by Christine Platt
July 10, 2022
for The Los Angeles Times
Op-Ed: Minimalism is about more than downsizing. It’s about living with intention
Every so often, I smile as I reflect on the random Saturday morning when I found myself faced with a common clutter conundrum: Do I need more baskets and bins? I had to laugh as I asked myself: Are you really about to buy more stuff to hide all the stuff you don’t even use?
That was the day I first acknowledged that storing things, OK, hiding things, so they’d be out of sight and out of mind wasn’t a solution to my overconsumption. It was time for a change. It was time for me to change. Every online search that day centered on how to live with less stuff, and they all yielded the same results: become a minimalist.
If there were a contest for the woman least likely to succeed as a minimalist, I surely would have won. Much like my piles of clothing, home goods and knickknacks, the odds were stacked against me.
I’d spent much of my young adulthood and early career engaged in consumerism’s most popular sport: bargain shopping. And I wasn’t just any ol’ bargain shopper — I was really good at it. The years I’d spent running to the mall and circling sales racks resulted in a wardrobe overflowing with designer clothing and shoes that I rarely wore and smaller handbags nested inside of larger tote bags that I rarely used.
Read the entire piece at The Los Angeles Times.