>Maintenance is a big catch. You can either pay other people to maintain your things, or you can maintain them yourself. The former is expensive, the latter involves keeping an array of tools & materials. Cooking is another, and similar.
But how is minimalism related to maintenance? I mean, minimalist just have/feel the need for less stuff. They still take their cars for service (if they have a car), wash their clothes, call the plumber, etc.
In that sense, minimalist is the opposite of consumerism. It's not about fixing your fridge yourself or making your own furniture. It's more about buying less furniture.
Same for eating. A minimalism and a non-minimalism can eat exactly the same, there's nothing much about minimalism as commonly understood that dictates how to eat.
Minimalist just says you don't need 50+ kitchen gadgets, fancy coffee makers, etc. A simple kitchen (with an oven, fridge, pans, microwave, etc) will do. And you can always cook (if you have the time regarding work) or eat out. Minimalism doesn't say anything about not eating out. Just says "don't amass stuff / consume less clothes/furniture/gadgets/shoes/etc / simplify your surroundings".
But not every car owner takes their car for service! That's the point.
Some car owners service their own cars, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it can be quite a bit cheaper.
I think this goes back to the point about needing money to afford having less stuff.
I have a set of ramps, an oil drain pan, a jug for returning the old oil, a specialized filter wrench, and a ratchet. That's about $200 in stuff, and then I pay $20 for oil and $4 for a filter each time. As opposed to $65 at the oil-change place or $80 at the dealer, because they both charge a mindboggling markup for using full-synthetic oil. (And I'm not confident the place on the corner actually puts in what they claim to anyway.)
Since I count this as something of a hobby, I don't count a dollar value for the time I spend doing it. Which means I'm saving roughly $50 each time, and the tools are paid for after 4 oil changes. After that it's pure savings. If I wanted to have less stuff, I'd pay quite a bit more for the privilege.
I assert that minimalism is directly at odds with self-sufficiency.
>I assert that minimalism is directly at odds with self-sufficiency.
No, you've proven that it's not. Many people equate minimalism to just not having stuff. Minimalism means you have the minimum amount of stuff for the task at hand.
You have one set of ramps, one oil pan, one jug, one specialized filter wrench only for your car, and a ratchet that fits that filter. Exactly the tooling you need for the job, and nothing more. That is very minimalist.
A non minimalist person who changes their oil might have a half dozen old jugs half filled with oil in their garage, a drawer full of misc filter wrenches, and redundant ratchets.
>But not every car owner takes their car for service! That's the point.
That's ~a~ point, but it's not tied to minimalism. That's more about the savings.
And in this day and age, with modern cars being quite unserviceable, I don't know many (whether poor or not) that fix their own cars, except for very basic things (changing oils, and so on. Not many tools needed for those).
>Since I count this as something of a hobby, I don't count a dollar value for the time I spend doing it. Which means I'm saving roughly $50 each time, and the tools are paid for after 4 oil changes. After that it's pure savings. If I wanted to have less stuff, I'd pay quite a bit more for the privilege.
Well, that's still like a small set of stuff, at best fitting in a small box and forgetting about it. So it's not really outside minimalism.
A person who is a minimalist but also a carpenter could have 10x the devices and still be a minimalist.
It's all about not getting more than you need to get the job done, which many people, whether in their regular decoration/life/job/etc, or in their hobbies, do (e.g. related to "gear acquisition syndrome").
In other words, it's like the idea of "minimum viable product", but applied to buying stuff. Orthogonal to how much that product must cost.
Sure, if someone is rich enough to oursource all of their life (e.g. have chefs deliver them food) then they don't need a kitchen at all, and can have a more minimal house this way.
But that's in no way a requirement for being a minimalist, or applying minimalism to one's house.
And in most cases it's the inverse: people with more money get a bloated kitchen with all kinds of crap they don't need ("juice squishier" anyone?) compared to people with less. But people with less are hardly minimalists either. You can overbuy stuff and fill your house even on a very basic wage (30-40K say).
>I assert that minimalism is directly at odds with self-sufficiency.
It's really orthogonal. What you describe as self-sufficiency example consists of buying all kind of tools to save $200 a year or less (and that's if one doesn't count their own time's value).
But even a person making $40K could still pay those $200 -- and they mostly do, minimalists or not.
So it's not like "changing oil self-sufficiency" or the need to save money on oil changes prevents one from being a minimalist. Or proves that you need to be "ultra rich" (the claim at the start of this thread) to be one.
> And in this day and age, with modern cars being quite unserviceable, I don't know many (whether poor or not) that fix their own cars, except for very basic things (changing oils, and so on. Not many tools needed for those).
Well, you just met one. Aside from pulling the engine, which would need a hoist I don't own, or body work (I've never been much good with sheet metal), there isn't a job I can't do on my car, which is a 2012 hybrid. Diagnostics are a USB dongle instead of a stethoscope now, and tweaks are likewise software-based, but here on HN of all places, this should not be surprising. Bearings are still bearings, tires are still tires, and the whole thing is held together with clips and screws and glue just like every other car in the history of cars. It's hardly rocket science.
It seems contradictory to attribute savings to owning your own tools when you admit you are not using the same oil. The dealer probably doesn't use the same filter either.
A minimalist as currently known in popular culture doesn't own a chest of tools for repairing their car or bicycle, or pans & knives & cooking spoons & such. They don't have monkey wrenches & a pipe sweating kit. They pay a mechanic or a restaurant or a plumber. Which is where the current complaint that you have to have money to be a minimalist comes from.
I understand where it comes from but I hardly see the point as real for several reasons:
1) The argument at the start of this thread was that you have to be "ultra rich" (exact wording) to be a minimalist. It's hardly just the "ultra rich" that "pay a mechanic" or pay a plumber, and you hardly need to be one to afford to do so. If anything it might be only the ultra poor that can't afford those things.
2) Almost every middle class and most working class people I know pays mechanics and plumbers. And according to what I've read, poor people are more likely to eat e.g. fast food and such than sit and cook (many just don't have the time/will due to working hard for one).
3) Even if all the above weren't true, it's still a moot point. If only the things that prevented people from being minimalists where "monkey wrenches & a pipe sweating kit" and such "chest of tools for repairing their car or bicycle, or pans & knives & cooking spoons & such". It's all the other BS that fills every room of every house...
4) I also don't know where the weird notion comes from that "aA minimalist as currently known in popular culture" doesn't own tools, or pans and knives and cooking spoons and such. Minimalists can own all of those things. They just get rid of BS stuff we all have but don't need.
This feels like a very narrow definition and I find it sad if this is the broader interpretation of minimalism in our society.
I don't find Kondo's advice in any way incompatible with a definition of minimalism that includes retaining the kinds of basic tools people use to perform common repair tasks. Certainly anybody who reads her book and decides to discard their tools and materials, being sure that they have the resources to replace them, is not a person who takes a very considered approach to consumption.
But I took away something different. Junk is something that is not useful, whose very creation is likely wasteful. Redundant items and keepsakes, unused gadgets, things that truly have no use and even whose decorative and sentimental value is lost (ie they do not spark joy). To me, implied in getting rid of junk, is also a dedication to not acquiring or creating junk, thus reducing the overall waste of resources one generates. Such a view should actually highly value preserving truly useful and reusable items since it results in fewer wasted resources.
Maybe that isn't the message most take from her work, or the message she intended, but to me it seems like a form of minimalism we could all aspire to.
I think the point is that people who cannot afford to just pay to have important items fixed or replaced must own a lot of additional tools simply to maintain the important items that they own.
In other words, someone with more money can own a minimal set of important items, but someone with less money could own that same minimal set of important items but would also need to own more items to maintain the important items.
In my experience, people having too much shit, is not because they have "additional tools simply to maintain the important items that they own", but because they buy all kinds of unnecessary shit. I've seen less poor people with "tools to maintain the important items that they own" and more middle class / rich people with BS tools and sheds full of tooling that they rarely if ever use + all kinds of other consumer crap that is not related to tools.
If someone needs "additional tools simply to maintain the important items that they own" the can still be totally minimalist.
But how is minimalism related to maintenance? I mean, minimalist just have/feel the need for less stuff. They still take their cars for service (if they have a car), wash their clothes, call the plumber, etc.
In that sense, minimalist is the opposite of consumerism. It's not about fixing your fridge yourself or making your own furniture. It's more about buying less furniture.
Same for eating. A minimalism and a non-minimalism can eat exactly the same, there's nothing much about minimalism as commonly understood that dictates how to eat.
Minimalist just says you don't need 50+ kitchen gadgets, fancy coffee makers, etc. A simple kitchen (with an oven, fridge, pans, microwave, etc) will do. And you can always cook (if you have the time regarding work) or eat out. Minimalism doesn't say anything about not eating out. Just says "don't amass stuff / consume less clothes/furniture/gadgets/shoes/etc / simplify your surroundings".