Those that know me best know one thing about me - I love my stuff, and, boy, I have a lot of it. I am a proud collector. I own a toy collection going back with some items over forty years. I have a massive DVD/Blu-ray movie vault and enough pictures and posters to cover the walls of your local Applebee’s.
Now, look, I know that my tastes in decor probably aren't mainstream, and, I also understand and respect those who choose to live life with considerably less 'things'. But let's get one thing straight right now - your voluntary lack of personal property does not make you a better person than me.
I realize not every minimalist is a raging, self-fart savoring, social media peacock with an unquenchable need to thumb your nose down at someone for hanging onto their childhood baseball card collection. This rant is geared towards those who do.
In recent years minimalism has become in many circles viewed as an aspiring practice. On the surface, I myself agree with some of the ideas of rejecting rampant consumerism and materialism as a way to cleanse oneself. The problem is - I am a person that gets comfort from objects. I love walls full of color, and a home full of nearly every representation of things, times, places, stories and people – fiction, real, or otherwise, that have in some way touched my life. When my wife and I have gone house hunting over the years I don't just see a house - I see the vacant walls and rooms that represent an empty canvas just waiting for me to color with my mountains of organized chaos. There are few things that give me more enjoyment than decorating, and redecorating my 'man cave' again and again. Creating a room with a plethora of nick-knacks is a challenge, a challenge to create aesthetically pleasing displays without making the room feel claustrophobic or overly cluttered. My problem isn't with minimalism as a practice, it is with minimalists who, like many vegans, see their way as not only the right way, but any other lifestyle as a socially unacceptable disease.
One more thing- collecting within reason, is not hoarding. Until the day I have stacks of trash piled to the ceiling, along with thirty shitting cats navigating the maze that runs between the couch and the kitchen of old pizza boxes and newspapers and a freezer full of mummified thanksgiving turkey from 1999 - I am not a hoarder. But enough about me, let's talk about you, Captain Minimalist.
Let's talk about your one bedroom apartment or your boxcar-sized micro house and your self-restricted one hundred items. Let's talk about the fact that you probably not only lack the basic tools to cook for yourself anything beyond a frozen pizza or a screw-driver to change out the batteries in a smoke detector. Let's visit the fact you probably ask the people in your life to borrow their shit… A LOT. You see, that doesn't make you enlightened, that doesn't put you on some intellectual, other-dimensional plane where you can levitate lotus flowers or some shit - it just makes you at best an annoyance and at worst a sanctimonious man-child-douche.
Fine Mr. Self-Promoting-Minimalist, you want to call me a hoarder, cool, but, conversely that makes you a hobo. And no, Boxcar Willy, you can't borrow my vacuum cleaner.
