Living La Vida Mínimo
America is number one….in terms of using too much space, buying too much stuff and using too many natural resources. But halfway across the world another sprawled-out, car-loving, former English colony gives us Yankees a run for our money in terms of maximalist living. As we’ve seen before, Australia has the world’s biggest homes and, unsurprisingly, they have their own issues with consuming too much. And now they are issuing their own revolt…against unchecked, consumer-crazed living (in fact, this month is “Buy Nothing New Month“). This short video points to a growing (or is it contracting?) minimalist movement in the land down under.
The video centers mostly on Brooke McAlary, who runs the minimalist blog slowyourhome.com. She expresses why she chose to become a minimalist and its myriad benefits. We also get a peek into her particularly suburban interpretation of minimal living. Brooke lives with her husband and two children in a not-so-small home. She has a yard and even a storage shed. But the house is sparsely, albeit tastefully, decorated, and their lives–at least in her telling–are free from many of the associated woes hyper-consumer living, leaving them more time for each other and more money for travel and other great experiences.
The video also interviews The Minimalists (aka Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus) and Australians Mark Adam Douglass and his wife Jess. They all talk about their motivation to live more meaningfully and how living simpler lives with less stuff supports that. In a word, Millburn puts the movement best, saying “Love people, use things, because the opposite never works.”
Thanks for the tips Chelsea!
Via SBS