Continuing minimalism

How to continue minimalism once you’ve done the initial purge? At the moment the cupboards are clean and the flat looks like it’s had a decent de-clutter but I want to extend the impact further than that. I am itching to start getting rid of some of our bigger pieces, the futon being the first to go. However, we have a friend of my boys staying over for a week around the wedding and everybody’s been telling us how handy it is to have somewhere for a guest to sleep. I am trying to motivate to my boy that instead of the futon which takes up a lot of space all the time (and looks quite scruffy) maybe we could buy, or heavens forbid, borrow a nice blow-up air mattress for when people stay over since all in all it’s only a couple of times a year. No success yet so it’s something else I have to try and ignore (still doing that for my boys desk as well).

So rather a re-focusing on me then since my fiancé is not convinced yet. As mentioned before I am quite happy with my slimmed down wardrobe. I am nowhere near the 33 items of Project 333 but I am happy with the current state of affairs and want to see if I can work with it as is for a while. To that end I’ve decided to not buy any new cloths for 1 year. Since I’ve not bought anything since I’ve started trimming down I have set the start date at 1 August 2013. I will thus endeavour to not buy any new clothing until 1 August 2014. This will include accessories such as scarves, belts, shoes, jewellery and even hand bags (another personal weakness).

This is somewhat complicated, and I am sure I will often be tempted, as part of my job is to occasionally visit retail shops. I stand in shops and look at the lighting, making sure the merchandise looks good and the window displays and entries are inviting. I’ve been on site three times since this experiment started and it is difficult to ignore the items hanging around and not make a mental note to come back after hours for a decent look. I am an avid shopper so it is a bit tough. All the minimalist websites say to avoid shops and the temptation, which is not possible for me so I will just have to rely on will-power.

Even writing this now I am thinking about going out to get a new pair of jeans. I ripped my favourite pair and in an attempt at frugality I bought and iron-on patch to cover the hole. Unfortunately the iron was too hot and the patch melted leaving a colourful streak all over my jeans. Gaaah, disaster! Not sure if I can rescue them and sad since they were my live-in pants. I will have to see if I can still salvage them. After the iron incident I just stuffed them at the bottom of my closet as I was too upset to face them for a while. I wonder if anyone else does that.