The
Minimalist Home – A Room By Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life –
Joshua Becker – (Waterbrook)
I have often said that there is a thin line between
collector and hoarder. Over time I have come to believe that line between
collector and compulsive gatherer is even more narrow and that we have created
a way of life to feed that compulsion. The older I get the more I have come to
believe that stuff and more stuff, can’t make you happy and that most of the
things that we cling to because “we might need it someday” is almost certainly
misguided.
With basements, garages and backyard sheds overflowing
into countless and multiplying storage sheds and lockers; a new
innovation/movement has sprung to life – minimalism. While minimalist acolytes
come in a variety of forms and approaches; one of the leading progenitors of the
movement via blogs and books is Joshua Becker. Becker sets his sights on your
home space in his latest book, The
Minimalist Home – A Room By Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life. Some
may complain that there is nothing new here that Becker hasn’t covered in prior
books/blogs or he doesn’t offer specific enough strategies.
I liked the fact that Becker offers an overview of
minimalism, without feeling the need to drill down and tell what to do or what
to chuck. Some will take minimalism to an extreme – stuffing a minimum of
necessities into a duffle and lead a vagabond life in a succession of AirBNBs,
worldly possessions in tow. Becker’s approach strikes me to take a more thoughtful or thought
provoking path, so you can develop your own processes and checklists.
Becker has even been slagged for assuming his readers
live in houses and not apartments and injecting Christian principles into his
writing. Sorry, but you have to be a nitpicky pinhead if you can’t gain value
from the insight Becker offers into simplifying, downsizing and focusing on
real joy in the freedom offered by minimalism.
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