Living With Less. A Lot Less.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-less.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

16 7 13 years ago

This is the worst kind of self-indulgent wankery. This guy's still rich. He's just clued in to the fact that piles of stuff aren't "cool" anymore.

These hipsters who "hate suburbia" are the epitome of the suburban culture they claim to despise.

noobface• 13 years ago

Totally agree.

Carbon offsets for personal travel? Come on.

mixmastamyk2• 13 years ago

Suburbia? Sounds like you feel threatened for some reason, why is that?

recursive• 13 years ago

You're the one who did the hearing.

jsnk• 13 years ago

To each his own for me. Having less didn't allow me to enjoy or experience special things that having more somehow prevented from experiencing as the author would describe. In fact, having more was way better than having less for me.

Last 5 years, I moved around to various cities Canada and US every 4 to 8 months or so going to school and working on internships. By necessity, I had to pack light, really light. No car obviously. I was a poor student. I had only one furniture, a bed, and I got that only after I started to have lady friends over. Before that, I slept in sleeping bag for months. I had very few cloths and only thing I had extra were my underwear and socks. And I guess only thing of value I carried around was my Macbook. I didn't even have a smart phone until this last month. I used cheap Huawei prepaid phone drug dealers use as their second phone. I probably had a little more stuff than an average homeless person in that I had a roof over where I slept.

It was definately an "experience" alright. I had ended the life of plentifuly that I took granted in high school, and went onto a subsistence living by the North American standard of extreme minimalism for 5 years. Sure, I learned to inspect what my true needs were and had a good discipline to spend on things I needed, not wanted. However, was that learning worth 5 years of discomfort and annoyance?

Since January this year, I finally decided to settle. I was done with school and I found a good roommate to share furnitures and kitchenwares with. I had a lot of fun decorating my room, living room and kitchen. It's been awesome since then. I felt so much more comfortable with things around.

To put it bluntly, there wasn't anything romantic about living with less stuff. I haven't experienced or felt different things that you would not feel through living with plenty of things.

mixmastamyk2• 13 years ago

The negative posts here miss the point. Having too much stuff can be a burden, just as too little can be a hardship.

In the book "your money or your life" I learned about the concept of enough... the logarithmic curve of stuff vs. happiness. TL;DR: get yourself up towards the front of the hump and stop there.

Though I've never been rich, I've gone thru the same phases the author describes. The average (American at least) works too hard and has too much to worry about. So yes, the advice to downsize is good for most. But don't take it too far. He's not advocating sleeping on a dirt floor and giving up electricity as a comment or two here seem to think.

Personally, I currently aim for the life my grandparents lived plus smartphone, better healthcare, and more vacation time.

Living With Less. A Lot Less.

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