In communities dedicated to everyday carry items like wallets, knives, and electronics you’ll frequently see community favorites that kind of act as the standard.
That and memes like the photo I linked made me think about a community of pseudo minimalist people who focus on living with portability or functionality in mind. Things like sleeping in a sleeping bag on a cot, relying on a docked laptop for gaming, or only using a single bowl for a majority of your meals.
It’s a bit of a long shot and odd question but I’d be interested to see what they’re passionate about.
Before people make Reddit style quips I’m not talking about not being well off or homeless. I’m also not really talking about people who have to move for work like truck drivers or people who stay in hotels. More like easily being able to move
Yes. I have very limited/cheap furniture. Almost everything I own comes from discount stores or thrifts. I don’t have an attachment to any of it. I’m debating going the Peace Corps so I don’t really want to own anything that I’ll have to pay to store.
Something that I’ve found works well for sleeping is a tatami mat and futon mattress. It’s best if you can air out the mattress and mat outside occasionally. But you can fold and roll both. You can also stack up layers of those $4 Walmart fleece blankets to adjust coverage.
Lets be honest. Most people buy stuff to impress other people. At this stage in my life I have no fucks to give about that any more.
I get you. I rarely have other people over. I feel like if I had to start over, like if my place burnt down, I would live more like that
Speak for yourself. I buy stuff for my apartment because I want it to feel homey; I don’t really care what other people think of it as long as it looks presentable.
What would be something homey but not presentable?
…what’s the issue?
It’s not an issue. Just a meme that’s common and demonstrates kind of what I’m after.
The person who owns that living room might just have gone after a really comfy chair over a couch which might be more typical for example. It feels kind of within the realm of minimalism and more focused on the utility of the space
i have a table
You’ll want to maybe start looking into some Asian cultures. There is a lot of minimalism there, like this guy. He is able to pack and move to a new home in 13min and moves every year. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XBQBKseozuY
There are also some people who try their best to make it look like there is nothing in their apartment, but it’s really a full on transformer https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XBQBKseozuY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XBQBKseozuY
There is also a youtube channel called Never Too Small https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XBQBKseozuY
This is actually inspiring. Not sure most poeple could afford installations like in the second video though. And the guy in the first video did have a point; it would be hard to share this lifestyle with someone else, or even just to invite friends at home up to a certain point.
FYI all of your links are the same video!
Mr. Sibu is so cool! It’s a very different way of living than any I’ve seen before. I don’t think it’s as doable in the suburbs of the U.S. as it is in a proper city.
Does make me think just how much junk I have cluttering the place up. Hmm.
Damn phone! Thank you for letting me know. I’ve updated my post.
And yes, it would be much harder outside of cities.
I don’t think it’s as doable in the suburbs of the U.S. as it is in a proper city.
I’ve read a few times that suburbs are horribly wasteful and inefficient to live, work, commute, or support for infrastructure. I’m not saying we should get rid of the suburbs so everyone can live sensibly, but I will tell you to get rid of the suburbs to save the planet (and live sensibly) :-D
30-floor mixed-use towers clustered around the subway entrance, with parks around that, and agri/nature space around that. No bungalow burbs.
I think this is why the “15min City/Neighborhood” is a popular idea. Small clusters of group where you can walk and get all your basic needs within a 15min walk. I don’t really think this is feasible in the US though, unless someone decided to build an entirely new city.
So talking about portability, I had a job in another city, I would do some of it from home like CAD work and then drive into town a few days a week to run machine tools etc. I had a system of bags I lived out of. My backpack which contained my laptop and my portable “office,” my tool bag in which I have a wide variety of capability, and a duffel bag with clothing, toiletries and such to keep a man running for 3 days. I could carry all three at once with a free hand and I can be ready for a 4 day, 3 night away mission in minutes.
my tool bag in which I have a wide variety of capability
Somehow that sounds a bit threatening, like Liam Neeson in that one oft-memed scene.
fear a man that carries a framing hammer and a gas powered soldering iron in the same bag.
What about a ball peen hammer and a battery powered soldering iron?
Depends on the soldering iron. I’ve got a Craftsman brand one that runs on drill batteries and it’s got a little too much oompf, it’ll burn itself up if you leave it on high. But shit like that “Cold Heat” one they were selling in infomercials? Nah those have never produced a single solder joint.
I think that image annoys women as they are angry that men require so little to be happy.
That’s a pretty sexist outlook. I don’t think the image makes an entire 51% of the population angry. And I think people like Jeff Bezos show that not all men require “so little to be happy”. It’s almost like genders are not hive-minds, and generalizing anything that broadly is only going to result in looking like a boomer who complains about how terrible their spouse is.
Wow look at you rushing to nobodies defence in the name of calling a joke sexist. Generally u can generalise most things.
No, you should not “generalize” when those generalizations are negative and targeted at a specific group of people. That’s called stereotyping and is widely considered a bad thing.
Stereotyping is simply a relabelling of the basic human intellectual activity of categorising everything specificly in the context of human behaviour.
For example i can categorise your behaviour and take an educated guess or as u would call it steriotype you. I assume ur a male, i assume your american, i assume your politically left of centre left, i assume your going to vote for kamala harris, i assume you are pro choice, i assume u support ukraine and have concerns about gaza, i assume u believe in free speach yet feel the need to censor hate speech, misinformation, and malinformarion.
How accurate is my steriotype? do u see why its generally considered a usefull tool?
What about your assumptions is useful to anyone?
It helps me identify the biases of this person argument and provide relevent examples or put them in situations where they must argue against an idea they believe to defend the point in the argument they are having. It makes pointing out people doublethink easyer. It allows you to infer thibgs without needing to ask.
Why do people wear sports teams, brands, get piercings, tattoos, fancy cars, literally any other form of personal expression. Is that not simply signally allegiance to a steriotype as to allow others to observe to communicate to meet people of commonality?
Id probably slide the TV stand closer to that outlet. You can at least attempt to hide wires.
Agree. All these wires make the room look rather messy.
At the least, the chair should be properly squared with the TV.
There was (is?) a subreddit called /r/onebag that might be like this. It was sort of minimalism taken to the extreme of condensing your possessions to a single bag. Definitely some overlap with the digital nomad community too
I’m not seeing a question in there. What are you actually asking?
What kind of work do they get into?
When they were here, it was mostly farm work. My uncle had them cleaning stuff up around his place, and they did some picking at a strawberry farm that I know of.
In bigger towns and cities, they tend to try and busk if they can, but don’t mind doing stuff like waiting tables, dishwashing, etc in restaurants. One of the guys has done a good amount of construction over the years. I’m pretty sure they’ve also done some weed dealing here and there.
They also do craft work and sell the stuff. Kinda junk imo, but it sells okay.
But, when they’re in the right cities, what they really focus on is session work. Mostly bluegrass and folk, plus some standard country. From what they’ve said, a few weeks in Nashville can set them up quite well, assuming there’s enough going on that their contacts can get them working on. It isn’t necessarily something they can just roll up and be in a studio, though. They have to plan the stay ahead of time, based on there being work.
One of the guys used to strip lol.
They’re wondering if there is a subset of the minimalist community whose goals are specifically nomadic.
Ahhhh, that makes sense now. Thanks
That’s pretty close to what most people would call Van Life. There are massive communities around that.
Thanks but that’s still kind of on the fringe of what I’m looking for. I feel like that’s more about working within the confines of the van rather than living effectively.
Someone trying that might be stuck using a hotplate but they could still have a decent sized mattress and gaming setup for example if that makes sense. It seems more like living densely
Maybe I’m missing something here, but plenty of folks - blue collar workers, technicians, engineers - have away jobs where they work in different places for weeks or months at a time, and there are landlords who specialize in providing this clientele with bare-bones furnished apartments. I’ve been there, too - in fact, one year during the pandemic, I had spent just a bit more than half of my time working and living in a place away from home.
You need a sofa for when you have girls over but other than that I see nothing wrong .
That carpet has too many… uh, “colors.”
I’m portable because I like the idea of being able to move without it being a big project. I think most people are utilitarian in that they buy things that address a specific problem they have, though maybe people who like minimalist ideas would have a different threshhold for what constitutes a ‘problem’ and favour products that address multiple problems in the simplest way.
When I moved I did sleep in a sleeping bag for a bit, but practically it’s much easier to wash a duvet cover than a sleeping bag. Same goes for hammock vs. bed. My bowl situation started at 1, but I ended up washing this one bowl all the time and it felt wasteful and effortful. I still do eat breakfast out of the pot, but I would argue it’s the best solution and others should copy me :) I’ll happily sit in one chair for a couple years before deciding a second chair or a couch is a requirement.
I think over a long period of time I’ll still be minimal, but have more specific things. It is genuinely more pleasant to eat salad from a salad size bowl/plate, pasta from a pasta bowl, soup or cereal from a cereal bowl, a latte from a latte mug, etc. Minimalism to me will always be about min/maxing items to squeeze the most joy out of life because I need that lift. Being spartan is hard living.
How awful. That cable management makes my eyes hurt.
Cable management is for work. In my happy place, I just let my cables run wild.
Cable management inside my PC case vs cable management behind my desk. The former is close to immaculate, the latter is no fucks given.
So true. Performance vs aesthetics. I know I’ll have better airflow inside my PC with proper cable management, whereas I couldn’t even begin to give a fuck what under/behind my desk looks like…
I took the time to dress the back of my desk, and all cables are routed appropriately, but there are SO many of them it still looks like spaghetti.
