Simplifying your life through tiny living (Part 4)...
Posted on June 23, 2020 by Ben Brown, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
This takes a look at tiny living and (Violating society's scripts)
I once had a relative say to me “You can’t have an apartment without furniture…that’s ludicrous!” My first response (in my head) was something along the lines of “watch me!” But my more polite response was to loving engage in the debate if for no other reason than out of curiosity to see where it was she was coming from and how she not only arrived at such a “cultural value” but also felt strongly enough about it that she felt the need to “tell me” how to live in my environment. "Why I can I not live in a space without (or with very little) furniture and what about this concept to you feels “ludicrous?” To this, she responded, “You just need to have furniture in your house. That’s what normal people do.” As you look around your current living space, are there areas that contain furniture that you use maybe once a year? A “sun room” decorated with plants and old chinaware? Perhaps a “dining room” that gets used once a year during holidays? Moreover, are those rooms filled with “stuff or things” that you hardly even realize you possess? Lets start with THE CAPITALIST TRAP! Every day, there we are bombarded with a massive influx of all the “things you can buy” that will make your life better, make you more appealing to your mate, delay the aging process, make you feel more important or further accomplished than your neighbors. The list goes on! Sale ends today. You won’t wanna miss this once in a lifetime opportunity! Tired of this condition in your life? Well try this! For three easy installments of 19.95, this can be yours! You get the picture! We are living in a time in the world where the “economic model of free-market capitalism” runs almost every facet of our lives! America especially is a giant colony of “Consumer Zombies” whereupon we will buy something just because somebody “recommends it” to us without giving any forethought to how our lives are actually going to benefit from it. This lovely little consumer industry that has very strategically made us this way has no shortage of help from the media. Here’s a lovely little experiment that will rock your world if you’ve never done it. Turn on your Television right now and just scan through as many channels that you have. Count how many channels you go by that are in the middle of a commercial! Social media is guilty as well. Go to twenty different websites (or social media feeds) and see how many of them you can get through without encountering a single ad. Good Luck! When you start paying attention, you realize that we are actually fed way more ads for commercials pandering products to buy than we are shown actual “content.” Don’t believe me? So see for yourself! Turn on your average morning news show. If you clock the times, you will find that over HALF of airtime “the today show” on NBC for instance is in fact actually commercials. Everything from products to buy (prescription drugs to make our life better), car sales, mattress sales, homeowners expos, beauty products, yard tools just to name a few, are plastered in our brains with one over arching message and one message only. "You MUST have this “thing” if you want to live a normal life." Marketing to our emotions, its easy to see why and how the Costco’s, super Walmart’s, and the Ikea’s of the capitalistic world exist. And have you noticed that the parking lots are somehow always full!? This insensate need to have the latest and greatest things is so ingrained in us that we buy stuff we don’t need (or can’t afford), to fill spaces we rarely use to impress people we don’t like so that we’ll feel “better about ourselves” because we’re “keeping up with Jones’s”. And what do we do with all of these things we buy that we don’t need and don’t have anywhere to put them? Why, we put them in storage of course! Self Storage is a whopping 38 billion dollar industry in America! We pay more to store things than we paid collectively for the stuff we’re storing in the first place. What’s this all got to do with living tiny? I’m so thrilled you asked. It has EVERYTHING to do with it! When you live in a space the size of a large parking spot (including a loft), you learn to live with a great deal of intention! This is felt nowhere more significantly than your relationship to the items you posses and keep in your home. You ask yourself the 2 big questions I spoke of earlier. Do I have a relationship with this item and or does it function in my daily life on a fairly regular basis? But then when it comes to being a consumer, you simply ask yourself a series of questions. “Are there alternatives at my disposal using the stuff I already have or can it be borrowed from a friend or a neighbor?” "If I buy this “thing” can I state specifically how it will improve the quality of my life long term?" Sometimes, the answer is simpler than you would think. For example, I recently bought a waterfall/fountain for my home. I carefully weighed this purchase through the following steps. First, I read several research articles about how hearing the sound of running water lowers blood pressure, reduces signs of stress and anxiety. I also read research studies around “consistent visual exposure to flowing water” in fact increases creativity. Second, I set out an experiment before starting to even look around for a deal. I would set up my water jugs with which I haul in my water during the winter months, and I would just barely open the nozzle to create a constant dripping. The result was that I could “hear the sounds of my would be fountain” for several hours on end because it takes quite a while for 7 gallons to steadily drip into water tank. After conducting this experiment over 2 separate 7 gallon jugs (4 hours over 2 days), I concluded than in fact I would really enjoy having that fountain sound and look in my home. I spend a great deal of time working from home so I justified it as an “office upgrade that would decrease stress and increase creativity.” I have since purchased said fountain and found that it has had all the effects I anticipated and more. On the contrary, I purchased a “handpan” years ago. It was 14 inches in diameter and 8 inches high. Doesn’t sound like very big item but when its sitting in a house that’s 18 feet long by 10 feet wide, its a chunk of space for sure. I kept this drum for about a year. It was hand made out of an old propane tank and had a very hypnotic sound. Being a drummer, it was a very soothing and fun instrument to play from time to time. But after a year or so, I found that I only played it once a month or so and that in fact, the tones that it had hammered into it no longer spoke to me as they did when I first got it. So…I sold it. These two examples could not have been more different and illustrate both what it looks like to purchase with great intention as well as to depart with from a place of great intention. At the end of the day, one of my favorite benefits of living tiny is living a very consumer conscious lifestyle with both purchases, departures and storage of things around you that make you feel good. There’s also an incredibly limited amount of space from which to hang pictures, etc. So one needs to be incredibly choosy about what gets hung from the wall. I’ve always chosen to surround myself with either the finest of beautiful memories or language that warms my heart and speaks to me. So be particular about what language and images you surround yourself with in a space that tiny. It should always feel like a magical place away from the world.