No wonder minimalism is a growth industry the "stuff" mountain is getting bigger: the average US household owns 300,000 items and additional storage space is real estate's most active growth area. Their new book Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works, defines their message, they say, and while decluttering is good, it's not all about having less: "We focus on making room for more – time, peace, creativity, experiences, contentment, freedom." But Millburn Fields and Nicodemus seem to genuinely believe in their mission to help "people to live meaningful lives with less". "I was chasing the American dream," says Nicodemus, "until I realised it wasn't my dream".Ĭritics point to the irony of The Minimalists' output, that it adds to the mountain of stuff – they have reached 20 million people, they say.
In 2009, the boyhood friends saw the light that minimalism could shine on their stressed, high-earning executive lives, and the accumulation of possessions they admit acted as a distraction from their deep unhappiness and discontent. With her are Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, aka The Minimalists, who have made the study of material goods we own – and why – their life's work. Kondo is part of a new army who have marched on to the popular stage in the past decade banging the minimalism drum.
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Is it a profound philosophy, intended to make us reflect on the damage we're doing to the planet, like the artist Michael Landy's 2001 seminal project Break Down, in which he destroyed all his worldly goods? Or is it just about objects – what we own and what we discard – at the level of Marie Kondo, empress of organising, whose concept of "sparking joy" through what we have around us has resonated to the tune of 11 million books sold on her Kon-Mari method. The term is now applied to innumerable philosophies, products or lifestyle choices, from a light-fitting design to the goal of owning fewer possessions or – the ultimate pared-down minimalism – monk-like asceticism. For something that's all about reduction and "less is more", there's an awful lot of it about. Minimalism seems to be everywhere these days.
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