Break one cookie into two pieces for a 3-year old, and you’ll be surprised how they react. It’s magical for them, as they see one treat transform into two. More is always more for them—their pleasure has been doubled!
Children around this age are unable to understand conservation. As kids get older, they begin to develop the capacity to understand that taller glasses of water don’t necessarily mean more volume than wider cups. And you can’t cheap out and multiply how many cookies they’re getting by breaking them up, either.
It’s an interesting study in human psychology.
As adults, we can smile at these tricks of the mind. We have learned to reason and critically evaluate much of the world around us. And we’re certainly too smart to fall for these sorts of mind games, aren’t we?
Not so fast.
Despite our experiences and understanding of the world, we still remain fallible to manipulations of perception—but this time, on grander scales.
For example, research has found that we tend to fill our plates no matter how large they are. The bigger the plate, the more the food we add to it. When plates are larger, we tend to underestimate the amount of food present. This, of course, can lead to overeating and weight gain.
When space is available we look to fill it.
This phenomenon is also obvious in our ever-expanding houses. Today’s residences are 61% larger than only 40 years ago. Despite a significant recession in 2008, median home sizes continue to steadily increase.
Many have grabbed the largest home their pre-approved loan will allow and subsequently filled them to the brim with stuff. As a result, the average household now has 300,000 items.
Never before have humans burdened themselves with so much space and so much stuff.
If we are ever going to break this growing trend, we need to get intentional. We ought to think hard about the amount of square footage we decide to own. And we ought to work hard to overcome the tendency to fill all our empty spaces with more and more physical possessions.
Here are three lessons to prevent you from continuing to amass more:
1. Re-examine your values.
If you were to say, “I want to downsize my house” or “I should declutter the garage,” those would be great goals. But they’re not values. Instead, values transcend time and objectives. Values, often times, form the basis for minimalism in our life. But more than that, they inform our specific practice of it.
What do you believe? What’s important to you? What guides your purpose in life or your philosophy of minimalism? And how do you want to be remembered? These are the powerful questions we must face and ask ourselves as minimalists. Who am I, what’s important to me, and does my life’s energy reflect that?
2. Start smaller.
When I embraced minimalism, I tirelessly decluttered our 2,200 square foot home in Vermont. Like most families in America, we had spent years filling every room, every closet, and every empty space. There were countless nooks to sift through, and it took months to pare down our belongings. But eventually, the space felt more open and more empty. We began to envision a life lived in a smaller home.
When we moved to Arizona, we chose a 1,600 square foot home. In so doing, we now save far more money, time, and energy than ever before. We took a risk and never looked back. But we didn’t start with the move first, we started much smaller—decluttering drawers and closets and rooms. Eventually, as we did, we began to discover we needed far less space than we imagined. And when we moved into a smaller home, we felt much less temptation to fill it with things we didn’t need.
3. Recognize fallibility.
Even the best of us get caught up in the drive to amass more space and more stuff. Just look out at the world and you’re apt to see flashy cars and McMansions almost everywhere. It’s human to be fallible, to make mistakes, or get caught up in this rat race of collection. Despite our values, we sometimes purchase and fill when we ought to lean on what’s most important to us.
When this happens, it is important not to punish or demean ourselves, but to return to step one: examine your values. What have you learned about yourself and how can you return to these values? Remember, you cannot change the past, but you can always learn from it.
We will always struggle to accurately judge the amount of stuff we carry throughout our lifespan. Whether it’s a broken cookie or an ever-expanding home full of stuff, our perspectives can be manipulated by the world around us. Society influences us and space affects us.
However, by revisiting our values, starting with small steps, recognizing fallibility, and learning from our past mistakes, we can overcome and counteract many of these tendencies. We should know better by now anyway.
Carol says
I would love to hear how folks deal with sentimentality. I have inherited a quantity of furniture from parents and grandparents. So has my husband. We’ve both been sick and are therefore slow at sorting and giving away. But, we are working on it slowly. As an example we have 4 rockers that we want. One rocker was my great grandmother’s. My grandmother rocked and read to me in that one and it fits my back perfectly-very comfortable.
Another rocker is interesting to look at, probably built by my great grandfather, belonged to my grandmother and then my mother. Not so comfortable, but awesome family history.
A third rocker is only about 25 yrs old and was my husband’s before we married. It fits his back perfectly. He wants it.
The fourth rocker is plain unfinished wood, boring design and neutral on comfort. It would be fine it painted and put on the patio.
It’s easy for me to say keep the comfy rocker for me and the comfy rocker for hubby and prob get rid of the plain one (even though my Dad bought it for me decades ago). No brainer. However, the one my great grandfather built and passed down through my family…I feel like a traitor getting rid of it!
Anyone care to mention how they deal with this type of sentimental situation? We don’t have other family members that want our items.
Gina says
Keep all the rockers. Find other stuff to let go of instead.
ProGMO says
Pick one and donate the rest. You won’t miss them. Take pictures of them if you think you’ll “regret” giving them away. It’s easier to look at a picture than it is to clean and upkeep multiple chairs.
Mao says
It really comes down to re-evaluating your values and what’s more important to you.
As a millennial, it’s interesting to see that things really hasn’t changed that much. Many of my friends are continuously amassing stuff or moving into bigger houses. Lifestyle inflation continues to be an issue without people realizing it. Maybe they are happier that way, but it certainly is not for me.
I believe getting down to the basics, and ask yourself, what does it matter more to you? How do we make room for more intangible things that we care about more.
ProGMO says
Neoliberal capitalism has hit millennials particularly hard. Maybe you don’t know any poor people, because they’re out there and they’re not buying homes with huge square footage.
Hannah | The Simple Things says
Our journey to minimalism began 18 months ago, and the sheer amount of things we discovered we didn’t really ‘need’ was astonishing. I think minimalism helped me discover our values and find out more about myself in the process. Those values, in turn, have helped our journey into minimalism. I think you are so right about starting small and keeping those values in mind, thanks for the reminder :)
Gladys Starkey says
We have rule in the house. If we buy new toys or new clothes, there should be old toys and old clothes to be donated. Yes, space brings sanity that makes my life organized and peaceful.
littleblackdomicile says
After 35+ years in our successful design firm, we have indeed see homes grow to footages more than most homeowners use. We often ask our clients what rooms they depend on each day. Kitchen, baths and bedroom is all many use. We encourage our clients to make these areas work to their best first before adding more things to simply fill space. Our younger clients are so refreshing in their goals to live with less, yet better quality items and not following the norms of their parents.-Laurel
Lindsey Tee says
Thank you for providing this community of fellow minimalists!!!
It’s staggering how we can LOSE this outlook by participating in communities whose values are those of needing material possessions.
I was devoutly minimalist, then worked for 3 years in a financial services job I felt lucky to have landed! It slowly broke me into “needing” to buy a brand new car, a bigger home, and never being satisfied with any of it because other people had more or better.
Thousands of dollars later (earned and spent) I realized it wasn’t worth the income for me to keep that work environment, because it made me emotionally fragile, anxious, jealous and unhappy.
I’m living on savings for the summer, enjoying frugality, adventure and uncluttered space and time.
Things aren’t worth it if they don’t serve joyful outcomes.
Love.
kristina says
We are five people in a 1000 square feet apartment. this is generally considered ‘spacious’ around here (and we are certainly not surrounded by minimalists). 1600 square feet for a family of four would be overwhelming to most. I begin to wonder whether a common European household would be thought of as ‘minimalist’ over in the States. ;-)
Anya says
We moved into an older, larger, less-expensive house when we were expecting our fourth (and last) child, and oddly enough, I could sum it up as “Bigger house, less stuff.” We wanted space for the kids to play and hang out, not space for more things– the bathrooms are small, the bedrooms are smallish, but the family room is relatively huge, so there is floor space– room for everyone to have a seat on the sofa, room for people to sprawl out with books and games.
That said, I think the “less stuff” bit is mostly me– if you give my husband storage space, he will fill it– so my answer to that has been to limit the storage furniture, and we honestly have less than in our smaller house, which has made all the difference. We got rid of a lot of things when we moved, so I gave away the storage furniture that used to hold them, and that kind of puts a limit on what we can own. I think it’s possible to live smaller in a bigger space, but it has required some intentionality. I should add– we live in SoCal, so installing solar (and a whole-house fan) was our answer to the obvious issue of more square footage causing more energy usage.
Cheryl @ Uncluttered Simplicity says
When our family of 5 lived in a 2,500 sq. ft. home, we foolishly thought we needed to fill every inch with furniture and decor.
Then we moved into a 1,100 sq. ft. home and quickly realized we had too much stuff.
Next year, 4 of us + our 2 dogs plan to relocate to Florida and live in a 26-30 ft. 5th wheel.
It’s funny how a person’s mindset can change with a little perspective :)
Cynthia says
Ireland, Dublin. 36sq meters or 386 sqft. Me, husband and two kids. Sucesfull hosting people on Couchsurfing.com. Yeap! It is all about having fewer but the best quaility items. Sold over 650 items and twice as many given away on Irish adverts.ie (like Craigslist) or to charity shops.
House gets even rented on airbnb when we travel. We pack personal items to 4 trunks. The rest stays for guests. Minimalism means freedom.