Mastodon post transcription:
kasran, fourier transfemme @typhlosion@awoo.space
minimalism is a scam invented by big small to sell more less
October 29, 2023 at 10:23 PM · 13 replies · 290 reblogs · 425 favorites
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Obsession over minimalism has always frustrated me. Minimalism is for people with lots of disposable cash and encourages buying things for single use or very short term use and discarding them.
Need something done but don't have the tools to do it? You either buy the tools and then get rid of them after the project is done or you hire someone to do it for you. That is not something you can afford to do if you don't have plenty of expendable money.
To me, it feels like how people fawn over ridiculously lavish things like mansions and yachts.
Buying things and throwing them away isn't minimalism
Minimalism is for people who can afford to not be equipped to do anything outside of their specific day to day tasks. I can't afford to not have 12 different tool totes for different job types because I can't afford to hire someone to do a job that I could do, so while the space and upkeep costs are higher long term, it allows me to now have to plan for single high cost occurrences. Minimalism is a lifestyle of privilege.
I suppose everyone looks at minimalism differently, but to me as I understand it functional minimalism is not “have the least amount of things possible; live in a barren house”. It’s more “only have what you need”. If you need those tools, it’s not against minimalism to have them. It would not be minimalist to buy a newer, fancier drill when the one you already have does the job as needed. Minimalism isn’t also about depriving yourself of happiness. But to be thoughtful about the things you buy and whether the act of buying it will trigger some quick endorphins or whether the item will actually serve purpose and fulfillment to you/your heart.
Exactly right. Well said.
Yeah it’s the question of “can I go longer without it” and “can I fix it instead”. I don’t like tying this into a philosophy though I much prefer tying it to being a responsible steward of resources and not being wasteful. It should be a habit and a virtue not a lifestyle
It shouldn't be but to a lot of people it is.
I didn't say that it was necessarily, but it does encourage that under many normal circumstances.
When you have a project that you are not equipped to handle, you need to acquire more things. Those things need to be stored somewhere or be discarded. In order to maintain minimalism how does one store more things? You can't. It then needs to be discarded.
The alternative would be to rent those things or hire someone, but that is often far more costly. Particularly if that need comes up again in the future.
I had to fix some drywall in my house. I bought the resources necessary to do that. Now what do I do with them? I store them. That is the antithesis of minimalism. My only alternative would have been to hire someone else to fix it, or throw the tools and remaining drywall away. Hiring someone would have been far more costly, and throwing away the stuff I bought would be a waste particularly considering things happen and I may need to fix drywall again in the future.
This is just one small example out of many things that can happen that would require someone to acquire more things. How is minimalism compatible with that?
No, that's the opposite of minimalism. Don't buy it if you don't need it. If you do need it, then don't waste money or effort.
What you're describing is a form of capitalism, which has nothing to do with minimalism.
Also, what's wrong with renting or borrowing tools? 🤦
I think the disagreement comes down to the difference between being a "minimalist" and the "minimalism" form of aesthetics. I'm speaking towards the latter, which is a style that is perpetuated via social media. While being a minimalist means you have a goal of using or acquiring less. A goal like that does not have a hard line of what is and isn't 'minimalism' in that sense. While "minimalism" as an aesthetic form of design has to portray a look and feel that doesn't care about what you need.
Because renting can be more costly, and borrowing may not even be an option.
I don't get the downvotes, you're not wrong. I have 3 broken microwaves in the shed. Because they're the same model as the one I have and I might need parts from them. Not very minimalist. Bunch of random computer parts, cause never known when I might need them. Etc.
Would I like to have no microwaves in my shed and just send my Microwave to get fixed when it breaks? Of course. That's expensive though.
You can have both.
Breakimg down the microwaves to harvest out specifically the parts that you would expect to have to replace, then organizing them into a couple small well labeled bins, which go into a shelf of other such small bins that hold all your other repair parts, and thus keeping clutter contained and organized, would be minimalist.
Having 3 half assembled microwaves stacked on top of each other on the floor to be tripped over, or on top of a workspace raking up precious space, would not be.
You can have your cake and eat it too, it just takes work is the downside.
If I knew what was gonna break then it would probably already be broken. Like, If there was a common part that always fails then it would have failed on all of them. Gotta keep all the parts. I could save space on the housing but I've also had the housing rust out or kids break the door etc. Also there have been some slight changes over the years in their design, I've had to pull all the guts out of one and put them into another because the one piece that was bad wouldn't fit properly in the newer housing.
And I simply don't have the time to strip down everything I have in the shed, package, label and identify every part in it. Time is money and people that don't have a ton of one often don't have a ton of the other.
Also the price of nice little bins is crazy, realistically everything is going to end up in cardboard boxes which will get damaged, parts will go missing etc.
And then just having all the tools needed is also another problem, people say rent or borrow but A: there's no where near me that rents tools and B: renting hand tools usually costs about the same as buying them. If you need the same tool again you're once again spending money.
Like it's nice if you can afford it but minimalism is in no way cheap.
Seems pointless to keep 3 entire microwaves around then, also what are you even doing to your microwaves that makes them fail this much? I have never seen a microwave fail, and I use them all the damn time.
Only parts prone to breaking are the knobs, handles, etc, and those are easier to just 3d print a replacement. If your electrical parts of the microwave have failed, I would assume the rest of the unit is already well past its prime at that point.
Bruh what the fuck your microwaves are rusting out? What are you doing to these things.
So these arent even exact same models, which makes it even weirder to keep them for spare parts.
Which is why you want to gain the skill to identify the key parts worth keeping and get rid of the rest. If you have the time to repair the microwave, you also logically should have the time to prep the parts ahead of time so you arent scrambling to ad-hoc fix the thing when it breaks.
You can 3d print them for like a dollar a pop. And in terms of tools, a 3d printer solves a lot of these types of issues, as instead of having to keep a bunch of spares around, or order new parts, or throw the entire thing out and buy a new one, you can 3d print a lot of replacement parts that are prone to breaking.
And most often its the plastic bits that are the most brittle and most prone to snapping/cracking/breaking over time.
Just an example: I had this giant plastic screw for my 30 year old dishwasher, it snapped clean in half and would have been impossible to replace. 30 minutes with calipers and a script I found to generate screw models by measurements online and my machine was printing away. Another hour later and the screw was done printing, I popped it in and... it worked first try and has been in my dishwasher working fine for the past 2 years. Cost me a whopping 30 cents worth of plastic and 30 minutes of my time.
Not really, buying tools you need is acceptable in a minimalist lifestyle. What isnt minimalist is buying a buncha shit you dont need.
There are specific tools that can handle like 99.9% of your use cases, and as long as you get those you should be fine for any ad-hoc work, and the last 0.01% you can rent.
A dremel, hand saw, and power drill can get you really far for a lot of tasks.
Factually false, especially those 0.01% of tools you only need once for a job. Most tools you have to rent for a couple entire weeks before it costs the same as buying, and some you have to rent for a month or two.
Renting is quite cheap actually.
You usually need it several times in these cases before it was better to just buy it.
I at least once every few years have to rebuild a microwave. A: these microwaves are pushing 10-12 years old at this point. B: I live in the developing world and power quality isn't great. Never had a knob or handle fail on this model actually, just electrical parts. Usually I can rebuild the board by replacing components but sometimes it's just dead. They might be "past their prime" but once again replacing something repairable just cause it's old is neither eco friendly nor frugal. I have friends and family with the same microwave also and have been able to help them out with parts in the past.
1: Remember they're like 8-12 years old. 2: tropical climate, super high humidity.
Same model different years. I mean I've always been able to fix them with what I had available so it doesn't seem that weird?
So if I have the time to pull one part out I have the time to pull every part out, label them and 3d print bins to put them in? Also, most parts I have replaced have been either metal or electronic. Even if they were, learning CAD software, buying and maintaining a 3d printer and designing a custom piece certainly seems more difficult and expensive than just popping out out of the spare. I know I could in theory use the 3d printer for other things but I really don't have the time or desire to learn how to use one at this point in my life.
As for renting/buying maybe that's just a country different but I can go the the Chinese tool shop and get tools for not much more than the cost of renting, assuming it's even available for rent here. Yes the quality is crap but for a tool that only gets used every few months it's more than acceptable. I'm willing to concede that this might not be the case everywhere.
Intereesting, yeah local location can absolutely be an influencing factor.
I would still definitely say its worth it to break down the microwaves a bit and at least reduce your clutter to some degree, it's certainly what I would do. Especially since you said:
Instantly that means you can eliminate like a solid 80% of the volume of the microwave, which would reduce clutter tremendously. You are looking at 3? distinct sections of parts/boards you'd be left with typically (fan unit, main board, and the transformer/magnetron assembly)
Thats enough to divide up into 3 bins and now 3 microwaves are 3 bins of parts, which could be put up and out of the way on a shelf.
Here in Canada, typically you'd have to rent something for multiple weeks before its about the same price as buying. If you rent for just 1-2 days at a time you'd have to rent it many many times before it comes close to the price to buy the same tool.
So for tools you use all the time, yeah, absolutely buy it.
But if I say, need a jackhammer literally once to just break up the concrete pad in my yard to replace it, I dont need to buy a whole jackhammer and can just rent it for 1-2 days. Same for cement mixer and whatnot. I probably at most see myself needing to pour concrete maybe 2 or 3 times tops for the entire life of my home I own, so I dont ever see myself buying an entire cement mixer or jackhammer.
But a Saw? Drill? Etc, other power tools I use all the time? Yeah 100% I will buy those.
But even with all my power tools, I have a very organized wall system they go on. A big part of Minimalism is the principle of Mise en Place. Everything has a place it belong, and everything is in its place it belongs.
As long as what you own truly is something you need, and it has a place it goes, and it is in its place it goes, thats minimalist.
People often skip over the boring part but, a big part of minimalism is containers, organization, storage, etc.
People use downvotes to disagree instead of participating in the conversation.