A bird’s-eye view of my apartment: Does this look like a minimalist to you?

A few months after I moved into my new apartment here in Pittsburgh, my family came up for a visit.  (My sister Shawn, brother-in-law Jim, my niece Sophia.)   Jim said “Hey Doug, I hear the stock market is doing pretty well… are you going to fix this place up?”

What the—I stood there dumbstruck.  I figured my sister put him up to it, as I was pretty sure Jim didn’t give a hoot if my walls were pink & my furniture purple.  Plus Shawn knew I was fond of Jim, maybe she figured coming from him it would carry a little more weight.  

Anyway, 3 rebuttals sprang to mind.  Which one would I choose?

1)  That’s NOT how retirement works, Jim.  It’s not like you win the lottery when the market is up, the trick for long-term investing is to STICK to a budget regardless of the highs—so you can have a stable income when things turn gloomy!

2)  Jim, how rich do you think I am?  It’s only been a few months since I wrote that $3,000 check to my slumlord in Waynesburg to get out of that depressing place!

3) “Fix this place up”?   Jim, look around you—since moving back to the city, the sofa is new, the leather chair is new.  The bookcases in the livingroom & bedroom are new.  The dining table—new.  So are the chairs.  The TV stand is new, the bedroom dresser, the nightstand, the BED is new.  The bedroom lamps—new.  The column fan, the wicker pouf, floor pillow, microwave, wall clocks—all new!

Heck Jim, you put most of it together—I think you’d appreciate the break! 

My sister saw this unique 3 seating glass table on Wayfair, where I later found these Indian zinc chairs—I think they’re from the medieval era 

Anyway, I just stood there and said “Yes Jim, I’ll get it fixed up eventually” while he smiled & nodded. 

(Oh, I later learned Shawn never asked Jim to say that—it was all him.)

I’m sharing this now, because recently my neighbor Ronnie’s mother came up from Georgia for an extended visit, and stopped over to say hello.  (A very nice woman, the last time she was here was before Thanksgiving and we talked politics for a couple hours.)  I invited her in to see my humble abode, and she said “Do you live on a tight budget?  Oh I get it… you’re one of those minimalists.”   

I AM NOT.  I just haven’t figured out what other clutter I want in here or what to hang on my walls yet!

And c’mon Mrs. Ronnie, your son’s place is packed to the gills with PILES & PILES & PILES of stuff.  He’s a hoarder!  So yeah, compared to him my place does look pretty spartan!

Still, her words stung (why?) and I resolved to getting more STUFF in here.  I still don’t have a coffee table, there’s room for another chair, I could get an ottoman for my leather chair and maybe a floor lamp….

But the more I went online to look for stuff, the less I wanted it.  Back in August 2016, when I was first hit with the TMJ (and wound up in an emergency room) and my sister thought it’d be in my best interest to move back home (and I readily agreed),  I said I’d probably need 50-60 moving boxes because of all my things. 

Shawn said “You don’t want to take all that stuff with you!  Now would be a good time to get rid of everything and start fresh!”   At the time it made perfect sense:  I wound up selling, giving away or junking furniture, wall hangings & other odds n’ ends, including a ton of clothes, hundreds of books, stacks of dvds—nearly 30 years of accumulated things. 

And I have to be honest, when all was said and done, I was angry at both my sister & myself for doing it.  Sitting in that dingy little place in my old hometown again, with few reminders of the life I had in Pittsburgh, it was like I’d given the last 30 years of my life away as well. 

But after moving back to the city, and (corny as it sounds) being among all the color & diversity again, heck even the PAT buses whooshing up & down my street brought on feelings of contentment, I realized my life wasn’t in all those dusty things I gave away.  It was just being HERE.

The bookcases in my livingroom & bedroom; those few books on the lower shelves are the only physical ones I have remaining, and I do feel a lot less bogged down with stuff now

So while I DO want to get artwork for the walls (also thinking about one of those oversized wall-tattoos), I think I’m done with the accumulation of stuff.   When my neighbor’s mom was preparing to fly back home to Georgia, she showed me a small crystal angel she’d found on the Southside.

She said “Did Ronnie tell you I collect these?  I have one room with over 200 angels alone!”

Good for you Mrs. Ronnie, and by the way you were right—I am a minimalist.