Skip to main content

Why I Owned 22 Coats (and why I now only own 4): maximalist turned minimalist?

My capsule wardrobe! 

Minimalism is, to many people, an extremely attractive yet lofty ideal. Own as few things as possible, only those that serve you and are functional for you and beautiful to you. For me, it was a concept I valued but I considered it entirely impossible, in practical terms, to implement in my day to day life. Maybe some you feel the same? Weighed down by possessions (literally so when moving from place to place) and unable to separate you from your stuff. Consumerism has been bred into us. 

So, I hear you ask: 1) how are you going to implement minimalist ideals and b) why are you even trying since you are most likely doomed to fail?


1) Live with as little as is comfortable for as long as is comfortable.

Ultimately, although I did a big wardrobe declutter and discarded (aka gave to charity) all the fallen apples (aka the clothes I really didn't care about all that much), I haven't abandoned the majority of my clothing though it no longer inhabits my space. It's in bags and black plastic sacks at my parents' house in my old room, available to retrieve at any time. It's a comfort to be slightly non-committal to what is a very new concept in my life. 

Clothes were my primary maximalist concern. I had twenty two coats, thirty three pairs of jeans, actually probably not enough tops because I was too busy buying jeans and coats, and countless hats and shoes. I was living in excess when it came to attire. It was time to retire the desire (gosh, aren't we getting poetic!) for stuff to fill a void within myself that I should be filling with meaningful things: family, friends, halfway-decent self esteem and positive self-talk. I was constantly chasing the next piece in hope of finding something that would make me actually feel good about myself. 

Understanding that clothes were, for me, a small plaster over a nasty wound, it made me realise that I needed to begin to heal that wound rather than keep buying and buying things I did not need. This only caused guilt, debt and generally didn't fix anything. Do you have a vice that has a deeper cause? You'll know what I mean if you do. 

So, in essence, I am practising (in both senses of the word) minimalism for these next few months. I am spending as little as I can, buying only what I truly love and need. I will see which pieces of clothing I miss and which ones I truly love. The rest, eventually, will be put in the loft for my future children to enjoy! Ever a silver lining, eh?


b) Striving for reinvention and for positive change is something I hold dear. Trying is incredible valuable! 

I am trying because I want to change. What I was doing wasn't working: I was in debt (still am), surrounded by clothes I didn't totally love and was frittering away all I had trying to fix something that couldn't be fixed with such a method.

Change in our lives is a great power we have and minimalist ideals are something I thought I could not do, but want to prove to myself are possible. It's important to challenge yourself!



We can be exactly who we want to be, no matter how far away that is from who we are now. 

Right folks, I've realised I've written a lot! What do you think of minimalism? Would you ever consider it? Let me know and follow me on instagram if you like: @jumper.dweller

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not-Dinner-Party-Appropriate: anecdotes from the mental hospital

 I feel like a time traveller. I've awoken in 2021, sleeping through a pandemic and my teenage years, now in my mid-twenties. I have no dinner-party-appropriate anecdotes. Only mental ill-health with bouts of questionable wellness. I have been in four different mental hospitals, which I predict could be four more than most people. No one talks about it, including me. Like, at all.  Whenever someone talks about mental illness, there is this most impenetrable silence, followed by: 'I knew someone who was depressed once.' Or a casual, almost nonchalant change of subject. I mean, we talk about mental health a lot - how to keep it afloat, how to do 'self-care' in a commercially-assisted sense. It's all body butters and face masks.  I don't like it when people reduce preventing mental illness down to looking after yourself or not. That is a large part of it, a whole team of people looked after me at my worst. Most things cannot be made better with a face mask.  It...
3 comments
Read more

Imposters: a story about a Capgras delusion

  It's cold. I'm always so cold. My hands quiver blue and wrists bloom purple, after days of bang, bang, banging my wrist on the arm of my chair. I don't think I'm okay, but I don't think I'm not okay either. I think, I think, I think I'm breaking. I am on the children's ward. I have not seen my real parents for months. Some strange people visit sometimes. I hide from them. They are not my parents. They are often nice and I begin to trust them, then they'll do something off-kilter and I shy away again, like a beaten dog.  I had climbed out of a window, bawled through the lane outside the house and taken solace at a friend's home up the road. Gently I was led back to my childhood home and bundled into the car, driven to the hospital and admitted in hopes of finding a way to avoid another inpatient admission. We couldn't find one.  I arrive at the unit, brittle. Last time I was in this position, I had a home, but now I'm adrift. My parents ...
2 comments
Read more

Building Bridges: breaking down the stigma that surrounds schizophrenia

Hi folks, another more serious post here (I promise there'll be a fun one very soon), as it's just come to my attention that it's mental health awareness week and that's a topic that deserves to be covered. This post might a little off-the-cuff as I've not planned or really thought it out, but here we go. Are you ready?  Schizophrenia. Most people hear that word and shudder. They might think of serial killers (admittedly, some do have the illness), violent outbursts, mental asylums, or just utterly unmanageable people. You might even be thinking (if you have no awareness of what schizophrenia is) that a person with the illness might have multiple personalities. This is not the case and I am living proof.  Without a doubt, the media's portrayal of schizophrenia, and indeed any psychotic illness, has highlighted the parts of the illness that the public most fear. Yes, sometimes unwell individuals might lash out, hurting medical specialists, family, ...
3 comments
Read more