Living Minimally | Sierra Club.
‘Tis the season for sales. We’ve got Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday — days designated for buying more stuff. Yet most of us have spent the better part of a Sunday afternoon decluttering our homes and unloading bags full of unwanted goods at our local thrift store. Do we really need to buy all of those things in the first place? Living minimally makes way for more time, money, and opportunity in our lives.
“We all have limited time, energy, and money. The world by itself has limited life, and if we are using those resources for manufacturing things that don’t enhance our lives then it is a waste of our resources,” said minimalist Joshua Becker, author of Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life, and BecomingMinimalist.com.
Living minimally is about detaching ourselves from material things and connecting ourselves instead to people and the invaluable experiences life can provide –putting our money instead toward our futures and/or to those in need.
The minimalist lifestyle becomes appealing when it becomes necessary. In June 2001, Time magazine writer Janice Castro termed the movement “the humble makings of a revolution,” in which Americans were slowly trading in consumerism for contentment and finding joy in everyday moments rather than attaching themselves to status symbols. This movement was mostly tied to the economy, and it seems that today it is tied to the environment.
