Simple Living & Me, or Minimalism is About Breaking Molds

by Frank Martin

If you’ve heard of minimalism and simple living before, you’ve probably got a lot of misconceptions about me, so before we go any further, lets take care of a couple things:
Counting Stuff: A lot of well known proponents of minimalism and simple living do this. Its sort of a point of contention. Dave Bruno created the idea when he came up with the 100 Thing Challenge and it sort of grew like a weed from there. Bruno took it on as a way to acknowledge that he was a hypocrite, and remedy the situation. I don’t do this. I think it gets in the way of the whole purpose of the endeavor, which is to clear away the clutter to focus on living.

Location Independence: I live in a basement apartment, and have no interest in location independence, vagabonding, whatever you want to call it. More power to you if you do, its just not for me. Don’t get me wrong, I have a list of places I’d like to visit including India, England, and Ireland. I also have no problem traveling to go to conventions which I do once or twice a year. The idea of not having a spot on this earth I can call My Home just sort of bugs me. My little Hobbit Hole is a warm, welcoming spot and I’m not particularly interested in giving it up.

No Car: I don’t have a car or a license,and this has less to do with simple living than the fact I have shitty eyesight, and the reaction speed of an Ent. I tend to walk places and only take public transit or get a ride from someone when there’s inclement weather, I’m going farther than I can comfortably walk, which, according to my friends is inhumanly far, or I’m grocery shopping.

Books: You can pry paper books from my cold, dead, zombie hands. I’m contemplating getting an e-reader but, being a bibliophile, I like the look, feel, smell of dead trees too much to get rid of all of them, even if everything I want to read is available cheaper on Kindle. That said, I’ve slowed down on buying recently and started using the library more. I’m blessed to have a branch walking distance from my apartment. Its little more than a hole in the wall, but living in Seattle I have access to an excellent ILL system and I’ve found stuff I didn’t think the library could possibly have.

Blogging: This blog is only partially maybe even tangentially about minimalism/simple living. There are people that do it better, and have been doing it longer. See Josh Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus @ the Minimalists Leo Babauta’s mnmlist, and Tammy Strobel over at rowdykittens for my favorites. Mostly this is a place for me to hone my craft, share stuff I find interesting, and make a feeble attempt to add value to this little blue marble we call Home.