Minimalism: A Reflection

One quiet boring day, I found myself clicking on the “Minimalism” documentary. A simple,

washed-out, sepia cover surrounded by vibrant and carefully marketed TV shows. I was pulled

into a concept based upon reducing the number of items in your life to feel fuller, happier…

grounded? I became fascinated, as I imagined this feeling might provide clarity and reduce brain clutter. Minimalism and Marie Kondo’s KonMari method are both concepts and/or trends that ebb and flow throughout society. Some dismiss the concept of minimalism and attempt to group these people into a cult due to humans’ tendency to want to classify or assign groups. Yet every time I clear out my closet, clean my room or even make my bed, I feel slightly less flustered. So are these minimalists onto something about feeling happier and whole?

Minimalism

We've all been guilty of procrastinating, and this seems especially true when there’s a million tasks to complete and too many items throughout our space. A study conducted by Ferrari & Roster (2018) found individuals had decreased life satisfaction due to clutter, which also contributed to life-long procrastination problems. Interestingly, procrastination worsens with age and induces a physiological response of increased cortisol levels (STRESS) and psychological cost (Lucchesi, 2019; Tice & Baumeister, 1997). What causes this clutter? More specifically, why is it hard to declutter? Ferrari attributes it to over-attachment. I guess that explains why Marie Kondo teaches people to identify items which speak to the heart and to say goodbye to those that do not. However, if you are on social media, you can barely go 20 seconds without having an advertisement shoved into your face. You may even google something once and all of a sudden, 10,000 different vacuums are popping up in your newsfeed for the next two weeks. So basically, even if you say goodbye to those items you no longer value, consumerism is being fed to you repetitively even when you’re not even fully conscious of it. What can we do about it? Awareness. More is not more.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is the man who first coined the aphorism “less is more.” If you’re like me, you may not be aware of this origin, yet still use it all the time. Ludwig was an architect and he rejected the traditional way of enclosing. Creating structures with enclosed rooms was completely thrown out the window to create a “bigger window,” to dissolve boundaries. For me, dissolving boundaries in materialised structures runs deeper. In a world where we are confined to office spaces and the indoors due to work-life, structures that incorporate an exterior feeling are essential; for freedom. 51 years since Ludwig’s death, the world is deep amongst the tiny house movement. There are many logical reasons why a tiny house is better for you and the world. They’re more environmental, they’re low maintenance, they’re simple, low cost and they encourage you to be in outside spaces whilst only using your tiny home for basics. Obviously if you like space and like your things, it may be hard to see the positive side of a tiny house. But, are you really living if you’re fluttering around in your mansion all day long? If you have people over all the time for dinner and parties, then fair. If you have a painting or a music studio in your house then fair. If you have a psychology office, a library which you sit in everyday or a gym for your clients, then fair. But during a work week, majority of people spend 8 hours a day sleeping and approximately 2-3 hours eating or getting ready. That leaves almost 14 hours not in your house, so I can see the beauty in having a tiny house with your few important things. Another beautiful thing – no stress attributed to a mortgage, most people can build one using savings or selling all the items that they once wanted rather than needed. More money to travel, for hobbies, for dining out at nice restaurants…I’m almost sold but I have the devil/mansion on one shoulder and the angel/tiny house on the other. So what does money have to say about all of this?

A little while ago, someone in conversation told me more than a certain figure did not increase happiness. There is a cap at happiness? Kahneman & Deaton (2010) suggested it was $75,000 although there is some suggestion that higher income is associated with happiness (Killingsworth et al., 2023). The most interesting point of the 2010 study was: wealth or money is not linked to happiness, but the amount relatively. Meaning, if you have more money than your friends or neighbours in which your “status”is higher, the happier you are - the “reference-income hypothesis.” Life satisfaction is linked to how much more you earn compared to others. It’s about rank? To me, I read this as relating as needing to appear better than others, which doesn’t seem quite healthy to me. We are all told from a young age not to compare yourself to others, compete with your personal best. Instead, we end up striving for the best above others.

Social rank and the link to evaluation of self is evident in Kraus & Park (2014). The research suggests your health and life well-being, is tied to your perception of self within an economic society. If you believe you are low in the economic hierarchy or you are high on the hierarchy, researchers believe this will seep across to general self-evaluations in all areas of life. In an experiment, the researchers assigned university undergraduates to either equal or lower economic resources. As expected, higher social rank was correlated with positive self-esteem overall. Let's apply Social Dominance Theory, which utilises an evolutionary lens. Social ascendancy is seen in animals; animals create hierarchically organised societies in which the higher the rank, the more resources and suitors. Humans are complex animals and rather than physical dominance, people symbolically evaluate each other above their peers. How do they elevate their self-esteem? Through striving for dominance.

Upon evaluation of my above thinking, from minimalism, to income and social rank; in my opinion, materials can act as distractions; from confronting our worth and self-esteem. Striving for dominance, social rank or success is positive, until it’s not; until you find yourself comparing everything to others and wanting to rise above without feeling any kind of contentment. Having an abundance of items and money or more objects than one’s neighbour should be brought to our awareness so that we can choose if this matters to us or if there are other more important values to focus on. Social rank or economic standing in society suggests life satisfaction, but why should we believe more items indicates social rank? Perhaps there is something else to pursue. When we strip back all the smoke screens, it is indeed our self-esteem which can foster dominance via confidence in ourselves. Living a minimalistic lifestyle allows us to focus on our goals, our minds, our creativity, our richness in life via moments. At the end of our time, all we have is this moment.

References and Further Reading:

Ferrari, J. R., & Roster, C. A. (2018). Delaying disposing: Examining the relationship between procrastination and clutter across generations. Current Psychology, 37, 426–431. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9679-4

Gregg, A., Sedikides, C., & Pegler, A. (2021). Self-Esteem and social status: Dominance theory and hierometer theory?. In Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science (pp. 6939-6944). Springer International Publishing.

Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(38), 16489-16493, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107

Killingsworth, M. A., Kahneman, D., & Mellers, B. (2023). Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(10) e2208661120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208661120 (2023).

Kraus, M. W., & Park, J. W. (2014). The undervalued self: Social class and self-evaluation. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1404.

Lucchesi, E. L. B. (2019, January 3). The unberable heaviness of clutter. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/well/mind/clutter-stress-procrastination-psychology.html

Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Longitudinal Study of Procrastination, Performance, Stress, and Health: The Costs and Benefits of Dawdling. Psychological Science, 8(6), 454–458. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00460.x