“…Less stuff = less stress. The fewer possessions you have, the less you need to worry about maintaining, repairing, insuring, protecting, and paying for them…”

I understand that minimalism isn’t just about getting rid of stuff just to be getting rid of it. That’s just reduction.

Minimalism is the focus on removing unwanted or dumb distractions from our lives and constantly considering whether stuff is adding or detracting from our lives. Stuff is not harmless, as most people lull themselves into believing.

If you watch Hoarders, you know that almost all sufferers of hoarding believe that their stuff somehow insulates them from the world and captures the essence of their lives and/or the people who’ve been in it, and that this essence will survive forever. As we all intellectually know, this is just plain crazy talk. Even if our piles of stuff live with us 56 years, it will immediately lose relevance once we are gone. Most of it will go to the trash.

Or fire, floor and disaster will remove it and us from the face of the earth.

The tough part of the journey is when you have reduced across all levels of your life – and still need to go further. Much of the resistance is inside us, while some of it resides with our family sharing our lives.