And “Chances are, the person moving into my apartment after me would like a bed. Leaving it for them will be a nice move-in present.” No, chances are they already have their own bed, and your landlord will deduct the cost of disposing of it from your security deposit.

This is where you started making up stuff and going on a tangent that has nothing to do with with what Kelly is doing or writing about.

I hope you at least had a smile on your face you wrote it. It could be the basis for a good short story!

Which means that, no matter what the outcome, it shall be a success…in increasing your knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong. There is value in specialization. This silly civilization we live in, in which every single home is expected to be its own enclave, with its very own set of appliances and tools and every god-damned thing you could ever imagine… it’s wasteful! America, as a country, probably owns ten times more lawnmowers than it really needs, just so Joe Public can get a warm fuzzy that HIS PERSONAL lawnmower is sitting safe and sound in HIS GARAGE. Yay for Joe. But it burns me to hear the minimalists talking about how awesome their lifestyle is without acknowledging the foundation of consumption and ownership on which it’s built.

I live on 3 acres in the country. I have a log home that I heat with wood that I personally gather from felled trees. To do that, I need a chainsaw, or at the very least, I need a hand saw. I have a garden, and a set of tools like a hoe and rake. I have a kitchen, with a knife and a set of sheet pans and a couple of cast iron skillets. I have a workshop of woodworking tools that I use to turn scrap wood into garden trellises, cold frames, and sometimes even furniture. All of the things that I do to sustain myself–never mind to enrich and enjoy my life–require possessions. To suggest that these possessions are “clutter,” as this BoingBoing article does, is totally ignorant. Just because a lot of people own a lot of needless shit doesn’t mean that everyone who owns a lot of stuff is “cluttered”.

While selling his stuff he hoards and accumulates his digital belongings. Not possessing anything does not mean only physically, but also emotionally. It’s a total abuse of language, actually. Talking about books that actually are audio-books.

Just an advice to Kelly:
Sell your Macbook Pro and shut down your website and you will feel the real “letting go” and mental liberation.

- pfff!

While I don’t really want to add to the pile of “he’s not living exactly like me so he’s a moron” comments, I definitely agree with those who call foul on leaving furniture behind as “presents” for next tenants. If you didn’t want it, wtf makes you think the next poor shlubs want it? Jeebus!

Plus, I agree, its not a life of asceticism, its a life of just buying new shit whenever I need it.

To appreciate what this kid is doing, one doesn’t have to live like him.

I recently moved to Berkeley, CA, having decided I could afford the high rent if I got rid of my car (i.e. car payments, maintenance costs, and fuel). Now that I am a bike person — and a 61-year-old one at that — I find that I am very careful about what I buy when I go grocery shopping since everything must fit into my backpack and/or saddlebags. I love to go to thrift shops, but I’m now less likely to haul home the junk that used to fill my car. And I’m even more careful about what I throw in the laundry basket since that, too, is a trip on my bike.

I did, however, pay a lot to ship my furniture to my new home, but not without weighing out the pros of cons of what would make my new space feel most like home: my bed, my books, my couch. Still, I have a lot less stuff than I did have, and have not missed much of what I left behind although I do wonder what became of my blender from time to time.

It’s not an oxymoron, it’s a spelling mistake. Analog means what you say, he should have used “analogue”. Perhaps one of his physical possessions should be a dictionary, or at least a bookmark to Merriam-Webster.

Didja think of taking your own advice before dissing his use of language? Go take a look at the “analogue” entry on m-w.com or other dictionary of your choice, I’ll wait.

By the way, you probably don’t mean “spelling mistake”, you probably mean “homonym error”. But in fact the apt description for these two is “synonym”.

Everyone should read the entirety of that. It says it all.

For instance, why not just have a library card if you want to reduce your book clutter? Why the “need” to have all your books with you on the go? Isn’t that itself a form of collecting goods, whether they be digital or not? How about just deciding you don’t need an iPad after all and can live without one? Surely, many things you can do on an iPad you can do just with the laptop?

My ultimate point is that what this young man is doing is mostly utilitarian and suits his purpose just fine, but let’s not blow it up into a statement about how he is taking a stand and not succumbing to worldly possessions like the rest of us unwashed masses.

I think a lot of the criticism people are posting here is really just the fact that they feel this “Cult of Less” paradigm is being presented as a sort of normative statement about our society and they outright disagree with that as such. If you can get by with less and are genuinely happy, then more power to you, but I’m not convinced the rest of us somehow worse off just because we have a few things in our closets.

Then there’s the matter of chairs: I have to take care of my backbone, so it’s an Aeron. Cheap throwaway chars give me cramps. (Yes, I tried that.)

I also like to watch movies and a laptop screens doesn’t over the same experience, so I have a large TV. Or rather: Screen. The satellite dish has been dysfunctional since last June. But I’m not going to watch „Hellboy” on a 17″ screen if I can avoid it.

I also like cooking and have an inbuilt pressure cooker, also something I would get repaired at once if t would ever fail.

Also a large comic book collection. I wouldn’t mind putting some of it on an iPad, but I have nearly all Carl Barks and Don Rosa on A4 album, wouldn’t want to part with that.

Quite a few books, of course, but I see myself going digital for those, save for a select few, like Tufte’s works, for example.

I love that my house has a dining room with a table and chairs, and art on the walls, and plates and glasses and candlesticks. I love this because my friends come over and I cook them food, and we drink wine, and talk, and laugh. When my garden project (involving many trips to Home Depot) is finished, then we can sit in the garden and talk, too.

I love that I have a TV. It’s quite a fancy one so I can plug in a USB drive and watch the episodes of Dr Who I download. It’s great. I love Dr Who. I love having a TV. And I love my laptop which is where my music is, and I love my stereo that plays the music. The speakers are good, so the music is more beautiful. Frankly my netbook’s sound is a bit tinny.

I love my graphic novel of The Arrival, by Shaun Tan. I am unconvinced that it would be as moving on an iPad. Likewise I think that the Canterbury Tales would seem incongruous on my wife’s Nook.

True, packing and moving is a pain in the arse, but that’s the trade off for having a life that I enjoy, and a home that I can share with friends and family. And I have no problem with this guy traveling light. He seems happy enough, so fair play. The problem I have is with the philosophy that things are bad.

Looking for happiness in things is foolish, certainly, but if you have to go and stand naked in the woods to realise that then there really is no hope for you. It’s like the people who travel to India to find themselves.

I’ve only ever moved in fully-furnished apartments for precisely that reason. Different courses for different horses, man. :)

‘My’ stuff now only exists in computers, while my kids thrive in their physical, analogue world. :) So, funnily enough, it was the offspring that pushed me into material-minimalism.
(My wife was already a minimalist when I met her)

Understandably, a lot of readers who have been out of school for a while have already experienced this brand of asceticism. I definitely enjoyed a period of not having that much stuff and now I have more stuff. To be honest, I don’t prefer one or the other. It’s nice to not have so much stuff to worry about, but on the other hand, I DO like having stuff, especially if I use it often (such as cooking supplies, or soccer cleats, or painting supplies, etc).

Take one book, one author, even perhaps just one idea, and sit with it. Then put the book down and wait. Perhaps experience silence. Then if you really need sound start singing, or if you can’t like me, take an instrument. Then notice you left the real world behind, spending too much in your own or the vitual mind and should get out more.

At least for me the digital revolution is definately not one of salvation.