On Minimalism.
One in, one out.
Uncluttering.
However you do it, getting by with less is remarkably liberating. It doesn’t mean that every room in your house needs to be sparse. It doesn’t mean that you need to write shorter blog posts. It means that you approach every situation with the design philosophy of ‘enough and no more’.
Here’s three minimalist-related quotations that I live by. One day I’ll stencil them on my study wall:
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. (William Morris)
The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more. (Kin Hubbard)
When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. (Lao Tzu)
3 minimalist-related things:
- mnmlist.com
- less (journal)
- Minimalist Beauty
Excellent quotes to live by Doug. I have added all of your “Divesting” posts to Instapaper for a little minimal reading over the weekend. Have a great day / weekend!
Thanks James! Attempting to use Instapaper with the Kindle – should e interesting! 🙂
Let me know how you get on. If my eyes get tired of the screen on my MBPro I download the epub file and sync w/ my PRS600, then continue reading on there, formatting is not bad and certainly helps my eyes.
Okay, I’ve just spent an enjoyable 15 minutes reading through your “Divesting” posts. It was very interesting for me as someone who only started reading your blog early on this year to see screenshots of its design in earlier stages.
The post where you sold the domain names was also interesting as I already knew who had won http://edte.ch having started reading Tom’s blog around the same time I started reading yours.
I don’t know if I could divest in the way that you did. Which is okay as I don’t feel I need to but there was a certain pang of horror in the final post when you said that you had reduced your DVD collection to just 15 and were going to get rid of all your CDs. I guess the DVDs I could do if I really had to but I can not imagine not buying CDs – I want to open the box, smell the paper of the insert, marvel of the artwork – all before I listen to the music. I have my entire collection and many other albums in iTunes. Current count = 15990 items, 44.9 days of music. However, any album that i realy enjoy listening to I must own on CD – the sound qaulity of the CD+Stereo is vastly superior to that which wither my MBPro or iPod can offer!
Perhaps it’s the musician in me screaming. Music is my first love, education and technology came later. This probably is also why i still own several guitars but there is not a single games console in sight.
It was a fascinating insight Doug. I look forward to being a year/two years into my own blog. I wonder what I will think of some of things that I did and blogged about when I look back?
Glad you found it interesting, James! Books are the next to go this year… 😉
Oh, and thanks for the help with Disqus earlier, I am posting this from within it, much more efficient for following up comments. 🙂