Confusing Minimalism With Incompetence
It has been deemed a “red flag” when a man lives in a minimal apartment and many women have memeified their effect on their man’s life—and living space—post-relationship. Sure, a bachelor doesn’t need 10 different kinds of towels, decorative pillows, or a Monstera plant drying out in the corner—nobody does. However, a “woman’s touch” can bring a homey feel to a house. By letting a girlfriend incorporate seemingly superfluous decor or storage into a space, a single guy may realize the value of organized ownership.
For some men, a live-in girlfriend marks their transition from Peter Panning their way through life and becoming a true adult. Because there is a point at which minimalism becomes squalor, so the key to a stress-free, adult-worthy home is finding that balance within your space. While it can be a green flag that your boyfriend is living minimally, condensing his hobbies, interests, and goals into a few necessities, it’s important for everyone to embrace at least a few homey touches to your apartment, like a bedframe! Lest we tip the scales to the opposite extreme.
Via u/kathasty
Subconscious Hoarding
Don’t get me wrong, I have decor in my house, photos on my walls, and side tables in my living room. While I love the aesthetic of an empty wall or a clean space, I also like to look at the faces of my loved ones and beautiful snapshots of places I’ve traveled, while admiring the memories and trinkets I know are just gathering dust. Forever conflicted between nostalgia and function, I teeter between a tight-fisted approach to my belongings and my burning desire for minimalism. If something serves no function, I have half a mind to throw it out—but it’s harder to declutter than it seems.
Excess and abundance have long been associated with affluence in our society and this maximalism is so deeply entrenched in the human psyche that it’s hard to break the habit of collecting treasures for our trove. Humans are still running on Caveman 1.0 software in our brains. Because of this, survivalist instincts are tough to override and, oftentimes, primal urges take over rationale. Despite knowing that an object in your house is fundamentally useless, it’s hard to let it go because of natural hoarding tendencies. In the wild, resources are scarce, making each possession all the more valuable and despite living amongst our first-world problems, that hardwiring tickles the caveman cortex. According to Dr. Nigel Barber with Psychology Today, “people who store too much stuff are motivated by self-preservation anxieties.” He claims that both clinical and non-clinical hoarders become “sentimentally attached to objects, they have difficulty discarding any of them. As a result, they accumulate, cluttering up their living spaces, offices, and other places of work with deleterious consequences for their happiness and health.”
Via u/LuckieBunni
While there are differing levels of hoarding severity, in some ways, all of us have fundamentally experienced the tendencies of a hoarder. The National Library of Medicine, describes resource hoarding as the “persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. This difficulty is due to a perceived need to save the items and to the distress associated with discarding them.” Been there, done that.
Feeling the need to hold onto your resources with desperate intensity is only human, but the consumerist and materialist mindset has compounded this disposition. The temptation to stockpile is everpresent, tricking us into wanting more when we really need far less mess in our lives.
Clearing the Air
As our materialistic society continues to glob onto random piles of stuff, we assign a greater intrinsic value to topically useless possessions, stockpiling whatever goods and resources we can get our hands on.
Via u/carlageulfi
Like Scrooge McDuck, the preposterously rich cartoon uncle of Donald Duck, many materialists hoard their vast wealth of semi-useful belongings, diving headlong into a perilously packed basement, a bursting toolshed, and an attic full of stuff that never gets used. But according to Cathering Clark, a journalist with the wellness magazine Greatist, “building up too much clutter and being unable to part with it can seriously mess with your life. Stashing away everything we’ve ever bought, touched, or blown our nose into can contribute to stress, and stressful life events can also be the cause of hoarding behavior.”
In short, this compounding cycle of hoarding and dumping, leads to stress that takes away from a person’s overall happiness. So as I stare at my junk drawer—filled with unused bottle openers, random screws I thought I might need someday, and mismatched cutlery—I wonder how my life would be instantly improved if I simply dumped it out into the trash. Dreaming of an apartment with scant supplies of bare necessities, the “typical male apartment” comes to mind. And as I turn green with envy, the bachelor pad lifestyle is no longer a red flag, but a beacon of minimalism in an increasingly cluttered world.
Spring Cleaning
The bachelor pad vibe is fueled by function. Lacking the sentimental attachment to home decor or aesthetic facades, the typical male apartment inadvertently becomes minimalistic. Contrary to the consumerism around every corner, baiting us to buy more, this homely aesthetic unshackles the inhabitant from the accumulation of random riffraff. Because a decluttered space reflects a decluttered mind, focusing on functionality and simplicity wards away the stress of the mess.
As a society, our obsession with stuff brings chaos into the home, and when it comes to the sanctity of our personal Hobbit-holes, less is more. While it may seem oversimplified, we just need to learn the difference between the things we want, the things we need, and the things we just have lying around for the sake of sparing the trashcan. Marie Kondo, from the Netflix show Tidying Up, is a renowned expert of decluttering. She simplifies the decision-making process by asking her spring cleaning clients about the vibe their excessive belongings bring to the home. “Does this spark joy?,” she asks. If the answer is no, then it’s simple, it’s time to toss it out.
So as the winter snow melts and the spring cleaning mindset brings a fresh new perspective on your home’s contents, perhaps your inner minimalist can finally flourish. Keeping in mind functional value versus sentimental assignment, we tap into our inner bachelor and fight our hoarding caveman tendencies—only then can we tidy up the loose ends of life.
Via u/ginge_herr