I’ve published over 2,000 articles on this blog over the last 18 years. Not all were written by me and not all focus on minimalism specifically. But certainly a lot of them do.
I’ve also spoken on the topic of minimalism all over the world. In fact, I’ll be concluding a 30-City Speaking Tour next week.
It occurred to me at my last event in Milwaukee that there are some very specific quotes about minimalism I repeat often when I speak. Quotes that I find so persuasive and inspirational that I return to them over and over again in both my writing and my speaking.
And because they have been so influential in changing my view of physical possessions, they’ll probably be influential in yours too.
Here are the ten quotes about minimalism I repeat most often:
(As would be expected, I probably repeat my own teachings and mantras more than I repeat anyone else. So for the sake of this list I’m going to skip my own favorite quotes.)
1. “Don’t you think if organizing was the solution, you’d be done by now?” —Courtney Carver
With this brilliant question, Courtney articulates everything wrong with “better organization” as the solution to our stuff problem.
It is common for people to confuse decluttering with reorganizing. Some people start with organizing as the goal, others subtly drift toward it during the process.
Of course, organizing is important. But it is rarely the best first step. And the fact that we’ve tried it before, but still feel like there’s too much stuff, is the lightbulb moment all of us need. I’ve used Courtney’s question repeatedly to help people get there.
Organizing is always, only a temporary solution. Owning less is a permanent one.
2. “You can always declutter a little bit at a time, but do you really want to be decluttering for the rest of your life?” —Zoë Kim
I first heard Zoë say this during a live webinar on owning less. It is true that we can decide to do just a little bit of decluttering at a time or we can say, “Decluttering is never going to end and I’m okay with that.”
But is that really what we want? Do we really want to be decluttering for the rest of your lives?
No, certainly not. It’s way better to put in the effort and the time and be done with it. Because that is when the rest of your life can begin. So set aside time. Give yourself a deadline for each space. And work hard.
Maintenance in your home will always be required. But not decluttering.
3. “Every increased possession adds increased anxiety onto our lives.” —Randy Alcorn
Our possessions are not passive, and once we see that, everything changes.
Everything we own becomes our responsibility to deal with and take care of. It takes up physical space in our homes and mental space in our minds.
Some possessions are worth the financial and mental burden, no doubt. The many that are not are the problem.
It was this quote from Randy Alcorn that first opened my eyes to the burden of excess, and I’ve repeated it more times than I can count. As a matter of fact, I used it in my very first presentation about minimalism—and most of them ever since.
4. “Picture your dream home. I bet it’s not filled with clutter.” —Unknown
Our excess possessions are a physical manifestation of unintentional living. No one sets out in life to just own as much clutter as they possibly can. We dream bigger dreams for our life. And we dream bigger dreams for our home.
5. “We need much less than we think we need.” —Maya Angelou
When we first started minimizing our possessions, I knew instinctively that Maya Angelou was right and we could live just fine owning less. But I had no idea how true it was until we actually started doing it.
Category by category, we discovered we could live just fine with far less than we had. Better than fine, actually.
That’s why I often encourage people to try a minimalist experiment, like a No-Buy Month or Project 333. Just try it, you’ll see. We need so much less than we think we need. And there is a wonderful freedom to be found once we realize that.
6. “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” —Seneca
Seneca wrote these words nearly 2,000 years ago, and they became the foundation for my book, Things That Matter. I use the quote whenever I speak on the topics found in the book.
The teaching is not about minimalism specifically. But in the middle of the longer version of the quote, Seneca says this: “When [life] is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.”
And what are excess possessions other than heedless luxury and no good activity? And what result is the constant pursuit and accumulation of physical possessions other than life passing away before we knew it was passing?
Minimalism is about making the most of our lives by not wasting a lot of it.
7. “Money won’t make you happy, but everybody wants to find out for themselves.” —Zig Ziglar
Zig Ziglar’s quote is not about possessions. In fact, it is about something completely different. It is about the role of money in our lives.
But the quote is constantly top of mind (and often on my lips) as so many conversations about minimalism steer into conversations about money.
To be honest, I’m not sure if the quote in isolation has enough power to change someone’s pursuit of money or if it is even a thought people think about after I use it in a presentation. The desire for money is just so great in us.
But the quote is true and life-changing. There are greater riches available to us than money. We know that to be true—regardless of how much money we have. Living it out is the hard part.
8. “If you have to buy stuff to store your stuff, you probably have too much stuff.” —Courtney Carver
The US Home Organization Product industry has grown to $15B in annual sales and is expected to keep rising through at least 2033.
So most people in America (and in developed nations around the world) have bought something to store their stuff. That’s why this quote from Courtney (her second one on the list) resonates and connects with so many people.
Whole industries thrive on the assumption that we’d rather buy more stuff to store our stuff than remove it. And once we see it, the excess on our shelves starts to look different.
9. “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” —Henry David Thoreau
We don’t buy things with money, we buy them with hours from our lives. And just because an item carries a price tag in a store, that is rarely the full cost.
Every purchase also requires our time, energy, and focus. It needs to be cleaned, organized, maintained, fixed, and eventually removed. It costs us hours on the front end and hours on the back end.
Minimalism is about understanding opportunity cost. Once we see how much of life is being exchanged for the amount of stuff we own, we can see better the rationale for owning only what we need.
10. “Your home should be the antidote to stress, not the cause of it.” —Peter Walsh
Peter Walsh writes wonderful books and co-hosts wonderful television shows. He has spent years helping people declutter their homes.
And as much as I repeat him, this is the aspirational quote of his I use most often. When I share it on social media, it gets shared by others over and over again. When I use it in a blog post, it always adds a punch. And when I use it in a room, I can see faces change and hearts impacted.
We want our homes to be a place of rest and calm. But many of us have turned our homes into the cause of stress instead. And it is our possessions that are often the cause of that.
In The Minimalist Home, I take Peter’s thought one step further. Our homes should be a place of refuge, but they also serve as a launching pad from which we make a difference in the world.
Removing the excess helps it become both.
Those are the ten quotes I return to most often. If you’ve followed my work for very long (or came to any of my live events this summer), no doubt you’ve heard them before.
So maybe I should be the one asking you. Are there quotes about minimalism you find yourself repeating often? Or that offered the lightbulb moment when minimalism made sense to you?
I’d love to hear yours in the comments below. This could be one of the most encouraging comment sections anybody ever discovers.
Source: www.becomingminimalist.com…