every little thing you think that you need every little thing you think that you need every little thing that's just feeding your greed oh I bet that you'd be fine without it.
You're listening to The Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and TK Coleman recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.
Yes, thank you, Malabama.
Hello everybody. Today on the show we're talking about the fear and joy of creating blank spaces in our lives.
Coming up on this free Public Minimal episode, a caller has a question about what happens if she doesn't find anything meaningful on the other side of minimizing her stuff.
And then we've got a question about the terror of blank spaces.
That's followed by our Right Here Right Now segment and a listener tip.
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Let's start with our callers.
If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you.
Our phone number is 406 -219 -7839, or you can email a voice recording to podcast at TheMinimalists .com.
Our first questions day is from Joanna.
Joanna I'm a podcast patron subscriber from the UK.
I'm just been thinking about how when say minimalism isn't about things.
It's about making room for important things which aren't things at all.
I have a fear that I've suddenly realized is there about how I don't think I will find anything important at the end of this and so I started wondering what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and almost don't want to do it because I don't want to find nothing at the end, I've had 20 or more years of being given incorrect psychiatric medication due to having autism and ADHD that weren't diagnosed until I was in my 30s and 40s, mid 40s really nearly 50.
I masked as an autistic adult, pretended to be other people, well not other people, but I pretended to be somebody who I wasn't, I guess, to try and fit in with other people and now feel like I really don't know who I am, have no idea what I like.
I can be doing activities and I don't know whether I'm enjoying it, and when I look back on things, I often have no idea what I feel about anything at all.
Any decisions are often made because other people's expectations or needs or wants and then when I do have spare time or I cast some time aside for myself, I really don't know what to do or what I want to do and that blank space inside me and blank time it's really quite frightening.
Anyway, so there we go, we might be getting rid of things, but supposing there's nothing important at the end of it.
You know, TK, this is more common than you might suspect.
When people start getting rid of stuff, there's often this inverse consumerism or reverse consumerism, this may be a better way to think about it, where we bought a bunch of things in order to make us happy.
It didn't work so we buy more things to make us happy, more must be the answer and it doesn't work it does give us some pleasure for a short period of time and we mistake that pleasure for happiness.
Of course pleasure isn't happiness and we did a whole hedonism episode about that it might be my favorite all -time favorite podcast episode because just pleasure after pleasure after pleasure continues to increase the threshold so more and more and more doesn't work, and so instead of more, we try different, like oh, I bought all the wrong things, so I must get different things that will make me happy.
A different house, a different city, a different job, a different couch, a different bed, a different mattress cover, different, different, different.
It's just another version of more, more, more.
And then when that doesn't work, at least in my case, and I'm roughly age 30, almost 30, when I first stumbled into minimalism at the time, I realized like, oh, all these things won't make me happy.
you know, my first thought was, well, what if I just get rid of everything?
Maybe that would make me happy.
But as Joanna pointed out, minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things so we can make room for life's most important things.
It's about making that room.
And it often starts with creating that, as she says, blank space.
She also uses this great term, blank time, which I'd love to unpack with you as well.
That's a different kind of blank space.
And so, of course, getting rid of this stuff isn't going to give us perpetual bliss, but maybe it'll allow us to make room for something different, not something that's going to make us happy because the happiness is not out there in the externalities, but a lot of these externalities are actually making me miserable.
But here's what happens.
When we get rid of everything and you come home to an empty house and now you realize, uh oh, this might even be worse because I've removed all my pacifiers.
At least the things that weren't making me happy were at least distracting me a little bit from my unhappiness.
And now where Joanne is, I'm afraid of continuing to minimize because what if I don't find anything meaningful on the other side of my stuff?
Yeah, I think it's so important.
And this question is a great reminder of it, to think about the value of minimalism in terms of what you say at the end of every episode.
It's about the relationship rather than the results.
If you think about it as a result, then there's some final stage to get to, some final boss to be, you know, to be defeated.
And then, when you get to that, if you don't experience the requisite high, well, then you lose.
But if you think about it in terms of relationship, then minimizing our stuff becomes a means to an end, and what is that end?
The end is redefining, and reframing, and revitalizing, breathing new life into our relationship with things and people.
It's really about getting off autopilot with our habits of buying things, consuming things, and possessing things, and introducing intentionality to that.
This is why it's so important that you talk a lot about not renouncing things.
It's not the renunciation of my stuff, and so when I minimize, I'm not saying, be damned, you know, thou evil thing, you know?
It's about saying, hey, I'm gonna let you go so that in this space I have some room to think about if I really need you, and if I really need you, why do I need you?
So on the other side, it's not like there's some grand treasure that you gotta have in order to win.
It's just about saying, okay, now that you've got some distance between these things, what do you really want?
And if the answer is nothing, that's important to find out too.
Yeah, and there's an abundance component to this as well.
The blank time or the blank space, sometimes that is a type of abundance.
And we often mistake abundance with more things, more widgets, more consumption, as if having excess things is going to bring us excess happiness.
But it doesn't do that.
In fact it brings us fear, but real abundance exists only where fear doesn't.
Fear is, you know, scarcity, right?
The fear of missing out.
We were talking about this at Simple Haven quite a bit.
We just had this great three -day retreat here in Southern California up at Ohio in my current hometown.
And it was really beautiful.
We brought 30 people together, and we just sort of met under the oak trees at the Ojai Art Center.
And this idea of fear came up again and again and again.
I'm letting go of something.
While on day two, we started talking about, okay, letting go's fine.
We want to let go of the things that are no longer serving us.
But what am I making room for?
And that is obviously the question that Joanna's asking.
But she's asking another question.
What if I'm making room for the nothingness and that nothingness is terrifying?
So here's one way I like to look at the process of asking questions that might lead to perhaps a disappointing answer.
Imagine you spend your whole life being suspicious that deep, deep, deep, within some hidden cave in a faraway land, lies a treasure that will make all of your dreams come true.
And every night when you go to sleep, You wonder about that treasure.
And then you decide to spend your whole life in search of it.
And you find your way across the country or across the world.
You make it into that cave. You exercise the bravery to go deep inside.
And then when you get there, you find that that treasure isn't there.
Question, have you wasted your time?
It depends. Had you never gone on that journey, would you have tormented yourself for the rest of your life about what your life could have been?
Because if the answer to that question is yes, then you haven't wasted your time at all.
In Death of a Salesman, Willie Lomac lives much of his life in regret and in his older age, he's struggling financially, he's struggling with his job, and he never stops thinking about his brother, who many years ago invited him to go on an adventure with him, to take an entrepreneurial creative risk.
And his brother had dreams of him being wealthy, and Willie was a little too scared and a little too conservative.
His brother goes and does it and he succeeds, Willie always thinks what my life might be if I had exercised that courage.
And he spends his life tormenting himself.
If you're going to end up being Lomac in that sense, then perhaps you haven't wasted your time and so I think the goal of wrestling with questions, the goal of following our dreams, the goal of going after things isn't because life gives us some kind of guarantee that we'll win, but rather by doing things that are worth doing, by seeking after answers to the questions that burn in hearts we discover important things about ourselves that allow us to live life differently even if we have to go back to the life that we always knew and so sometimes there's just value in getting answers to your questions
so if there's nothing on the other side you may find that it's a nothing that you can be at peace with as opposed to staying where you are now and never getting the answer to your questions.
Yeah i'm thinking about this courage thing that you brought up here because several people who came to Simple Haven told me at the end, I'm glad I had the courage to do this.
I was afraid of going, afraid of wasting my time, afraid of feeling awkward, afraid of what was on the other side of this retreat.
But ultimately, I think I also came down to a fear of letting go.
I was afraid of letting go of the past because what if those were some of the best days?
And that's a disempowering story of sorts.
So that's one other thing we let go of were a lot of disempowering stories.
We had everyone focus on the three things they wanted to let go of over the three day weekend, and it was amazing when I saw people write down, some people said I want to let go of 80 % of my stuff.
Okay, I get that, right?
But okay, what are you gonna do with that 80 % of space?
You don't have to necessarily do anything with it, and I think that's the fallacy.
When we talk about making room, it's not room for more stuff, although it can be.
You might be making room for the things that are actually important to you and these other things were getting in the way, but there's a courage here and there's a trusting that there's something on the other side of this, but there's also a trusting that even if it's not the treasure that we thought it was, there's something else here that is worthwhile.
That's exactly right, that's exactly right.
It's not about finding the right answer.
It's about finding the true answer and having that courage to recognize that we're always better off knowing the truth.
So if there's nothing there, that's important for you to find out.
Yeah, and by the way, let's not pathologize the fact that there might be, there might not be the treasure that you want on the other side of this, especially if we have an expectation that there's going to be the functional equivalent of winning the intellectual or emotional lottery by getting rid of my things.
Yeah, you'll probably feel calmer, you'll feel lighter, the things that are harder to count, right?
How many international units of calm do you get by getting rid of 80 percent of your stuff?
I don't know, but I can tell you from personal experience I can't measure the amount of calm that I have relative to when I was 29 years old, but it is appreciably more, and it's more regular as well.
Before I had blips of peace I had blips of calm amid a sea of chaos, and now that chaos appears way less frequently, but also I'm able to survive within that chaos because I have the space for that to show up when it does.
Yeah, you know I know a drama teacher who gave herself five years to pursue her acting dream in L .A.
She went to L .A., five years, didn't make it at all, went back to her hometown and taught drama.
And says, of course I don't regret that.
Now that I'm a drama teacher, I have a whole set of stories and experiences that really makes things resonate with my students, but I didn't get what I wanted, but I was never promised that I would get it anyway.
I just went to find out and I'm glad that I found out and I gave myself a time limit and that's it.
And so what's the worst thing that could happen?
if you began this process of minimizing for the sake of experiencing a little bit of levity, you experience that and you get to the end of it and you say, darn it.
I thought there was some cool prize at the end and there is nothing romantic, nothing beautiful, nothing mystical here.
Okay, now what? What's the worst thing that can happen?
It's not like you made a million dollar investment.
If anything you've saved money by reducing your consumption.
It's not like you have bought into some scam business that required a 50 grand upfront investment.
and you've just minimized your stuff and gave yourself a little more peace, the worst thing that can happen is you just go back to the life that you once had.
You say let me bring all this stuff back.
This was a waste of time.
But guess what, when you bring it all back, you're gonna be way more intentional and you're gonna have way more self -knowledge and so you'll still be better off in the process.
I was just in Nashville yesterday and I was talking to George Camel from the Ramsey Solutions team.
And the question he often asks folks on the money front is, and then.
I remember a few, or maybe it was last week, actually, We were talking about a friend who said that he would if he made $200 million, then he'd be set for life.
And it's like, okay.
Yeah I mean, I guess you would money wise, right?
But what's the and then?
And then, okay, you've gotten 200 million.
Let's say you had 199.
Okay, what are you gonna do with the extra money, and then?
And I'm not saying that it's wrong.
You may have a great reason for wanting $200 million.
Think of how many wells that I can build in Malawi, okay.
Wonderful, then it sounds to me You want to do everything you can.
In fact, if you look at the, what's it called, the functional altruism group, you can see how they are, they're willing to do really hard work and work 80 hours a week because they find that's the best way to contribute beyond themselves, take all that money they're earning from venture capital or whatever and pour it into places that may need those resources.
They have an and then.
And to me, Joanna's question is an and -then question.
Okay, I'm letting go of the stuff, and then I'm making space for X.
And that X could just be, you know what, I want to be calmer.
I don't know anyone who's ever regretted simplifying their life because as TK said, if you want to make it more complex in the future you always can.
You can bring in more stuff, you can bring in more relationships, you can bring in more frustration, you can bring in more hours worked.
I do wanna wrap up this question by talking about this blank time concept.
I love that term that she sort of accidentally threw in there, right, because to me that is the most valuable thing and I didn't realize this at the time when I was simplifying.
I thought yes, I was making room to feel lighter and freer and maybe that would lead to more happiness long term, I had to really identify what happiness was and disambiguate it from pleasure and excitement.
Those can be ingredients, but it's not the whole thing.
But for me, the biggest benefit is more spaciousness in the calendar, that blank time.
I value it so much now, compared to wow, maybe I wasn't just wasting my money on stuff, I was wasting my time on stuff.
That's so good, and you're better at that than anybody I know, by the way.
And so I think you have given me pause, many moments in life to think about how I can create more space for emptiness.
And one of the things I think your life and philosophy illustrates very well is that emptiness does not merely lead to treasure.
Emptiness is a kind of treasure unto itself.
But what makes it so difficult to be open to it is we want that foreknowledge, we want that certainty, we want that guarantee, we want that assurance that it's going to be okay.
But if a new experience could always give you the assurance that it's going to be okay, then, by definition, it ceases to be an adventure, and our soul needs adventure.
If you know what's going to happen ahead of time, then it can't possibly be a discovery.
And without the possibility of discovery, what are we doing?
Whatever we're doing, it's not living.
And last week we talked a lot about uncertainty and how we actually need that level of uncertainty and next week we're going to do a whole episode about the beauty of uncertainty.
We've got some uncertain things that are even coming up for the minimalist we're going to save that for next week.
But for Joanna the next question for you is, and then, question mark, okay, I'm letting go and then?
Okay, I won a million dollars.
And then? Okay, I want to buy that Mercedes Benz.
And then? That is always a question worth asking.
I'd love to send you a copy of the minimalist first book, Joanne.
It's called Minimalism Live a Meaningful Life, and really, it's a story about finding the things that matter after decluttering.
It focuses on these five foundational values, and identifying what is valuable to me.
So, minimalism live a meaningful life.
We'll send you the ebook or the book book, or if you want the audiobook, we'll be happy to send that to you as well and while we're at it I would encourage you to download our free values worksheet over at the minimalist comm slash V it's one of our free resources and you can fill this out and especially useful when you do it with a friend or a family member so you can better understand other people's values and they can better understand your values because one thing that Joanna talked about is well I call OPE other people's expectations and when we are just following everyone else's expectation it's
kind of like when you take a balloon and just let the air out and it starts flying all over the room like crazy.
Thank you Bama. And that's what happens when we live our life by other people's expectations.
We're not grounded in our values just like that balloon isn't grounded and it creams from wall to wall to ceiling to floor and goes all over the place and you don't know where it's going to go next, but you do know by the end of it, it's going to be deflated.
So download that values worksheet, identify what your values are.
That will help you identify what you are making room for.
It's free to download at TheMinimalists .com.
Malabamba, before we get back to our callers, and we've got a bunch of them here, what time is it?
You know what time it is, it's time for the lightning round, where we answer the Patreon Community Chats question of the week.
Yes indeed. Now during the lightning round, we attempt to answer your question with a short shareable minimal maxim.
You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at TheMinimalists .com and every minimal maxim ever at MinimalMaxims .com.
We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox for free including seven new maxims every Monday if you sign up for our email newsletter over at TheMinimalists .com.
We'll never send you spam or junk or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity.
What's the question of the week this week?
Blank space. Do you find it terrifying or appealing?
TK. Blank space, do we find it terrifying or appealing?
Before we get to our pithy answers here, I wanna hear from our simpletons.
What did some of our listeners have to say, Bama?
Cynthia said blank space is essential in design.
It allows the eyes to rest and brings peace to the atmosphere.
It also allows other elements to shine and move to the center stage.
A room, wall, counter, or closet can be complete with less.
You know, when we first started our blog, our website, TheMinimalists .com, you can go there now and there's all this blank space on the side.
And we first started, we wanted to get like a sidebar, what are we gonna put over here, what we're gonna put here, and I just talked to Ryan about it, and we both agreed, like what if we just left it blank?
What if this website was mimetic of what we're doing with our own lives?
We have what is essential here, right here in the center, and then what if we didn't need to have the sidebar with the promotions or the banner advertisements?
What if we I didn't need the pop -up, please sign up for this, newsletter, whatever, right?
You know what, it may be more calm.
It may be the place that people go and they feel calmer when they are reading it.
So I think she brings up a great point.
In design, we often see a beautiful use of blank space.
What do Nevi have to say?
Blank spaces always bring opportunity, but not all opportunities are happiness -shaped.
Blank space in a new apartment or after a huge decluttering session is amazing.
However, a blank space in your life from a person you miss or wish you had more time to hang out with may make you feel lost for some time before you're ready to accept it.
Injecting blank space into our relationships has actually been really helpful for me, and I think we all recognize this when we spend too much time with someone for too long.
I was just in Nashville, Tennessee, with Nicodemus for three days, and we were in the car together all the time, and it was great.
He's the person I could spend the most time with and enjoy it, but if it was three months straight, I would know, oh, I need more blank space in this relationship.
The thing that makes it thrive is the fact that we have that distance majority of the time.
Yeah, every relationship needs space, and it's only a question of how much is needed, and if you ever think to yourself, well, here's a relationship that doesn't need any space, really ask yourself, never?
even when you go to the bathroom, you want that person on your heels following you, standing next to you, every single moment.
Even when you take a shower, you want them talking to you the whole time, standing right next to you holding your hand.
There are moments where we need that space.
And so if that's true of our relationships, what is that true of our relationship to self, our relationship to our work, our relationship to our things, our relationship to our homes.
Maybe tell me a little about what Nevi said here.
I loved this framing.
Not all opportunities are happiness shaped.
So blank spaces always bring new opportunities, but it doesn't mean it's going to necessarily bring you happiness.
I think that's an important point here.
Maybe we're making room for happiness, but maybe that is not always the point.
Yeah, it's interesting because space is one of those things that can produce happiness and it can make you feel terrified at the same time, which to me means that space or emptiness is really just a mirror reflecting back to us our own disposition, our own expectations, our own attitude.
And when we feel overwhelmed by that space, it could just mean that we've felt overwhelmed for such a long time.
And now we're actually processing that.
We're dealing with it, we're triaging the past and finding a way to be comfortable in that space is difficult, it's like the very first time you meditate, yeah, you've turned it on to volume all around you, but the volume in your head goes way, way up.
And the same thing can be true if you come home to an empty house after decluttering all the stuff.
Or you leave a career and all of a sudden you got all this blank time in your calendar, the spaciousness of your calendar.
You get to this point where you're like, oh, what am I gonna do with this?
And the fear starts to creep in and yeah, it doesn't always look like happiness.
But that is okay. It's okay to be there with those so -called negative emotions that really they're just unpleasant emotions.
that's part of the experience.
That's right, true story, I convinced the buddy to try meditation when he identifies himself as a non -meditative type.
He went and tried it and he came back to me and he says, man, that didn't work.
I said, what happened?
And he says, I sat down to meditate and I closed my eyes and I fell asleep right away.
And I said, believe me, it worked.
If the first thing that happens when you got yourself some alone time and you said no to everyone else and you just closed your eyes, you fell asleep, you discover something essential about who you are and what you need when all the noise ceases.
Let's do a couple more, Bama.
This one comes from C.
Blank space at first terrified me, whether it was blank wall space, blank shelf space, blank closet space or blank drawer space.
It felt like something was missing or that I was too poor to fill the space with something.
But once I lived with it for awhile, I realized it was actually a breath of fresh air, especially in the morning when I walk into my kitchen and see blank counters.
It's a refreshing way to start the day.
Yes, we call this, well there are a few rules here, the no piles rule is something we just did a video about for Instagram, but like, it's so easy any flat surface.
When you walk into a home, they're magnets for clutter.
It could be mail, or receipts, or your handbag, or your wallet, or your keys, or your earbuds, or pocket change, or everything that's in your pocket, or everything that's in your or you know I've got junk mail to set here I'll deal with it later.
And my maxim, this is not my pithy answer, but one I live by is why deal with it later when you can deal with it now?
It's sort of the anti procrastination maxim and it's something I'll tell myself because when I just get to it, nope.
Why deal with it later when I can just deal with it now?
Because the problem with dealing with it later a lot of the time I'm still dealing with it now.
It's oh I've gotta do that thing.
And it always feels so insurmountable in the moment.
Dealing with that pile of junk mail on the counter, you know what, it's gonna take me three hours.
It might actually only take me three minutes or 13 minutes or whatever it is.
It's almost never as big as I build it up in my mind.
That's right, and by the way, when we think about space primarily in terms of the absence of stuff, then that leads to a worldview where you say, well the purpose of space can't be fulfilled, unless I keep filling it with stuff until it's full.
But if you think of space as energy, as vitality, as room for play, then you kind of look at it relationally, and you say, oh, the purpose of space can be fulfilled without me filling it with things, but by me allowing it to nourish me, or by me using this space to play and to create.
The other rule that we use is the setting the stage rule.
Which I think goes hand in hand with the no piles rule.
We did another video about that for Instagram as well.
It'll be coming out soon.
You can check that out if you follow us there.
But the setting the stage rule is you take a timer, set it for 15 minutes.
I only need five now, but give yourself some grace.
Give yourself 15 minutes at the end of the day to set up your next day for a simple morning.
Because there's nothing worse than you get up and you're like, already tired, no, no, I've got a crazy day ahead of me.
And then there's stuff on the counter.
The dishes aren't put away.
The dishes weren't even washed.
Oh, I forgot to fold the clothes.
So what we do is, we just spend 15 minutes at night setting the stage for the next day.
So there's no Legos on the floor, no toys in the living room, there's nothing strewn throughout the house.
We're setting up our next day for success by taking five to 15 minutes tonight so I don't have to force my future self to deal with it or worry about it or be inconvenienced by it tomorrow.
I think about Blank Space, what C.
is talking about here, on walls, It's okay to have a blank wall.
There's no problem with that.
It's not illegal. No one's going to get upset with you.
In fact, it can be really calming.
It doesn't mean you have to have blank walls.
I remember when I first moved in with Colin Wright who's been on the show several times.
He's the guy who introduced me to Minimalism, we started a publishing company back in 2012.
In 2013, he and Ryan and I all moved into this house together in Missoula, Montana and one of the rules he has, I don't put anything on the walls.
Now, that's not a rule for him now.
So he's changed that over time, but what was really great about that is it showed me another way.
You didn't have to, you weren't required to do anything.
Everything is optional.
Your couch is optional.
Your coffee table is optional.
You know what, your coffee pot is optional.
Even your bed is optional.
I know someone who doesn't sleep with a bed.
They sleep on a floor with a little, like on a little rug and that's not for me.
It doesn't mean I have to go that way either, but everything that's in your home is optional and that blank space is optional as well.
One other thing we do in our kitchen real quick is we have a kitchen cabinet that we intentionally keep bare.
It's blank. It's just one cabinet.
Even though sometimes I'm like, oh, I'll just put it in there.
No. What we're doing is we're proving to ourselves that we don't have to fill every space just because it's a blank space.
Let's do one more, Bama.
This one's from Lottie.
You can feel rich with lots of space.
A room with little in it can feel luxurious.
It's the same trick advertisers do with printed materials.
Luxury brands have large blank spaces around the content.
Oh TK, talk to me about the luxuriousness of blank spaces because that's so true when you think of like luxury hotels or luxury homes or luxury living, we're not thinking of like more stuff, we're thinking of more spaciousness.
Yeah well it's similar to how certain people who are really powerful can afford to not say anything or afford to not do something about it.
You know it's like if some drunk guy at the bar is saying man I could punch your lights out, a really powerful person can afford not to talk back.
They can afford to not engage in a fight.
In a similar way when you're designing and you don't feel the need to fill up every crack and every crevice you're signaling to people something that's very powerfully on an aesthetic level.
We can afford to let the space speak for itself.
I'm not afraid of having some blank space.
Yeah, and then you realize that there that does something.
Minimalism has something to do, and this is my pithy answer here that you've heard me say it before, but minimalism is the amplification of spaciousness.
but maybe also it's a type of luxury but it's a luxury that is free.
I don't need to pay any money to not put anything on the wall.
I don't have to pay any money to not put something on the counter or the credenza or on my bedside table.
Think about my bedroom, I don't want anything.
I have a lamp on my bedside table and that is it.
In fact, we did some videos in my bedroom recently as part of this home tour thing that we were doing that we're putting up on Instagram, and to me the bedroom is like the ultimate place for spaciousness because there are two things I want to do in the bedroom ultimately, and they don't involve glowing screens or more stuff or having a bunch of things on my bedside table, things tend to get in the way in the bedroom so I want clear space on the bed, I want clear space on the bedside table.
I don't want a bunch of excess because that feels the opposite of luxurious.
Clutter never feels luxurious to me.
Yeah, that's so true.
It usually clutter kind of cheapens things because anytime you have an excess of something, it just makes you valuate less.
That's so true, yeah, yeah.
So clutter can cheapen your experience.
You want a more luxurious experience?
Find ways to inject more blank space into your everyday life.
How about you, listeners.
Blank space. Do you find it terrifying or appealing?
Let us know why and you can tell us your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to our private podcast. Okay, give me something pithy, TK.
Blank space, do you find it terrifying or appealing?
My pithy answer is space is to control what fire is to gold.
It removes the excess to reveal what is essential.
When you place the gold into the fire, the impurities rise to the surface where they can be easily brushed off.
But if the gold could speak, it would scream.
will say, get me out of here, this is too much, and you'd have to speak back to the goal and encourage it and say, hang in there, yet a little while longer, and you'll find yourself so much more valuable and the goal would have to say, okay, I'll try.
And that's what space, that's what emptiness can be like for us.
Our thoughts seem louder, anxieties and depression moves closer to the forefront and we say, this isn't working, like I'm feeling even more anxious.
I tried this space thing so that I can get some peace, but I feel like I'm moving further away from peace and it's you've got to understand you are gold.
And if you can learn to practice that discomfort by taking it in small doses and sticking with it over time that space that emptiness will indeed make you more valuable.
It's interesting too because you're not saying nothingness and I think Ladi pointed this out with hey advertisers know this in printed materials luxury brands have large blank spaces around what they're advertising but they don't put a blank ad although that could be fascinating.
from an artistic point of view, no, they realize the best way to highlight the thing that they really value is not to put 1 ,000 things there.
When I get on Instagram and I see someone's Instagram story and there's like 1 ,500 words on one Instagram story, I'm like, what is this?
I don't find it aesthetically appealing.
I don't find it particularly compelling.
It feels frantic, it feels manic, it feels chaotic.
whereas you just see a picture of a person and it says so much. You know, the picture, it speaks a thousand words there, and yes, you can put some text with it as well, but sometimes you don't even have to do that.
You're communicating something with the spaciousness just as what you are communicating with the materials themselves.
Funny thing about blank ads, nowadays, when you drive past a billboard where no one's paid for the space or you see a sign on a wall or something like that, there's usually something that says your ad here, call this number or visit this website.
And so, now, when there isn't an ad in a space, there's an ad letting you know that there could be an ad in this space and that ad could be yours.
You know, on page three, we do a sucky ads segment from time to time, and I was just talking to Nicodemus about this because he was back here in California for a few weeks, and he was talking about, I missed the advertisements here relative to the advertisements elsewhere.
It's not that I want these ads, it's just that they're more compelling in LA because they're at least a bit more useful in the sense that, oh, did you know this TV show with Jon Hamm is out?
Or did you know that this new album, the occasion you'll see that, I even saw Veronica Harris, her new documentary I was driving yesterday from the airport, her new audio documentary, she was just on the podcast, they had a lights out bill or lights on billboard up there.
And while I would prefer no ads, that's one of the great things I really enjoy about Ojai, there are no billboards all over Ojai.
There are on the drive into Ojai, but in Ojai, there aren't ads.
And so what Ryan was saying is yeah, I would prefer there were no ads wherever I am.
But if you go to Dayton, Ohio, or you go to Knoxville, or you go to Saskatoon and the ads you see on billboards there, they're quite often...
appeal to me because well A, they're aesthetically displeasing quite often, they're kind of cheap, but moreover they are, how would I put it, they're just not valuable to me.
There's ambulance chasers, have you been injured in a car accident or whatever it is, and and I simply don't enjoy the experience.
I was just in Tennessee and I saw so many of these ads for different law firms. And it just felt like it was cluttering the sky.
And that's just, I just didn't like it.
Speaking of the kind of ads you see in LA, I'm sure y 'all have seen this one.
I was driving on the highway and I saw an ad that said, have you been injured in an accident?
Squabble up, call Drake the lawyer.
And it's literally a lawyer named Drake.
Oh gosh, yeah. Well, you can't copyright a title.
so I guess I guess I get it, but also.
Yuck. All right. That is almost the end of page one.
We still have an entire switch board of callers to talk to, but first, real quick for right here right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. I sort of hinted at it a moment ago, but we've filmed a bunch of new things for social media, mainly for Instagram.
But you can also find the stuff that we're doing on TikTok and Facebook and Threads and X and YouTube shorts as well.
wherever you like to consume your videos responsibly.
And Savvy D and TK and Jordan and Ryan and I were all in here in the studio.
We did a bunch of really hilarious reaction videos to things and some super serious reaction videos to things as well.
That was a beautiful creative endeavor, collaborative experience.
I felt like the five of us were all inputting information and oh, maybe try this.
And Savvy D was like, oh, I think it would resonate this way and Jordan's like, oh, I think you wanna stand here.
and it worked really, really well.
So if you wanna see all three of us, me and TK and Ryan, all interacting to these other decluttering videos and some of the best decluttering insights, you can follow us on Instagram or any of the other social media platforms. Did you have a standout moment from anything we were doing there, TK?
Oh, my gosh, just the opportunity to have the three of us together again, that was something special, you know?
It was so fun and like we were laughing so much we had to like stop at some point And I think that comes through in the videos that we filmed as well.
It was just a joyous time having the three of us and SavvyD and Jordan here as well.
I just really enjoyed spending that time with y 'all.
We've got a bunch of stuff going up on Instagram as well.
Really enjoyed that.
It's different from the other stuff we've ever done.
Also a bunch of stuff in my home as well.
Jordan and SavvyD came up and we did a home tour for Instagram.
We did several of the minimalist rules like the no piles rule and several other things in my home as well.
can check that out on Instagram.
We're at The Minimalist on all social media platforms. Malabem, what else you got for us?
Here's a Minimalist insight from one of our listeners.
Hello Minimalists, this is Nina moving from Mexico to USA and I want to share a couple of tips that I have been finding very helpful.
The first one is a free application that is called IMDYX.
And what it does is that you can scan your clothes to just put the pieces over the floor, take the pictures and the application removes the background.
After that you can mix and match what you already have creating a different outfits.
I have been doing these with my kids clothes and also with my toys.
I have eight different bins with eight different toys that I keep on rotation with my girls so they don't get board, but also I have everything in notice with my application.
The second is a webpage that is named a toy cycle where you can just send them in a box all the toys that you don't need anymore and they will sell it for you and you will get commission of that.
But for busy moms like me that doesn't have the time to start selling each of the items, posting each of the items and keep online for each sell, it's very useful.
I'm also getting my toys from this web page because they have a very good quality on their toys, they clean them, they try to repair them and then they put it on the cell.
I hope this information helps for all the minimalies out there like me.
Thank you. Nina, that is a super useful tip.
I've never heard of Indie -X as a clothing app, but one of the things about not needing to get new clothes is find and go and shopping in your own closet because you can...
you might find some clothes in there.
You're like, oh, yeah, I forgot I own this.
Another thing that we did is the Hate That Shirt rule.
We did a my closet and I try on a shirt and I'm kind of like, oh, or I tried to just put it back in the closet.
Oh, wear this later.
That is the sign that I want to let it go.
But if I go in my closet and I wear a shirt I haven't worn in a month or two and I'm like, oh, I really like this.
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's a sign that I actually want to wear it more.
I'm going to get more value from it if I, if I start using it.
But also with this app, it sounds like you can, you can find different combinations and And so you can find, you can breathe new life into your existing clothes without going to the mall and using your credit card to put your future self into debt to buy a bunch of things that look good on a mannequin.
And then toy cycle, and something else I haven't heard of, but yes, you know, one of the things that happens is kids play with toys, and then they stop playing with them as they get older, and then it's really difficult.
You would go on Facebook Marketplace, sell individual toys, that's a lot of work.
But if you hop on a place like toy cycle, It sounds like they will do that for you, but then also you can buy gently -used and repaired toys from an app like that so that you don't have to buy everything brand new.
So because someone else previously used it but they're not using it anymore, you get the benefit of that as well.
If anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, you can send a voice memo to podcastattheminimalists .com so we can feature your voice on the show.
Up next we have page two and page three, But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break.
We'll be right back.
All right, that's the first 34 % of Episode 490.
We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions.
Questions like what happens when my exciting work turns out to be too stressful?
Why do I feel so compelled to save other people from their circumstances?
What does it take to create a staged home calm that always feels calm, plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on The Minimalist's private podcast on Patreon.
And that is our minimal episode for today.
Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space.
On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, T .K.
Coleman, Malabama, Post Production Peter, Spire Jeff and Spire Dave, Savi D.
on the board, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields -Milbert.
If you leave here with just one message, I'd love to be this.
love people and use things, because the opposite never works.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time.
Embrace the emptiness.
Every little thing you think that you need, every little thing you think that you need, every little thing that's just feeding your greed.
Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.
you
