lower-income people tend to be “hoarders” and richer people are able to do more “minimalist” living spaces. if u don’t have much, you will hold onto any little thing that comes across your way. you got a new tv, but you still keep the old tv because you know things can break. you keep extra boxes of macaroni and cheese lying around because there will be a week when you don’t have money for groceries. you hold onto your stacks of books and clothes for dear life. those are your assets. physical evidence of where your money’s gone. it’s hard to get rid of it. the bare wall is terrifying when you don’t have much.
Fuck. This makes so much sense and explains so much about me. I must have inherited this from my mum.
so I’d normally put this in the tags but it’s kind of a lot so just reblog this from OP to skip my commentary. But I dogsit for a family who is clearly LOADED. Their house is immaculate. High, vaulted ceilings, wood flooring, two chandeliers in one room. These things are fancy, right ?? I really don’t know, anything that isn’t tile or 30 year old carpet seems fancy to me. It also so… bare. Everything is organized perfectly, they have no excess. Their decor is extravagant and yet minimal - it is carefully and precisely executed. Nothing that doesn’t match the aesthetic sits in their living room. I tried to replicate some of it, but it’s just not possible. I have every book I’ve ever owned, my mom keeps papers upon papers, VHSs in a dresser, how do you just get rid of these things when you know you may not have the opportunity to buy them again? How must it feel to live in such orderly quarters where everything is replaceable?
This really locked into my brain when I was reading one of the declutter your space things and it suggested getting rid of duplicate highlighters and pens. /Pens/. It suggested that you needed one or two working pens, so if you had extra you should get rid of them. That was when I realized minimalist living was /innately/ tied to having spare money, because the idea was, of course you just went out and bought the single replacement thing whenever the first thing broke. You obv. Had the time and money to only ever hold what you needed that moment, because you could always buy more later.
there’s a nice article titled “minimalism is just another boring product wealthy people can buy” by Chelsea Fagan which i feel addressed lots of my problems with minimalism, you can read it [here]
Okay, so I guess my house now makes sense. Couple month ago I decided to get rid of all my extra stuff, because my room is 9 square meters, and I need to be in an orderly and quiet environment to be focused. I managed to donate and sell all the clothes that didn’t fit me (and that I kept, because we are a family of hoarders), but a looooot of others stuff I couldn’t bring myself to throw away, “just in case”. So I did what the family already does, you put the stuff you never use, but can’t throw away in the garage (or in my older sister’s bedroom, since she’s gone from the house). So we have rooms that are clean, almost bare with only the necessary items, and rooms that literally are hard to walk into because there is so much stuff.
What bothers me with this interpretation of minimalism as being only for the rich, is that, honestly, minimalism feels good. And not from an aesthetic point of view, although it does help. But the feeling of having in front of you only the things you need to work or get things done, without being visually bothered by all the miscellaneous stuff around it is irreplacable. There is truth in the fact that a certain austerity is freeing, and that stuff is a prison for the mind, because you have all this stuff to think about and deal with.
So no, minimalism is certainly not for the rich or the bourgeoisie or whatever, even if it is marketed that way, to justify the insane prices of some quality items. And now there is also a certain jugment toward people who own lots of stuff, but it’s more a way for the bourgeoisie to separate themselves from the middle class, quality over quantity. It’s like a reverse effect. When you are poor, you hoard and try to attain the standard of living of the middle class, by making sure you have enough stuff to feel secure. When you are middle class you try to disance yourslef from poor people by trying to achieve the minimalist lifestyle of the wealthy. But it never works, because middle class doesn’t have the same amount of disposable income as the wealthy necessary to absorb the cost of replacing the few but expensive quality items. Middle class is...stuck in the middle.
In short: being rich also can buy you the piece of mind of not having to hoard stuff “just in case”. Plus you don’t have to keep EVERYTHING, because you’d rather pay for services, like car repair, or catering, rather than try and keep your money by keeping tools and repairing it yourself, or keeping all your kitchen equipment in case you want to make something fancy.
