I say, “To hell with it!”

 

I call this cozy and inviting.

To hell with minimalism, I'm saying. You can have it. Just be sure it's what you want.

 

Books and websites selling “the new minimalism,” often simply called “decluttering” and “simplifying,” like to tell us we can’t buy happiness. Let’s think about that. Okay. You can’t buy happiness, neither can I, but — think about this with me, please — I believe it's possible to throw happiness away and regret it later.

These things speak to me daily.

Follow the link here and look at the top image on this internet site. If that looks like a cozy, restful, snug and happy refuge from the world to you, read no further in my post today. On the other hand, if you are an inveterate hoarder — that’s another whole ball of wax — then you should go back to that link and follow the steps to clean up your act, because no one wants to have friends or family members living in absolute squalor. Hoarding is a sickness. Heal thyself!

 

Coming back from my digression, though, don’t we all know that hoarding vs. minimalism is a false dilemma? Collecting is not hoarding. And while most of us, I’m guessing, are not serious, committed collectors, with homes that could be mistaken for museums, neither are our homes junkyards, simply because we prefer more visual stimulation and activity than minimalism offers. 

Colorful tins, that's all.

Found objects

Little things

I bought him the box; he bought me the cow.

As for me, I look at bare, minimalist-“decorated” rooms and wonder if lives are being lived there at all. As I have written before on this blog, the Artist and I together were never minimalists. Our life together was rich, although that life, as well as the one I have now, could well be called a simple life. “Too many books”? To me, that sounds like “too much art,” i.e., an oxymoron of the first order. 

Yes to books!

Yes to art!

When my sisters and I had to clear out our mother’s house, we did think she had “too many clothes,” it's true, but none of us were sorry she had kept boxes of photographs, letters, and other personal mementoes, some of which we had never seen before. I wrote about that and about how much it meant to see a scrapbook my mother had started back when she and our father had their first date. 

 

I have saved old letters myself, and along with several albums of photographs I also have piles of loose photos, as did the Artist – and I am keeping all of his, along with my own. He loved his memories, and I love mine, and we shared many wonderful years. Why would I “declutter” my life by throwing out reminders of happiness when I can, through those reminders, re-live more youthful times, our years together, as well as years before we met? 

A little messy but full of life!

Paintings, prints, and photographs on the wall; books on the shelves; a beautiful, “useless” vase; perfectly shaped bowls; little collections of tins and boxes; a row of cowboy boots here and hats hung there; even the ubiquitous scattering of stones on a windowsill that all northern Michigan people seem to have (is that “in our DNA,” as people are so fond of saying nowadays?) – my surroundings are brimming with associations that tell me in a thousand ways of the richness of my life. 

Mine (need polishing)

His --

“Declutter”? You first! What happiness is left to me, I will not be so foolish as to throw away, and I can imagine people today falling for the minimalism fad and wondering on some tomorrow years from now whatever possessed them. “I’d give anything if only I still had my mother’s high school ring ... my father's letters ... that sketchbook from our trip to Paris!” 

Obligatory photo of Sunny Juliet!