After watching that Netflix documentary by The Minimalists and checking out their blog, we realised that we practice “accidental minimalism”. Here’s why I think having less stuff paradoxically adds to your wealth.
Obviously, buying less means saving money. Duh. I’m talking about the benefits of mindset though, which is a bit different!
Minimalism – is that living a Spartan life and hating yourself?
I thought that for a while. No, really. It’s amazing when you look back at your old mindsets and realise: “was I really that close-minded?”.
The answer is: yes, yes I was.
SierraWhiskyMike in his late teens/ early twenties was a total idiot. Looking back, I’m not sure how I’ve managed to keep any friends for the last few decades, but I’m grateful they have put up with me for so long!
Minimalism – at least, the way I do it – is just about not owning crap that you don’t use or enjoy. You can have whatever you want, just don’t have much that’s a burden.
How we accidentally fell into minimalism
I’m sure I’m supposed to tell you that we had some “big awakening” or “life-changing event”. It would make great TV, we could do some podcasts about it, maybe get 1,000 views on YouTube…
…but no, that would be a lie.
It all started with a house
About five years ago, we moved to our first home that we actually bought. Following the advice of our parents, we bought the biggest house we could afford. We hadn’t really discovered stock market investing yet; I had a few private equities through Crowdcube, but otherwise we had cash savings so that we could buy the house.
Before we bought the property, we’d live semi-nomadically, changing location every 2-3 years with work. We’d been living in subsidised rental accommodation, which was a lot larger than our means. We’d accumulated new hobbies and interests in each place, which meant that we arrived at our new home with loads of boxes.
The problem with “buying the biggest home you can afford” as a strategy is that you end up with something that needs a lot of work.
One of the things people don’t tell you about buying a house that needs a lot of work is that you spend most of your time living in just one or two rooms at a time. Months, in fact. Which means that all your worldly goods need to similarly fit into the same two rooms while you destroy/ re-plaster/ re-wire the rest of the building.
Needs must
We found three things out very quickly:
- We didn’t actually need much stuff to live and be happy: it was all in boxes, piled up in one room, or we were using it. Guess where most of our stuff was.
- We needed to get rid of a lot of stuff to make the renovations easier.
- The “buy the biggest house you can” strategy sucks.
What we needed to be happy
We were happy with the dog. We kept him, readers will be pleased to know. He takes up a lot of space but he’s a permanent fixture. In fact, he’s snoring in his bed in the bay window as I type.
Furniture, generally, doesn’t make us happy. We had lots of it. One of the things people don’t tell you when you’re moving into your first home as a couple is that you’re expected to have a lot of furniture, and it isn’t cheap. Well, some of it can be, but that stuff tends not to survive being moved around much. I regretted spending money on it, keeping it clean, the crap that tends to accumulate within any drawers, cupboards, flat surfaces, shelves – well, crap attracts crap. It turns out that having crap everywhere is just stressful.
There was some stuff I missed having, and some stuff I really wanted to get out of the boxes. As we started clearing rooms and expanding the proportion of our home that we lived in, that stuff miraculously appeared in the rooms. Cutlery, cooking items, wine glasses, bottle openers, clothing – that stuff tended to find its way into new homes within the house.
I would later learn that this is The Minimalists’ own approach to starting with minimalism. Interestingly, they recommend a few different approaches, but this blog post is the basis for the Netflix documentary.
Even after that, we still had boxes of other stuff. What was it? Even today, we’re still sorting through it. This morning, I binned a load of CDs that we’d kept from the car we no longer own. The only device we own that could still play them is a PlayStation.
Getting rid of stuff makes life easier
We started getting rid of things out of necessity. When your “liveable” area is small, you can’t keep around things like decorative glass bottles. Space is at a premium, so if it’s a choice between decorative glassware or a lamp that is both decorative and functional on your cleared shelf then that glassware needs to be pretty damned impressive to earn its place out of the box.
Similarly, you can’t keep around jeans that don’t fit anymore. There are only so many sets of painting clothes that make sense: after a while, you’re just hoarding clothing that you can’t wear out in public. Gloss paint stripes are a bold fashion statement.
I’m not Marie Kondo. Stuff doesn’t “spark joy” or not and I don’t get a thrill from organising. I don’t get a big kick out of organising and archiving crap in drawers. Actually, I really hate it.
Even now, I get things out of drawers or boxes and think about the wasted potential of the item. There must be so many possibilities for this seven-year-old Android tablet! It seemed like such a good idea at the time! However, having gotten rid of stuff does feel good.
It’s like going to the gym. Sometimes, getting to the gym and training isn’t appealing, especially on cardio day; but having gone to the gym feels great.
I remember reading on The Minimalists’ blog once that owning stuff can itself be a burden. I’m not sure I took them seriously when I read it the first time. I haven’t linked to it because searching for stuff on their website is really difficult, so you’ll have to take my word for it!
The theory goes that your mind feels burdened by the need to protect all the stuff you’ve hoarded/ acquired over time. It preoccupies a bit of your subconscious.
I’m not sure if I fully believe the logic, but my experience so far has been that fewer piles of crap in my house definitely makes me feel less stressed, and having “mystery drawers” bugs the hell out of me.
Not having this stuff around makes life better. Getting rid of stuff makes life better – within reason.
Why the “buy the biggest house you can” strategy sucks
The theory behind this strategy – allegedly common wisdom – is as follows:
- Your home is a capital investment, and a lot of that is wasted on conveyancing/ stamp duty. That’s mitigated by buying a home to start with that’s bigger than you need, so that you only have to pay for this stuff once.
- Bigger homes tend to have more choices of buyer. You can sell to other first-time buyers, people looking to downsize, or people looking to upsize. A one-bedroom flat is probably only for first-time buyers.
- Houses make money over time. It’s a percentage game, so bigger houses stand to make more money than smaller ones.
I put it to challenge that this theory is absolute turd. Knowing what I know now about investing, personal finance and household economics, I raise the following counter-arguments:
- Your home is not an investment. It can be made to be one if you try hard enough, but if you plan to live in it the best you can do with it is take on debt against it.
- Buying the biggest home you can means that you will sink more money into it to set it up/ renovate than you would lose by buying smaller, better equipped homes to start with them paying the fees to upgrade when you need to. That will likely counter any penalty for paying a conveyancer and maybe some Stamp Duty Land Tax.
- Property price movements and other market forces can change your number of buyers. Right now, flats are significantly reduced in value thanks to a tag-team of COVID and cladding fears, but that might reset in five years’ time. A flat bought today might be considered a bargain in the future. Similarly, if all the work dries up in your area, people might not be willing to pay full price for housing anyway.
- Over a long enough timeline, property generally increases in nominal value, at least with inflation. This isn’t guaranteed though, and money sunk into a slightly bigger home which you also live in is money that isn’t being used for investments that might perform better or provide cash flow in.
- Maintenance sucks so much harder on bigger houses than smaller ones. Have you ever paid to replace a bay window? It was an expensive life experience!
What we do now
We’re still not done with the DIY, but we’re thankfully at a point where we’re living in the house as intended and then occasionally move stuff around to do the next job. The bigger projects are essentially complete.
We’ve kept the minimalism up, now. It’s a good habit that now feels like second nature.
Clothing is the area that we’re most brutal in. We both tend to fluctuate in weight quite a lot, although since adding in a few veggie meals per week I’ve generally been becoming leaner. Wearing trousers that are too big for you isn’t a good look, so things that don’t fit any more tend to go to charity shops.
If we find something that has been lying around for a while, unused and unloved, we’ll challenge each other on it. Usually, my partner challenges me, because I tend to not realise something isn’t being used. If we’re clear that we don’t need it, it goes onto Facebook marketplace. If we’re not sure, it gets a reprieve until challenged again.
After a while, you start to realise that something is attracting a disproportionate amount of attention for how useful/ fun it is. I really don’t like having my energy wasted on stuff that doesn’t matter or that I don’t enjoy, so it often gets acted on.
Where this has worked well
Bizarrely, getting rid of the car was one of these decisions.
I realised that after I switched to a private sector job where I had to commute, the car spent most of its time either being static or being repaired. Seriously, that was it. We live somewhere with great public transport links and where cycling gets you around town much faster than a car would, so we were using those and the car basically sat there being a collision hazard for other drivers at the side of the road.
I don’t regret getting rid of that money pit. Sure, paying £250 for a hire car for the weekend makes you think twice, but if you check out the post you’ll see that we’re making pretty big savings on it. Plus, hire cars tend to be nicer than the car you own after a few years.
Where this can be a drag
The hardest part of getting rid of stuff is the getting rid.
Firstly, there’s the effort of sorting stuff out, making a decision about it’s fate, then putting it somewhere so you know that it needs to go.
Secondly, there’s the selling or donating.
Donating to a charity shop is easy. Anyone can take bagged clothes and bric-a-brac into a charity shop. The volunteers tend to do the hard work for you.
Selling, on the other hand, is a complete ball ache in the 21st century.
If you sell on eBay, you need to have packaging, and you need to be able to get it to a post office or whatever. That’s a chore. It’s doable, but you need to check that you can package the item first. I’m keeping my eye out for a box that will transport a motorcycle jacket with a built-in back protector – it doesn’t fold.
Worst, though, is Facebook marketplace. You get a ton of timewasters. I find that if you try to give something away for free, people say they’ll take it then don’t turn up, so I make sure to put a price on stuff even if I’m happy to give it away. Tools and DIY bits seem to be the exception, but generally freebies tend to attract freeloaders. “Can you post this to Cardiff?” is something I routinely get asked about. You also get people trying to haggle with you, even if you’re selling below market rates for a quick sale, thanks to a feature where a potential buyer can spam you with accept/decline buttons and a price offering. On the other hand, stuff tends to sell.
Unfortunately. charity shops don’t often accept electronics. As a result, I spend too much time getting spammed at midnight on Facebook marketplace.
Energy savings of accidental minimalism
OK, so getting rid of stuff can be a pain. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad!
Having less stuff lying around means we spend less time tidying up. I remember that as a kid tidying a house could take all day. In my own house, I can rush around pretty much the whole building and vacuum clean it all in an hour and a half at a push.
I find it easier to concentrate at home than I do in my office at work. Strangely, offices in the City tend to be chaotic, with pile and piles or miscellaneous crap paperwork on every shelf, in-tray, drawer and flat surface. There’s clutter everywhere.
Not so at home. I have a desk, a cupboard for work stuff (unfortunately, working from home a few days a week means that I need to have work stuff in my home) and a big flat desk for the computer.
Simple. Zen.
Having less stuff also means that there’s less to maintain. You might not realise it, but time spent dusting and wiping down or degreasing or polishing or whatever is that valuable commodity – time – spent doing something that’s no fun. Well, I realise it, and I’m noticing that I spend a lot less time doing tedious admin tasks now that I have less stuff to administrate.
In my case, that has meant more time for DIY, more time to play around with side hustles, or to write this blog. Or, you know, fuss the dog.
I enjoy all of these things more than dusting shelves of glassware. The energy savings are pretty good.
The financial benefits of accidental minimalism
Here’s the bit that the cold-hearted cynics among the readership have been looking for: measurable financial benefit from minimalism. Aww yes. SierraWhiskyMike, tell me how some mumbo-jumbo can help me become get to financial independence quicker, dammit!
Fine, I guess I promised in the title. Here you go!
1. Maintenance costs money, and stuff needs maintenance. Minimalism means less to fix.
OK, so fixing stuff or keeping it in working order costs money. Thus, having less stuff to go wrong saves money. As a penny saved is better than a penny earned, this is an obvious benefit.
There’s also the consumables. Back before everything ran on internal lithium rechargeable batteries, having lots of stuff meant buying lots of Duracell every month. Who remembers buying hoover bags before we all switched to Dyson knock-offs?
Some stuff costs money on maintenance that you don’t even realise you’re spending. Having lots of things plugged into the mains means you’re spending more on energy bills; that’s true even for things you aren’t using, now that most things recharge or remain on “rest mode” when unused. You’re paying for it and you don’t necessarily realise it.
I’m not saying that replacing broken stuff is necessarily better than repairing it. I’ve become a fan of getting stuff repaired if I can. It’s just that having less stuff necessarily means that you have less to repair.
2. Stuff attracts stuff.
Where things are left on a flat surface, other random things get piled next to it. It seems to be a universal truth.
In a similar vein, if you own something and accessories can be sold for it, you tend to buy accessories that you wouldn’t have before. Stuff just attracts other stuff, and it isn’t always good.
Take an Amazon Kindle, for example. Before eBooks became easy with Kindle, people were quite happy to go to libraries and wait for books to be returned. Today, I can access the Kindle store at any time I want and buy an eBook to download straight away. I’m spending money for the convenience that I wouldn’t have if I’d never had the Kindle.
I don’t regret buying books or eBooks. It’s one of the things I’m happy not to be disciplined with, but it’s a good example.
You wouldn’t buy a PlayStation controller or game if you didn’t have a PlayStation.
No-one would buy an iPhone case if they didn’t have an iPhone.
You wouldn’t have spent £100 on headphones before you had a device that could connect via Bluetooth.
What was so wrong with those £10 wired headphones? Were cables really £90 worth of annoyance?
I’m pretty frugal, yet I can still think of a few things that I’ve bough that I wouldn’t have bought if I didn’t already own something that used it. Stuff just attracts stuff, and that stuff costs you money that you wouldn’t have considered spending before you got the central item.
By doing a little bit of minimalism and only keeping the stuff that you actually enjoy, at least the stuff you accumulate is stuff that’s worthwhile.
Even better, by changing your mindset, you start spending intentionally – which is helpful if you want to become financially independent.
3. “Vimes’ boot theory” in support of minimalism
In the Terry Pratchett book Men At Arms, the main character and commander of the City Watch comes out with this little gem:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
He’s talking about big issues, but there’s a nice twist on the same theory. By having less stuff, you can put your money to better – i.e. longer lasting, more comfortable, or higher spec – versions of the stuff you do have.
Spending money is committing part of your life energy (thanks for that analogy, Vicki Robin!). You can spread it around and give a little bit to a lot of things, or you can concentrate into a few, better things. Ideally, things that are longer-lasting and have more utility.
Of course, there’s a maximum cost to quality (after which you’re just paying for hype and good branding). There’s a cap on what you will commit to. Even then, I’ve found that you can indeed still buy quality items that last a lot longer, you just need to do a bit of research beforehand.
If you only want a few things, this research won’t take too long.
4. You can buy more stuff second-hand
This isn’t a given, but it’s something we’ve noticed in the way we’ve stumbled into minimalism.
When we became accidentally minimalist, we ended up buying stuff for it’s utility value as a priority. Last season’s colours, fashion considerations and so on stop becoming a thing. Suddenly, second-hand goods that are still in good condition become an option to you.
That’s an obvious advantage. Second hand goods come at a significant discount to new goods.
Take furniture, for example. We bought our walnut, shaped wardrobes for about £50. They’re seriously old school, but we don’t have much furniture to match with anyway, and we live in a house that is often filled with plaster dust.
I would be hard pressed to find a wardrobe for less than £200, even in IKEA. I could replace these four times over and still not be out of pocket.
We bought a TV cabinet for a fiver, rather than buy a TV stand or a wall bracket. It’s brilliant.
My partner finds some clothing bargains in charity shops. I’m less successful, but I bought two sports jackets for about £20 and I got one of them tailored for about £70. With formal or smart casual clothes, people tend to wear them once or twice at best before they find their way to charity.
I basically have workwear on a shoestring budget, and I look pretty pimp. My house doesn’t look stylish, but I have what I need in it and we’re still looking at stuff now and thinking: is this really valuable?
In conclusion
We became minimalists by accident. Until someone told my partner “your house is sparse!”, I didn’t even think I was a minimalist.
I guess I practice minimalism with a bit more awareness now! By my loose maths, I think I’ve saved thousands of pounds from this year’s budget compared to a few years ago. Sure, my maths is a bit ropey, but I’m pretty sure the difference is so huge that I don’t need to sit down with a calculator.
I’m not telling anyone to sell all their stuff and live like a medieval monk. If that’s your takeaway from this article, I guess my writing is out of touch.
What I’m suggesting that you can make yourself comparatively wealthier by owning fewer, better things, that last longer and get more use; and that you might want to consider buying quality second hand items rather than lower grade new items where you can.
Your financial independence campaign might just speed up – I’m sure “future you” will be grateful.
