Why and how i began my journey into minimalism

The first thing I did was buy myself a plant... just kidding, this came later.

The why.

To make lifestyle changes there is sometimes a trigger, for me it was the shock of coming across my ebay seller account total for the last 15 years on ebay and this amount being more than I have. How is this possible i asked myself. This hit me hard because I am currently saving for a deposit for my first home... there was the money right there, only it wasn't.

So where was it? I looked around me and the answer was right there in front of me, literally, for everything i sold I replaced with another.... or two. There and then i decided i needed to make some changes, i remembered the minimalism documentary i had watched recently and these words came back to me.

Does this add value to my life?

I started asking myself this question of my possessions... did that bluray that i enjoyed but will never watch again add value to my life? Does the graphic novel gathering dust that i don't think i'll read, ever? How about the old Mac computer that hasn't been switched on in 7 months? I started to resent all these items, what were they doing here, wasting money and space? 

If you only ever take away one thing from minimalism, make it this question.

The how.

Some people may think of minimalism as getting rid of all your possessions and never buying anything unless absolutely essential, for me this couldn't be further from the truth. My friend even joked that my minimalism blog should just be a blank page.

My biggest passion is cinema so I have bought many DVD's and Blurays over time, how to apply minimalism to hobbies? In particular collections? Ask the question 'does this add value to my life?' - I applied this question to every item in my collection and reduced my collection down to just a few of my absolute favourites, I have a beautiful Mondo edition of one of my favourite ever films, Possession, you couldn't pry this from my cold dead hands. This clearly passes the 'does it add value to my life?' test.  I think you will surprise yourself at the answer for much of your material possessions.

Little by little I am clawing back money and space, I now have room for the aforementioned plant, every minimalist needs a plant.

Aloe Vera - part of NASA's top 10 plants list

A quick tip if you do use ebay or want to, put your items on Thursday night at 8pm and run it for 10 days. This gives two weekends of exposure and finishes on a Sunday evening when people are most likely to be around to finish bidding on your items.

Things that are less valuable either went in the bin or charity shop, in particular clothes.

I feel like i should mention Lia's Loft video blog here as watching her video's helped me on this journey and provided inspiration to create my own blog.

What to expect, and why minimalism?

Just a quick post about what kind of content to expect here in the future. This is a personal blog and i've struggled for a long time deciding what content to write about, people say you should find a niche and focus on that but that is assuming you want to build an audience and make money, neither of which i'm really interested in.

It's only recently that i came into minimalism that I started to realise this extends to so any areas of my life, my interests that seemed so separate aren't in reality, they are all connected and thus minimalism has made me realise my interests do share a common theme.

The core focus of the blog will be to document my journey into minimalism, this will branch out into other areas and interests in my life, so i will occasionally write film reviews. I'm a huge fan of Andrei Tarkovsky's films so i will be posting about his films in the future that are most definitely linked to minimalism. For a wider range of my film reviews you can find them on lettterboxd, where i first caught the writing bug.

Other things i may touch on are music, ambient music in particular, travel, food and i will occasionally post about tennis, i'm a fan of Roger Federer and Simona Halep who i think are the most exciting players to watch in men's and women's tennis respectively.

If i'm honest, what really kick started this minimalism journey is my desire to purchase my own flat, minimalism helps me save far more than i ever would have otherwise, i have less stuff to move with and going forward, better money management when i have a mortgage to pay for, allowing me to have money still for things that really add value to my life.

Minimalism is everywhere and nowhere.

Minimalism is everywhere and nowhere, it has been at the periphery of my life yet only now at 38 am i consciously aware of it, where i can nurture it into other areas.

My minimalism journey is just beginning however after just a couple of months i can list some of the immediate benefits i have noticed.

I have more space.

I'm currently sharing a house so the more space and less clutter the better.

I have more money.

Budgeting has been a revelation which is great because i'm saving for my own flat. 

I am more positive.

The little things I used to stress about don't bother me so much any more because my mind is clearer and i can see the bigger picture.

I am more focused.

This blog wouldn't exist if not for minimalism, it helps me focus my energies more efficiently, I no longer get bogged down in the muddiness of decision making and ending up doing nothing.

I have more time.
Time for family, friends, interests as i reassess what really adds value to my life.

At the heart of it all

The discovery of ambient music at the turn of the millennium was my first brush with any form of minimalism, indeed, the first ambient track i heard was aptly titled 'At the heart of it all' by Aphex Twin.

As a big Nine Inch Nails fan during my student days I bought everything by NIN that i could get my hands on, one of those records was Further Down the Spiral, a remix album of the now classic industrial album released in 1995, The Downward Spiral. This included the aforementioned track 'At The Heart Of It All', a stripped back, atmospheric, industrial droning beast of a song... at the time, unlike anything i had ever heard. Where were the vocals? Where was the chorus? Where were the drums and guitar? This was a soundscape, not a song and i absolutely loved it, excited to hear more i grabbed everything i could that Aphex Twin had produced... next being blown away by Selected Ambient Works Vol II, which is my most listened to album of all time and one of my favourite albums of all time.

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II

As ever with exciting discoveries, they inevitably lead to the snowball effect... i've since discovered Brian Eno, Biosphere and various other ambient artists and it has become my favourite genre of music.

However like i said in my previous post, this was only ever really at the periphery of my life and never extended further than simply my enjoyment of listening to this music... it was maybe the seed that was planted, it's just taken a while to grow.

Less is more - my journey into minimalism.

This is my first ever blog post, i'm not sure how many people will come across this blog, however i'm not writing a blog for an audience, this is more of a personal space to get my thoughts down on paper so to speak, if people come across it and find some value in a post here and there then great. You won't find me preening for an audience.

I've recently came across 'minimalism', first coming across this term as some sort of 'movement' or 'lifestyle' in the Netflix documentary 'Minimalism, A Documentary about the important things'. While not the best documentary ever made, I would have preferred a documentary with less focus on the two guys making it with a broader canvas, it did it's job of introducing minimalism to people who never even knew it existed.

This has had so many positive effects on my life which has really inspired me to document my experiences, without minimalism i would never have started my own blog, something i've had at the back of my mind for years.

Minimalism has creeped into my life in other ways before now, over the past decade or so my tastes in cinema and music have become more minimalist, the action films and rock music of my youth giving way to the slow, meditative films of Tarkovsky and the ambient music of Brian Eno. In fact the title of this blog is taken from a Brian Eno track, just because i liked the look and sound of it, i guess Brian Eno is a good link to minimalism, even if the google spiders may not quite figure it out.

Lets christen my first post with a shot from one of my favourite films, Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky. This image really sums up the tone i hope to have here.