An old friend of mine recently* posted this quote on his Facebook page:

“The best lives are often well-edited, carefully curated lives.” – The Minimalists

My immediate response was, “This sounds like the mantra of a control freak.” Being a bit of a control freak myself, I feel like I can say this with confidence. The quote immediately conjured images of someone wrestling with the idea of what a particular throw pillow or end table says about them. Inevitably this would lead to someone whittling down their book collection to only the titles that make them look witty, smart, and hyper-intelligent. No mysteries or chick lit here! Is that a scrap of junk mail that didn’t make it directly into the recycling bin? Burn it!

Ugh. Doesn’t that sounds exhausting? Even maddening? There’s a reason why the apartment from American Psycho looks like this:

Obsessive minimalism is, to me, not that different from hoarding. Your life is all about stuff–accumulating it or getting rid of it. Either way, when you let stuff take over your life to that degree, it seems like a symptom of something bigger. Continue reading →