated about life, and people that may have practiced minimalism in the past, may need some motivation to get back into the swing of things again.

Less Stress

My parents have always been stressed. Not too long ago, I woke up one morning to them frantically searching the house, high and low, for an insurance letter for one of their cars. They only need to reference this letter once a year, and although the have downsized and decluttered, this letter was still no doubt going to be buried under a lot of bits and pieces that my parents had accumulated over the year.

They were getting so upset and frustrated over it. They searched in every cupboard- and some drawers were so full that they were jammed shut. They spent more time moving other things out of the way rather then actually looking for the letter. The emotion was so high that my mother had removed so much clutter from the cupboards and drawers and placed it onto the table, that when stuff started falling off the table, she started crying. No one wants to see their mother cry.

It took over an entire weekend to find the letter, but eventually they found it. But, let’s be honest. We all know a person or a family like this; you wouldn’t class them as hoarders, but they just have… too much stuff that it’s becoming more or a burden than a joy to own. I, too, use to be like this, back when I was a kid. I would spend more time cleaning up my toys then I did actually playing with them. Which, in turn, made me feel unmotivated to want to play at all at times. Or asking my mother to help me reach that one toy I loved as it was buried under millions of other toys that I really had never cared for.

Watching my mother sigh as she helped me reach my favourite toy made me feel guilty to have favourites. I felt like a burden. But, I learnt over the years that it wasn’t me that was the burden, it was the mountain-high pile of clutter. I also had to teach myself how to fit so many storage boxes under my bed, which held toys that I hadn’t played with for years. But every time my mother vacuumed my room, I had to spend a long while fitting the boxes back under the bed in some kind of Tetris formation.

But, today, I am nothing like that. In fact, under my bed is empty. A few days after the whole event with the car insurance letter, my mother and I were sitting in the living room when she asked me for one of my medical documents. The last time I had needed to reference this document was when I was sixteen. Five years ago.

“sure thing!” I said. And within thirty seconds, my medical document came through the printer.

“There you go.” I exclaimed, smugly.

“That was quick!” My mother said in disbelief.

“That’s why I scanned all my documents years ago and kept only their digital form.” I explained. My mother seemed angry, probably because she knows I proven her wrong when she had argued with me in many occasions that scanning things will “always end bad.”

It took my parents three days to locate a document from one year ago with a maximal amount of stress, where as it took me only thirty seconds to locate a document from five years ago, with no stress at all. And I’m proud of myself for being able to accomplish that.

Better Organisation

I strongly believe in the quote “if you need to by stuff to store your stuff in, you probably own too much stuff”, but in saying that, I really like being organised. Even as an extreme minimalist- I can still apply my organisational skills to combat decision fatigue. I may not own much stuff, but the stuff I do own is very organised.

Being organised, even as a minimalist is very good and efficient. You’ll understand what to prioritise and it could stop people from organising pointless things. For example: why would I want to organise a pile of DVDs that I’ll never watch, why would I want to waste my time doing that, when I could just sell or donate them? Your brain will probably trick you into thinking that it’s okay to keep something that you hate if you organise it, because it looks ‘pretty’.

But honestly, I would of rather given the DVDs to a new home, and to spend my precious time doing something more associated with my lifestyle and the things that I love. I could of spent that time putting my collection of four books (ironically, all are about minimalism) in alphabetical order. Or just, doing something a lot more meaningful. I ended up donated over two hundred DVDs which I would of probably spent an entire afternoon cleaning and organising if I was to keep them.

I know plenty of people in my life who would always be the ones late to class or a social event because they had “misplaced” their keys or they forgot where they put their formal shoes, or some other excuse that would always lead me to think that they must have a very chaotic, unorganised and unstructured life, and I can understand how tiring that must be for someone. So I knew I never wanted to become a late-to-the-party kind of person. Even as an extreme minimalist, I have a lot of organisational systems that I have, or had in place.

As mentioned earlier, all my documents (excluding my passport) is only kept in a digital format and is kept in the cloud of a website called CamScanner. It is also a phone app (for both iOS and Android) but I no longer use the phone app version as I hardly ever need to reference the documents. Within the website, I have less than ten scanned papers (I’m very low-key and informal about everything in life) and those papers are titles and are automatically put in alphabetical order.

I own two pairs of shoes, and even that pushing a bit too far for me. A pair of white trainers, and a pair of black Timberland boots. But both sit in the floor of my closet, and as my bedroom is the room closest the the front door of my house, I go straight away to put my shoes back. That way, I’ve never lost my shoes and I’ve never been late too, well, anywhere.

When I was in college, I use to use online textbooks or websites rather than borrow the physical copy from the college library. And I would type all my notes in my MacBook (which I sold shortly after dropping out of college) and then I would either print my work at college (using their free printing system) or I’d email my work to my teachers directly.

Better Circle Of Friends

We have all probably had a bad friend at some point in our life. Whether it was an emotional or verbal abusive ‘friend’, or a friend who is negative and sucks all the optimism from us. Before I started living intentionally, my life was full of people that didn’t really care about me. Some would just use me for money, for someone to talk to when they were bored, or using me as someone just to go shopping with, because back then, we thought shopping should be a hobby.

When I first discovered minimalism, decluttering the physical clutter was important, but being able to remove the people from my life that didn’t always have the best intentions, those that didn’t care or people who didn’t share my values was so… freeing. As I began to rid my life of all that had been weighing me down, my eyes began to open more and more. The more mental (and physical) space I allowed to give myself, the more I could think on what I wanted out of life, as well as my relationships.

Most of the time, we only become friends with certain people based on convenience. You’d feel obliged to befriend your classmates or coworkers, for no other reason then the fact that they’re just… there. Whether these people had the same values as you or not, you would more then likely befriend them, rather then someone out of town, because it’s easier to be close to those… who are close.

I use to be like that. As I mentioned at the start of this essay, for all my childhood birthdays, my parents would only invite those from my class in school. Simply because they lived close to us, with some even being in the same small street that I lived on. But, I really didn’t like these people. I was always mature for my age, and those who I enjoyed the company of were people older than me.

When I would stay at my cousins house, in Wales, she was a year or two older than me, and she has friends a year or two older than her- and I got in so well with those people. And I can guarantee that the seventh birthday of mine which I spoke about earlier wouldn’t of ended in tears if I could of had the people there that shared my values. But that didn’t happen, because it wasn’t convenient.

The Minimalist’s always say “you can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.” And when that little switch went off in my brain, all those years ago, I told myself that the people in my life in the future aren’t going to be chosen out of convenience, but instead in the values and interest that we both share. And as a minimalist who owns very little, I promised myself that if I meet someone, who makes me happy enough (and vice-versa), I’ll travel to them, no matter how far it may be.

Though, knowing me, I’d probably befriend an alien from Mars. Heck, the girl I love the most in this world lives the other side of the planet, it’s true that you don’t need to live right next to someone to form meaningful bonds with people.

I was watching “Anne With An E” in Netflix a while back (which is based on the book “Anne of Green Gables”) and it is set in the late 1800’s. People back then would marry those who they met in school. As transport was limited to only boats and horses, and communication was done either face to face or through letter-writing. So children’s friend were those that lived next door.

But, we don’t live in the 1800’s anymore. The other day I visited my sister, where my nine-year-old nephew was playing online games with his friends on the other side of the world, and my eleven-year-old niece was FaceTiming her boyfriend, who she met on the video game Fortnite, and lives the other side of the country. The advancement of technology is a beautiful thing. It means we can befriend who actually makes us happy, instead of those close by, that could be nasty and unforgivingly mean people.

It’s Easier To Travel

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to travel the world. To be more specific, I wanted to live in a van and travel the world in it. I’ve had the idea ever since I was about four years old and I would watch The Wild Thornberries on TV. They were this little cartoon family that lived in a camper van and travelled the whole world. And then, in season two, from episodes two through to sixteen, and in season three, from episodes fifteen through to seventeen, they went to Australia. And ever since then, I was in love with Australia, and wanted to explore the world, from that very young age.

I know not everyone’s dream is to travel the world, but during my decluttering process, I have found that any kind of travel is easier as a minimalist. Back when I was a kid and would have a sleepover, I would take far too much stuff with me. This was mainly because my mother would be the one in charge to pack, as she didn’t trust me to “remember everything”.

I would if much rather of took my Dora The Explorer backpack with a change of clothes, a toothbrush and my Nintendo DS (and maybe a cleaning cloth or two). But, my mother would force me to take an adult-sized suitcase with at least three sets of clothes, toys, stuffed animals (that I hadn’t even played with in months), DVDs, extra hat if it was cold and extra sun cream if it was hot.

Most people wouldn’t really see anything wrong with that, and would just brush it off as my mother caring too much. But as I mentioned at the start of this essay, I only had one or two friends and do I would stay at their house every week, I had my own drawers there, which already housed spare clothes of mine, and hats and even some toys too.

For a large portion of my sleepover, I was too busy packing and unpacking my adult-sized suitcase rather than playing with my friend. Which would always put a damper on the entire sleepover, and when it was all completely pointless, thinking back on it now, over ten years later, still makes me somewhat angry.

Since I have become a minimalist, I’ve had many friendships. Sure, most of them usually lasted no longer than a few months, but during those months, I have usually had a sleepover at their house or gone in a weekend trip with them. Personally, in my life, I’ve promised myself to never drive a car. This is because I personally have no need to, and I don’t want to contribute more than needed to global warming. I live in England, and even though I live in a very rural area, I can still, in normal circumstances, get anywhere in the county in just a few hours on public transport.

So, due to relying mainly on trains, the fact that I now own so little that I only need to take a backpack with me wherever I go in the UK means that it’s easier to pack before I leave home, easier to travel with, it takes up less room on the train or bus. It’s easier to unpack when arriving at my destination, less stress while on my trip, and of course, more time to do what I want to do.

Healthier Mind & Body

Personally, minimalism has been the best thing that I have ever done for my mind and body. About halfway through my teenage years, I started suffering from depression, and the anxiety that I had experienced my whole life had started to get worse. I was no longer the happy and optimistic person that loved life, in fact, I became quite the opposite of that.

On many occasions, I would wake up, roll over to glance at my cluttered bedroom and already felt lethargic, unmotivated and depressed. I got myself into a never-ending cycle where the clutter was making me too sad and unmotivated I clean, and because I wasn’t cleaning or having anything in order, I became overwhelmed and my sadness was only getting worse.

One day, I again was laying in bed feeling sorry for myself, and as I have told this story many times; I was scrolling through Netflix and I found The Minimalist’s documentary and it just put all the puzzle pieces about my life together and everything seems to make sense, and ever since that day, things have been a little brighter. I know I’ll never be completely “better”, but practicing intentional living has meant that I can… live.

Back in my teen years, I was always one of those people who wanted go get fit, but I had so much burdening both my mental space and my physical space. I would always come up with an excuse to not work out or anything of that nature. Whether it was the fact that my mind was distracted by thinking of all the toxic friends that upset me, or whether it was me worrying over if I had handed a college assignment in on time.

I didn’t like having to move piles of clothes out of the way if I wanted to meditate in my bedroom. Once I had moved all of the clutter out of the way, I was always too worn out and angry to work out or meditate or to really do anything. My anxiety was always too high to go out and relax, but now, minimalism has allowed me to have an empty space and an empty mind- but, in a good way.

Being able to live with no distractions has meant that I have had plenty of time and space to go on a journey of self discovery and has helped to become who I’m meant to be, and to feel confident about it to. And now, I am able to exercise and meditate without any worries and I feel so much better in myself.

More Savings/No Debt

I’m really glad I became a minimalist when I was so young. But I know that couldn’t be the case for everyone. But I was not even classed as a legal adult when I discovered minimalism, so I didn’t even have a chance to go into any debt. For me, minimalism is all about: firstly, living with at little as possible to not burden myself or others with physical stuff to make room for happy moments. And secondly, to not waste money on things I don’t want- and to not waste time on people I don’t like. It sounds blunt, but it’s the truth.

As well as not spending money on new items, being a minimalist has that that I have been able to let go of items that no longer bring me joy. For most of those items, I’ve been able to see and put the money into savings. Before the whole situation with the world came about, I could travel anywhere that I wanted with my savings, slowly slowly ticking off each place from my bucket list.

For me, minimalism has not only taught me how to prioritise what I spend money on, but it also means that I need less room. I can live in an apartment instead of a house, as I don’t need an abundance of room as I own so little. It all fits into a backpack or two, and in turn I’ll save so much money or mortgage and rent in the future.

When I was a kid, I was brought up to want the biggest and the best of everything. The biggest and the best doll house, would one day, lead to me wanting the biggest and best real house when I was older. This meant that as a child, I was very jealous when my friend would get a toy bigger or better then mine.

This also lead to me feeling very anxious and sad. As I was told that I should always do the best and have the best and if I didn’t, then I was failing. And poor eight year old Alex really didn’t want to fail. But, as minimalism has taught me over the years, the best is what you see through your eyes, it doesn’t have to mean big and fancy. In fact, big and fancy would make me miserable.

Now, I can be happy for others, and I am never jealous or selfish. As I, over my teen years, learnt about the true value of life. Happiness or success is not in our stuff, it’s in our hearts. We also love others with our hearts. Why would i be jealous, when I have everything I need within me?

Becoming Environmentally Conscious

I’ve always been fascinated by the environment and the world around us. But I didn’t realise until I was much older, how much of a negative impact we have in the environment. As, until recently, the government, as well as 90% of the population all turned a blind eye to things such as global warming, climate change and the act of being environmentally conscious.

When I discovered minimalism, I was truly able to open my eyes on the world and I could see how it was- and still is- crying out for help. As the months and years went by in my minimalist journey, I could start living more intentionally, and could make more meaningful and conscious choices.

As I started earlier in this article, I promised myself I would never drive a car. This is because I personally don’t need to drive and it doesn’t align with my lifestyle. If I was to drive, it would be purely for ‘convenience’ and to make life easier. But sometimes there’s a price to pay when it comes to convenience.

I was young when I discovered minimalism and eco-living, so I wasn’t even old enough to of ever had to go grocery shopping alone yet. But this meant that I never had to buy one or multiple of those single-use plastic bags. When I started shopping, I would usually use my backpack. But if that was unavailable, my family has worked up quite the collection of reusable bags.

Being a minimalist also means that I have stopped buying new items where possible. Which in turn, creates less of a demand for that item to be produced, because a lot of waste goes into making almost anything. Buying secondhand is better for people’s finances and the environment, it’s a win-win.

Apart from the four books that I own (that I reference all of the time) I made it a habit to not purchase books new, but to instead borrow them from the library. This is better as it creates less of a demand for books to be printed, which saves more trees. And it also means that I can give the books back so they’re not cluttering up my house as I wonder what to do with them.