Redefining the Dream

More than five years ago a neighbor’s tree catapulted my wife and I toward a different lifestyle. As longtime readers may recall from my post titled “Celebrating Life,” the aforementioned tree [a massive water-logged oak] landed on the roof of our dream house and consequently launched us on our journey toward a minimalist mode of living. With this defining moment came the realization that we wanted to live less tethered to one place by trading our picket fence version of the American Dream for a more mobile one.

So we methodically pared down our possessions, including our carefully curated library of more than 1,000 books. And in less than a year we were blessed to sell our renovated home for cash at the asking price even in the depressed market of Central Florida. Since that time Linda and I have lived in some very special places, not the least of which is the antebellum mansion we call home here in historic Franklin, Tennessee. Without exception, everyone we have shared our story with has said how much it resonates with them, whether or not they are willing to try it themselves.

And thanks to the good people at the Center for a New American Dream, we are able to share our story with many others. As of yesterday, we are being featured in the latest installment of the center’s Living the Dream series under the heading of “Living Large With Less.” We are very proud to be a part of the center’s Redefining the Dream program, “inspiring, engaging, and challenging Americans to re-examine their cultural values on consumption and consumerism and initiating a new national conversation around what ‘the good life’ and the ‘American dream’ mean.”

Living Large With Less

The other day I had the pleasure of giving my father-in-law a tour of our place during his quick visit to historic Franklin. Of course, he is very familiar with our minimalist journey and thus knows as well as anyone what we have jettisoned en route to arriving at our latest destination.

So it was ironic when he later commented with a smile over a cup of coffee regarding our nicely furnished, newly leased home, “So much for minimalism.” To which I replied with a smile of my own, “We like leasing spacious places furnished with antiques and artwork for less than we paid for our own place.”

Somewhat understandably, when people hear the word “minimalism” they typically think of living a lesser lifestyle in a qualitative sense, which may be one version of it, but not the one we espouse. The type of minimalism my wife and I experience is living with less in a quantitative sense, which in turn allows for a higher overall quality of life for us.

In fact, our minimalist journey has been a progressive one, with us literally moving from one level of accommodation to another, and all for the same relatively modest amount. If only to indicate what minimalism is not, I’ll divulge that the estimated property values of the four places we’ve leased thus far have ranged, in $200,000 increments, from $400,000 to $1 million.

Also, each place we’ve leased without exception has not only been furnished but has to varying degrees also included utilities. And the furnishings, including appliances, linens, towels, dishes, pots, pans and utensils, have been as nice, or even nicer, than anything we used to own. To those so disposed, I heartily recommend considering the minimalist lifestyle. For my wife and I at least, it is “living large with less.”

The Pursuit of Elegance

I realize my last post also covered a book about Steve Jobs but I just read another thought provoking one along the same lines, albeit not one exclusively about Apple, and since the movie Jobs is out I thought it timely to write about. It is titled In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing by Matthew E. May and it presented some good stuff worth sharing here.

“Apple lovers had become accustomed to Jobs’s flare for spare. They knew that minimalism, especially relating to buttons, was his obsession. The keyboard for the original Macintosh had no direction keys for the cursor. Until 2005, the Mac mouse had only one button, rather than the traditional two of most computers. Mr. Jobs had long criticized industry-standard multibutton computer mice as ‘inelegant,’” writes May.

“He had removed on/off power buttons on desktop units. He had removed buttons from elevators in multilevel Apple retail stores, along with standard retail queues and counters. Rarely if ever could he be seen wearing a shirt with buttons,” May adds. One of the striking things to me about that statement is how Jobs even applied minimalist principles to his wardrobe.

It is something I have done myself. While I often wear shirts with buttons I actually prefer ones without, such as zippered pullovers, sweatshirts and turtlenecks like Jobs loved. And whereas Jobs favored lace-up running shoes, I prefer slip-on footwear like loafers, further minimizing my dressing time, not to mention time spent going through security checkpoints.

What's In Your Wallet?

After reading Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You I was reminded how what we carry on our person speaks volumes about us. And what is more personal than our wallets? As for me, I carried a bulky Rolf organizer wallet for 20 years before switching to the much more minimalist one I carry today. My old one included several card slots as well as space for my checkbook, calendar, cash, notepad and mileage log. Needless to say I freaked out the handful of times that I misplaced, but fortunately never lost, my leather lifeline.

Once I became a minimalist I traded my walloping wallet for a simple card case handmade in New Hampshire by Osgoode Marley that I got in a cool leather goods shop when I lived on the island of Nantucket. All it contains are my driver’s license, library card, AAA card, Sams Club card, credit card, debit card, couple of cash cards and cash. It is as light as a feather and I love it. In the words of that ubiquitous, if slightly annoying, credit card commercial: What’s in your wallet?

A Moveable Feast

Whether we realize it or not we have all become conditioned by our consumerist culture to want more stuff, even though we rarely need it. And the remedy to this condition is to learn a new language, the language of less. Stuff is less likely to clutter our lives if we strive to limit its accumulation in the first place.

Asked how much consumer culture contributes to clutter, Marilyn Paul, author of It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys,” said she believed advertising’s natural outgrowth, consumption, is part of many people’s problem. “The more stuff you’ve got, the more skillful you have to be in managing it,” she said. Paul also noted that “clot” is the root of the word “clutter.”

In 1900 the average Westerner wanted 27 different things, and considered 18 of them essential to happiness. Today the average Westerner wants 500 things, and considers 100 of them essential to happiness. Greed has many faces but it speaks one language: the language of more.

The average three-bedroom house contains approximately 350,000 items. Meanwhile, the average person spends between six and seven hours a week looking for misplaced items. That translates into 312 hours a year, which amounts to 13 complete days, or almost two full weeks out of one’s life.

Two years ago today my wife and I moved out of our dream home with the proverbial white picket fence to pursue a new dream of a location-independent lifestyle and it has been even more fun than we ever dreamed. Living with less stuff has enabled us to experience life as a moveable feast and we are enjoying the menu.

Keys to Simplicity

It is funny what inspires you sometimes. I was sitting here at my favorite café minding my own business when a fellow with a giant ring of jangling keys walked by and inspiration hit me. When I heard all those keys I couldn’t help but think of my own keychain and how little noise it makes.

All my “keychain” consists of is a key fob to our push-button car and a single key to our apartment. That is it. Gone are the days when I carried multiple keys to the multiple doors of our house and the multiple vehicles we owned. One home, one vehicle and one key…I love it. And the truth is, we could probably leave our door unlocked but we don’t.

It got me thinking about how else my wife and I have streamlined our stuff. As minimalists we strive to pare our possessions down to what we consider for us at the time to be “an irreducible minimum.” That is often a moving target but it is a target nonetheless. And it has become a pastime for us to see how little we can live with.

While we presently live with a total of less than 500 things between us, there is no magic number to which we feel we must whittle our things down. It is more a matter of what fits our current situation. Since signing a one-year lease for our present place we’ve picked up a few extra things we left with our parents and that is okay.

But if the situation called for it, we’d simply shave stuff off our list by asking ourselves what we wouldn’t want to live without. There is nothing like the need to fit all your stuff in a mid-sized sedan on moving day to motivate you to live with less. Ultimately, the keys to simplicity come down to what fits your lifestyle and what you love to live with.

Living Simply With Style

A good friend once observed that he thought the lifestyle my wife and I are living could perhaps best be summarized as “living simply with style” and besides feeling flattered I also couldn’t help thinking that it is a fitting summary. Ever since selling our house in Florida a year and a half ago to travel we have been blessed to live in some very nice locales, all of which have been quite affordable also, contrary to what one might think.

As regular readers may recall, upon the sale of our house we moved from Mount Dora, Florida to Celebration, Florida for five months. From there it was off to Nantucket, Massachusetts for seven months and then here to Franklin, Tennessee, where we have a one-year lease. We lease exclusively and each place has been nicely furnished and included utilities, all for only about a grand per month. Suffice it to say that our move to “minimize to mobilize” has rewarded us with the ability to live in desirable destinations without breaking the bank.

I am reminded of a couple of thought-provoking quotes that have helped my wife and I on our journey of “living simply with style.” One is attributed to Vicki Robin, co-author with Joe Dominguez of the bestseller Your Money or Your Life, who wrote, “I buy my freedom with my frugality.” In other words, each dollar not spent on superfluous stuff can be saved toward living a location-independent lifestyle. And similarly, Henry David Thoreau said, “I make myself rich by making my wants few.”

It is easier than people think to make relatively radical lifestyle changes, if one is prepared to make the necessary sacrifice. And I don’t mean sacrifice in the sense that it hurts to do so, but I do mean that in order to “live the dream” you can’t always have it all. For example, we moved from a 1,400 square-foot house in Celebration to a 400 square-foot studio in Nantucket, but my wife and I agree that it was totally worth it to be able to live in such an awesome place. Whether or not you aspire to live the mobile lifestyle, consider changes you can make in your life to experience your dreams.

The Beauty of Grey

Okay, I confess: I like the color grey. And yes, I prefer the old English spelling of it also. Actually, I came to the realization the other day that it is my favorite color of all. I guess I was in some kind of denial about it until I had to acknowledge that my car is grey, my scooter is grey, my computer is grey, my house I sold was grey, my wardrobe is very grey and what is left of my hair is becoming ever more grey.

While I consider myself a very black-and-white kind of person when it comes to principles, I cannot help liking the color grey and its many hues, from light grey, or heather, to dark grey, or charcoal, and all that is in between. I suppose I am particularly enamored with the sleek minimalism of grey and the understated elegance that it reflects. Besides that, I am not sure what it says about me other than that I simply treasure the beauty of grey.

So suffice it to say that I love living on the island of Nantucket, which is called “The Grey Lady” partially due to its fog-laden location and partly due to the abundance of grey-colored houses here. Whereas the fog is weather-related the architecture is man-made, largely the result of the island’s Quaker settlers who believed in an egalitarian unanimity. As a matter of fact, a running joke on Nantucket is “meet me by the grey house with the white shutters.”

Another appealing aspect of Nantucket’s grey-scale landscape is the total absence of billboards or even chain establishments on island. Other than a Ralph Lauren store that apparently got grandfathered under the guidelines, there are no national brands represented here and the result is a community vibe reminiscent of kinder, gentler times and places in America. Coming from the commercialism capital of Central Florida to the offshore oasis of Nantucket has been a welcome respite, grey days and all.

Nantucket Nomads

It is hard to believe that it has already been a month since my arrival here on the island of Nantucket with my wife and our stuff via ferry. Yet as hard as that is to believe it is even harder to fathom that in the six months or so since we sold our home we have downscaled our lifestyle from living in a 1400 square foot cottage to a 400 square foot studio.

And believe it or not, we fit virtually all our 400 or so possessions inside our Volvo convertible, [which rode with us half the way on Amtrak’s Auto Train before we drove it the other half of the way here]. Besides that, all we own is our Vespa scooter, [which we shipped to Cape Cod and brought over with us on the ferry from Hyannis], and a couple smallish storage bins with stuff at my mother’s in Florida.

And how do I know we own about 400 things? Because I counted them, of course! I compiled a detailed inventory of our stuff and even broke it into categories for simple tracking. To that end, my wife and I each own about 100 articles of clothing so that is half our stuff, with the other half coming from about 100 media evenly distributed between books and music and another 100 miscellaneous items ranging from toothbrushes to computers.

So in about seven months we have transitioned from a seven-room house to moving here with about seven bags stuffed with the favorite of our possessions left after selling our house, as well as most of its furnishings through a couple of garage sales. And the truly amazing part of it all is that my wife and I embarked upon this downscaling adventure voluntarily and in total agreement about how it was to transpire. Stay tuned for more updates from these Nantucket Nomads!

Making Sweet Music

One of my very favorite quotes is from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Don’t die with the music still in you.” It speaks to me of the need to live life in such a way as to allow the creative gift that lies within each of us to find its voice. Whether it is through the actual playing of music or not, we are each gifted with creative ability meant to be shared with others and designed to enrich our own lives.

On that note, if you’ll pardon the pun, today I came across another musical quote attributed to William Henry Channing: “To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common–this is my symphony.”

To give credit where it’s due, I discovered Channing’s quote at a minimalist blog I’ve been reading lately called Miss Minimalist. And lest readers assume it is simply another “decluttering” site, while it does cover personal organization it is much more than that. It is an excellent resource for anyone desiring to live a life less encumbered with STUFF and movingly portrays minimalism as the meaningful lifestyle that it is.

Curb Your Materialism

My wife and I have never subscribed to the consumerist philosophy but lately we have been even more vigilant than usual in guarding against materialism. Aside from the obvious financial benefits of living within our means, it has also freed us from the pressures of possessions. We’ve discovered that the less we possess the less we stress.

From the start of our marriage, a scriptural principle from Matthew 6:33 has guided us: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” What it means to us is that as we place the things of God first in our lives then the things of this world stay in their proper place. In other words, we possess our things instead of them possessing us.

Throughout this year, we have intentionally gone through our house paring down our possessions in anticipation of living a more mobile lifestyle. In fact, our mantra has become, “Minimize to mobilize.” Instead of materialism we’ve embraced the tenets of minimalism. Less IS more and we are reaping the benefits of it daily. We’ve never strived to own tons of stuff, but we’ve even whittled down what we had.

As part of our move toward minimalism, I’ve followed several minimalist blogs, including one by Dave Bruno at www.guynameddave.com, which advocates what has come to be known as the 100 Thing Challenge. It simply suggests trying to downscale one’s possessions to 100 things. While I am not there yet, and may never be, it got me to thinking about how much extraneous stuff I own and has motivated me to donate hundreds of books and countless spare household items to my local library and thrift store, respectively.

Less is More Too

For several years I have practiced many of the principles of the voluntary simplicity movement, including living within my means by limiting personal debt, etc. I don’t personally believe that life is a “zero-sum” proposition, meaning that if one succeeds others must suffer, so I never totally bought into the mantra of “live simply so others may simply live,” but I do get the spirit behind the sentiment.

On the other hand, when I used to hear the term minimalism I conjured up images of spare spaces devoid of warmth or welcome. However, over the course of this past month I have come across several blogs dealing with more of a minimalist message and must admit that I find myself embracing the “less is more” philosophy very much as my own.

One of the more revolutionary exercises in my newly invigorated move toward an ever simpler lifestyle has involved me going through our house room by room and excising everything according to the words of William Morris: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Consequently, my wife and I have methodically gone through our stuff together, gotten rid of much of it, and given more that remained to a local charity. For example, our small household of two does not need four telephones so we eliminated one and we downsized our Christmas decorations to fit into one large box instead of our attic.

As we did this, I identified some helpful principles that enabled us to move through the process of paring our possessions. First, choose quality over quantity by selecting the best and scuttling the rest. Second, challenge your assumptions by imagining a different space and structuring it accordingly. Third, leave no stone unturned by thoroughly going through things regardless of their sentimental value and such. If you don’t use it regularly, consider getting rid of it or giving it a better home. After all, simpler is better.