Do you know what minimalism is?
If the answer to that question is no, then please refer to my definition of minimalism and come back here. I promise this will make a lot more sense if you do.
I have begun my minimalism adventure a few months ago. My budget needs work, I am constantly losing things, and my life in almost all aspects have become cluttered. It’s been a wild mess and instead of just resigning and saying ‘that’s the way it is’, I have decided to step up and do something about it.
While I am not going to simply throw away everything that I own in the name of minimalism, I am going to look at every item I own in my bedroom and then my home office to determine what brings me joy and value in my life and what doesn’t. This process I am going to label as “The Things I Carry” series and each post will be either about a single item or a group of items that I will catalogue and critique.
If the name of this series rings a familiar bell, that’s because it was partly inspired by the novel I read during high school titled, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. It’s been a long long while since I’ve read it, but it made enough of an impact on me that I remembered it so many years later while brainstorming for a name for this series.
What Will You Expect from The Things I Carry
We will start off with items in my bedroom.
We’ll go over products such as self-care items, beauty products, jewelry, stuffed animals, video games, and more. The majority of the items I will be discussing will be ones that I already made the decision to keep since the older items I tossed are no longer in my room and I cannot remember what they are. Later entries will have a keep or toss verdict if that’s what people care about, otherwise I’ll simply only review items that survived ‘the purge’.
There also will be a link to the item, if possible, to purchase. While some of them may be affiliate links, others will simply be links for the sake of making your life easier if you want a similar or same product. Regardless, I want to make your life easier so I’ll do the searching for you.
Lastly, you are going to learn more about me by reading these entries. If you want to learn about someone, you simply need to look at what they carry. People who own pets have plenty of ‘pet-care related items’ in their own, musicians have all kinds of nicknacks that further define who they are, it’s just the way it is. Even by describing what categories of stuff I have lying around in my room, I think you have an idea of who am I and what I’m about.
How I Will Rate Items from The Things I Carry
I will rate each of the products with the following criteria:
Does this item bring value into my life?
Does this item bring me joy?
Optional: Is there another item in my life that can replace this one?
Optional: Does someone else in my life need it?
What Will You Benefit from The Things I Carry
The short answer is, I don’t know.
The long answer is, you’ll realize that you too have too many stuff in your life and perhaps you too need to evaluate what things you carry in your life. You will discover that if you cannot explain why you have each individual object in your home, then perhaps it doesn’t bring you value. I hope that by doing this process, not only will I be a step closer towards my Minimalist goals, but you too will benefit from the experience too.
If you want to benefit even more, then I believe that commenting or tweeting at me would be great. This way we can learn together by sharing our experiences and insights.