Minimalism & In Praise of the New...

Sometimes I like to have something new, whilst this may not be good news for my struggle towards minimalism I do believe that it is good for both the spirit & for keeping up with innovation.  The reasons why I believe it's good for the spirit come from the belief that inside us all is a little child, who loves to have a treat and who also loves new shiny objects!  In other words, when we get something new it makes us feel special.  I know that you're probably yelling at the screen right now that we should be mature & regulate our desires etc.  But I honestly think that a little of what you fancy does you good, subject to certain restrictions, namely, that you can afford what you're buying & that it will genuinely give you pleasure for more than five minutes.

In all fairness you could keep playing your old CD's and make your calls on an old brick mobile (with no sense of post modern ironic style) for as long as your equipment lasts, or you could favour the Kondo Minimalist idea of keeping what you love and gently saying goodbye to the other items, which does give you the opportunity to replace some of them with shiny, new, more efficient & usually smaller items (an Ipod versus a CD collection) and yes, my whole music collection fitted onto my Ipod Classic (even though it amounted to over 90GB).

Minimalism teaches you to work out what is important to you and attach values to what you have in terms of what it adds to your life, so if you do choose to upgrade or replace something for a shiny new item, don't feel bad, but do make sure that you savour every moment of unwrapping it, playing with it and generally enjoying the kidlike pleasure of a treat - just don't get sucked into buying too many of them!