of cupcakes, literature and black metal

What do I really need in a kitchen, anyway?

I wish I could pinpoint the moment when I embraced minimalism. But maybe like many things, it was a gradual change that ended with a cataclysmic “that’s enough!” I’ve moved around a lot, and maybe that is a big influence. Constantly moving – and not just small distances – means a lot of work, and the more stuff you have, the more work it takes. And maybe because I’m the tiniest bit lazy (okay, a lot lazy) I am always interested in the most efficient way to do things (so I can scamper off and read books faster) and I get annoyed very easily at having to do things multiple times, or to do things that just don’t matter. Like pack things in boxes and move the boxes and unpack the boxes only to realize that 3/4 of the stuff was stuff that didn’t matter. So I don’t want to do a bunch of extra work to keep ahold of a bunch of things I don’t need or want or care for.

Also, I am endlessly fascinated by thinking of what are the most minimum items needed for living. What can I live without, or even more succinctly: what are the only things I need to live? In a lot of radical simplicity movements, or even through advice on de-cluttering, there’s this notion of paring down possessions to only 100 items. I like this idea, perhaps not for the arbitrary nature of the number but for thinking of one’s things in those terms. If I can only this many things, what are the most important things that will make the cut? I’ve never tried to do anything like this, again, I feel like the arbitrary nature fo the number would just create an endless back-ing and forth-ing in my mind: why not 99 things? Why not 101? Does a pair of socks count as 1 or 2 things? What about a series of books, you can’t have just one volume of most series… And so forth.

But, like I said, I like the idea of trimming everything down to essentials only. Or if not essentials (like the series of books) considering the use of every item. Do I really need to OWN it? What does it do for me? Could I find another way to meet this need that doesn’t add to all the crap I already have? I’ve thought about this idea a lot recently, as we’ve spent the last six or so months really getting settled into our place in Boston, which is a place we’re really planning on being for at least several more years. It’s been a long time since I’ve considered that I’ll be in the same place for a long time, so the worry about moving and not adding things to the next potential move is a worry a bit far from my consciousness, but the minimalism is certainly ingrained, so it’s a concern. And it’s not just material. I’m fascinated by über-minimalism in literature, as well. As Strunk & White say: eliminate unnecessary words. It’s so much more insane to me to see a story told in as few words as necessary, and I strive for it when I write as well: How can I get this across without beating it to death? Tove Jansson is amazing for this. Her book The True Deceiver is so amazingly spare, each sentence packs layered meaning and movement and tension that it makes my heart want to explode with the sheer beauty and mastery of it all. Truly, a book I will take with me on the next move.

When we moved in, we had NO kitchen equipment. We donated it all to a charity in Seattle before we moved. So, on move-in day, we stopped at an Ikea and picked up a kitchen starter set-all one really needs for a kitchen in a handy-dandy box. Oh, Sweden My love for you and your Scandinavian brethren really deserves its own post. I digress. The box from Ikea was great: the materials within were of good quality and it really was mostly all one would need for a kitchen. But then, the problems…

In software development, there’s this phenomenon known as “feature creep.” Pretend I’m genius-y enough to develop a word processing program. What do you need in a word processing program? You just need to be able to type and have words appear. But, with use, things become susceptible to desires and wishes and different ideas. Okay, now that I’m typing a lot, I want to be able to change the fonts so I can have cool heading, so now, I need to add all these fonts. And styles (bold, italic, underlining). I need to be able to change my paragraph (right, justified, centered, left). Ooh! Ooh! And BULLETS, I need to have bullets. But not just boring dots, I need to be able to have triangles and hearts for bullets, too. So I have to add all those into the code. And here you see the problem: you start off with a simple, straight-forward idea, but eventually, features creep in and begin to complicate an otherwise simple endeavor.

And that’s what happened in the kitchen. We open up the startbox and it has a great, plastic measuring cup. But it’s in metric! Not that metric is bad, but it’s weird metric. Like, deciliters and such, nothing that is easily convertible from American cookbooks. So the next time I’m out and about, I pick up a NEW measuring cup. And after a couple of months of cooking with the items out of our startbox, other problems emerge: heating leftovers takes too long because we don’t have a microwave and then we have to dirty one of our only three pans. And when one pan is dirty it adds all this work to clean it or try a different method. So we bought a microwave. And then after a while we’ve cooked all these weird things but we miss toast-plain old toast-so I bring home a toaster. And you know, we spend an awful lot of time making coffee in our french press and cleaning the thing out, so when we’re out and about and see a french press KIT, we can think of a million uses for all the items and we spend so much time at the french press, it’s an easily justified purchase. So from one small box, our counters’ clutter has grown to incorporate all these new things that we would have considered luxuries when we were standing in Ikea wondering: “What do we really need in our kitchen anyway?” But after a while, luxuries can start to feel like necessities, and feature creep can choke out the best of a minimalist’s intentions.

But, all hope is not lost. Yes, sitting around living life the same way can start to itch one’s skin, and provide the perfect breeding ground for feature creep. But I think there are methods by which to keep it to a … minimum … You can try to keep things at an arbitrary level. Only 100 items in the kitchen! Or the whole house! Or you can keep it at a more practical level. Only whatever can fit in this drawer and still be seen! OR, you can keep a couple of things in mind when you’re considering a purchase:

If it’s something pretty frivolous (and you totally know what those things are) you can wait however many days the item costs in dollars. That is, if you want an awesome new $40 mouse that you see in the store but yours at home is pretty functional, wait 40 days. Usually by day 3 shopper’s lust has faded, (or buyer’s remorse would have set in) and you save yourself a bunch of grief. And seriously, if you’re still considering the mouse after 40 days, it’s probably going to be a purchase you’ll get a lot of use out of.

The questions I mentioned before: Do I really need to OWN it? What does it do for me? Could I find another way to meet this need that doesn’t add to all the crap I already have? Also, considering that I have to find the space to store it, clean it, pack it around if I move, etc., is it still worth it? Is there something at home already that can get tossed to make room for the new item? I still struggle with this stuff a lot, but awareness is the first step. If the goal (as it is with me) is to stay in a small space without a bunch of crap around, then thinking about these questions can help keep the influx of more clutter, features, etc., down.