Every Indian household is in mourning. COVID in India took a turn for the worse and no home went untouched. One can try make sense of death by making peace with decay, by meditating and by being in awe of the great carbon cycle we are all a part of. I don’t want to see death as end of life, but a part of life. After I die, I would like my carbon to eventually go into the soil, grow into moss, nourish insects, become rocks, be part of clouds, form tree rings and reach the oceans. (Currently, my carbon is perpetually parked indoors on a chair by my desk.) All of this is tragic and beautiful at the same time. These are the perspectives I tap into, to find solace in natural life cycles. However, these are not words I can speak to anyone in grief. These are not the words I want to listen to, when my mind is lost to sorrow. These are not words one should use to let elected officials off the hook for a job poorly done. Beyond a point, it’s all helplessness and letting time do it’s magic. Sometimes, by helping others, we end up helping ourselves. MissionOxygen was where I rage donated and momentarily felt less helpless. ( The biggest donor stayed anonymous and I will forever be in awe of this human. ) Licypriya Kangujam, a grass-root climate activist, will always and forever have my support when she fund raises. Small organizations on the ground maybe the best way to serve communities. Indians had gone from waiting for saviors to come do something, to rising up within. When in stress, I used to distract myself with consumable goods and experiences. This year, I am doing some death cleaning instead. I re-read these words. Excerpts from these books helped : Practical advice from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition & Japanese death poems. I cleaned.

Image Credit : Trey Ratcliff

Handwash Winter Clothes.

Clean sweaters, socks, jackets and store them after winter has finally left us. One per week. I am finally done.

Why not drop them off at the dry cleaners, you ask ? Glad you asked.

Firstly, the money not spent on repeat. It’s a garment, not a subscription you got to pay year after year, to own and use.

Secondly, hand wash with olive oil soap is good for the clothes and the environment.

Thirdly, if I hand wash, I wont buy sweaters that aren’t a true need. Coz who wants to do more hand washing for a fun sweater worn 5 times during the season ? I wont prematurely throw away a sweater that I cared for, for the last 6 years either. I notice the wear and tear. Spot cleaning has become second nature. ….

Feel the burden of you possessions and you will live lighter.

What about time spent, you ask ?

If you grew up looking down upon humans who clean or have been told that you are too important to waste time cleaning anything by yourself or have never held a service job in your life, this philosophy can help with cultivating the mindset : A monks guide to a clean home. (Or learn from mothers and fathers who mother. )

I digress. The sweaters and socks have been washed. The outerwear, spot cleaned. My apartment deep cleaned. Seeing my possessions ready for the next year of service, fills me with gratitude.

Further reading : The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Simple Living.

On Decluttering :

The way I perceived decluttering when I first started practicing minimalism isn’t the same as I do today.

I can no longer clap when an aspiring minimalist proudly declares that trash bags full of stuff has been thrown out. Influencer minimalism has become synonymous with decluttering. It is disproportionately lacking in the tools necessary to develop the necessary mental models to desire less and need less.

Unless a philosophy and a spiritual practice steps in to address the deficit, minimalism will continue to be : buy, declutter, buy, and purge again.

Or worse, we may end up viewing minimalism as boring / depravation.

And minimalism reduces to a trend that eventually fades away.

Clothes :

Till I know for sure that I have reached a certain level of peace in my mind, I decided to not declutter my clothes. My history supports this decision. Over time, I have slowly added back as many second hand clothes as the fast fashion scores I vigorously purged after reading my first blog post on minimalism by Joshua Becker. Reading about 40 item closets from a vantage point of a 90 item closet and thinking that decluttering is what it takes to be content with a 20 item closet, is a failure of my rational capabilities. Minimalism is a mindset. Decluttering is one action. Till the root cause is addressed, tinkering with the symptoms is counter productive. I haven’t decluttered for years now.

This year, I only subtracted the garments I no longer fit into, after some weight gain.

That blue dress from Phoebe Philo’s Celine that I thought I will wear till I turn 60. It’s now listed on RealReal.

The wrap silk dress that once made me feel French IT girl ? Realreal.

A wrap dress that looks very wrong on my new body. Craigslist.

A sweater that is too tight. Donation box on my street.

A pair of raw denim I cant button up. Stored in a box because I cant wrap my head around letting it go yet.

Shoes.

James Clear of Atomic Habits said something in the lines of “If you focus on the number on the scale, rather than becoming healthier, you’ll start to do unhealthy things to see that number go down”. Rather than trying to find shoes to get rid of, I tired to develop some habits :

  1. Declutter influencers and limit exposure to advertisements. No aimless wandering through the stores please. No need to check out seasonal collections as they arrive.
  2. Limit spending time on instagram, my #1 source of what’s new in stores and what’s up with the Joneses.
  3. Limit spending time on the phone. A tool should not dictate how I use it. I should be the master of the tools I buy and use for the purpose of my choice.
  4. Dont look up to style bloggers for inspiration. Someone whose entire focus of their day job is to dress up and sell ads while doing it, will have a different set of resources and goals to begin with. Look to older women who live interesting lives and somehow figured out their personal style while at it.
  5. Record wear. Practice gratitude. Wear and re-wear, is what is releasing me from the cycle of buy-dissatisfaction-irritation-purge-desire-buy.
  6. Find ways to experience beauty and creative expression outside consumerism. A camera and a walk does it for me. Every building on every street has a story to tell. Every tree and plant has the potential to contribute to my happiness. Walking is my soul food.
  7. Instead of asking “can I afford it and wear it”, ask “do I need it? Can you explain this need to a person who is underprivileged, without cringing? ” This month, I heard the words “This house only has 5 bedrooms.” “Dont deprive yourself of ____. If it makes you happy, buy it. You have to live your most authentic life.” I will try to remember how I felt upon hearing those words. I finally understand why I see “eat the rich” signs at protests. Empathy is inversely proportional to privilege. Negative externalities are not even acknowledged, let alone considered.
  8. Allocate free time to hobbies that help de-stress. I like cooking and writing. Do not turn hobbies into income streams/career if you don’t need to.
  9. Take up practices that improve emotional strength. We can NOT resort to retail therapy or buy flight tickets, when we are happy, sad, depressed, desperate, anxious, enraged, … as a temporary distraction. We can not run from one dopamine hit to another to drown out sorrow. Mediation helps me. Exercise, helps. Sleep, helps. Crying it out, helps. Hugging my puppy, helps. Talking to other humans, help. Allowing the grief cycles to take their natural course, helps.
  10. Consumer identity is inversely proportional to one’s ecological identity. We have to try to live well on the land we inhabit. Learning about the native trees, plants, soils, water bodies, our waste streams, ecological history, current pressing concerns, network with gardeners, network with zoning activists, network with environmentalists, checking in on my fav tree on my street every day and observing her changes, supporting the small farmers in my town, … help me expand my community. If not, I would be lost in some sci-fi utopia and be perpetually waiting for tech saviors to come fix non-tech problems.
  11. The message of most ads : “It’s YOU. You, you, you. You are the most important thing in the world. You will be made better by what I am selling. You deserve this object I am selling. No externalities need to be considered”. When I find myself thinking like an advertisement, I try to sleep on it. These impulses pass.
  12. To be human is to have 3 kinds of desires : to possess, to know, for sustained thrill/pleasure. Excess focus on possessing makes us passive consumers instead of citizens who can critique corporations and systems. Excess focus on pleasure seeking thrills makes us shopaholics, frequent flyers, philanderers, trend chasers, perpetually chasing our tails, fixated on going to Mars, … Focus energies on the desire to learn.
  13. Make peace with the silences and the lows of the day. Learn to be without constant stimulation.
  14. Find your 3rd place. ( A third place is a location where you can hang out that isn’t your home or office. A place you can visit to just be, does not require you to spend money to be there, welcomes humans of every socio economic background, a place to meet people, …. It can be a park bench, beach, a place of worship, a community garden, a public library, a town square, a hill top, …) Existence of 3rd places is probably why we love certain European cities ? Countries that replace their public spaces for the love of cars and force us to retreat into suburban backyards for solace, make us lonelier by default. Malls make for terrible 3rd spaces. ( Urban activism helps create more 3rd spaces. )
  15. Spend more time with neighbors, friends and family. Volunteer some time on public projects. Smaller my identity, easier it is to solve the problem of consumerism. Larger my identity, easier it is to justify any want as a need and ignore negative externalities. Marketing tricks don’t work on humans with small identity.
  16. Have someone to talk to, about minimalism. Have someone to practice sustainable living with. Tribes help with strength, wellbeing and resilience. After I joined CCL, life became easier. To be surrounded by humans who live simply, makes it easier. I found companionship. If an identity should be formed, let it be centered around sustainable living. “I cant truly wear 20 pairs of shoes. I am not the kind of person who hoards shoes”, is a good script to practice saying to one self.
  17. Sometimes, by helping others, we end up helping ourselves. After a certain point, our success is tied to number of people we help become successful. Help get the Carbon Fee and Dividend act passed. Protest every new fossil fuel expansion scheme.
  18. Am focusing on saving money to buy a home in the future. ( Not an excuse to buy fast fashion. Be frugal, not cheap. )
  19. Beauty is a result of form and elegance with just enough. I think about beauty, a lot. A collection of handbags or shoes or clothes, however gorgeous they are individually, can loose their beauty when they exist in excess. I can not be the one creating an ugly closet with beautiful garments.

Cured and ready, I may never be. But for once, the need for shoes has gone down. 3 pairs were let go. I continue to feel good about it. I have walked away from beautiful shoes since, without feeling the need to fill the newly empty slots. I will try to keep the peace from within.

These subtraction are plenty for now.

Books

We added to the community library in our apartment building.

My partner and I disagree on our library goals and needs. He wants to keep them all, is a maximalist and likes the library-inspired decor. I want negative space and less stuff in general. Only my books get decluttered. His stay. I have learnt to let him be.

Dont Declutter

Letting winter clothes go, in spring. It’s easy to NOT see a need for warm clothes on a sunny day.

Dressy clothes I wore before the lockdown but couldn’t wear during the pandemic.

More shoes. Take it slow.

Textbooks. I am slowly repurchasing physics, chemistry and engineering books from my past. This time, in digital formats.

Avoid any thing that can be done in haste and in bulk. Binge purges don’t necessarily lead to behavior change that lead to minimalism.

Develop the habits first and then downsize in proportion to the progress made.

Some Death Cleaning

Some Buddhist teachings urge you to think about death few times a day. I do now, not because I want to but because I miss the humans we lost. Not contemplating death left me unprepared, betrayed and lost. My puppy will have 10 more years in the most optimistic scenario. My parents might have 10 more years of functional health. I can feel my decay and no longer have the benefits of my youth. My partner might die before I do. All of us have a variable expiration date. Only preparing for the pleasant-to-think-about-scenarios may have ill-prepared me for the realities of life. I have some tasks I am getting through :

Need to write all of Mina’s quirks and training protocols, should her godmother should inherits her from us. Dogs with information and a good story have better chance at being fostered/adopted successfully.

Need to write down memories I have of M, for her kids to read someday.

Stored passwords in files accessible to my partner. Everything from cellphone bill, internet plan, …. loan company logins.

Made a plan for what needs to be done if I need to leave America for good.

Wrote a draft of my will and discussed it with my partner. Need to formalize it.

Made google doc folders with scanned documents for immigration, ids, taxes, insurance documents, etc.

Need to get a life insurance policy that is not tied to my place of employment.

Had a conversation with my parents on their wishes post death.

I am urging my mother to learn family finances so that she is prepared.

Got serious about exercise/healthy diet again, so that my decay isn’t premature and burdensome to my family.

Finances. Am re-thinking my relationship with spending money and who my savings should benefit if I die on net positive wealth. Lately, spending money on fashion given that I have a full closet, feels more unjustified and frivolous. Owning too many shoes after I saw closets of my dead loved ones cleared out, feels vulgar. Not wearing all the clothes I own, feels wasteful. Writing about clothes on a blog, instead of sustainable living feels like wasted potential. Writing about death, feels too personal pushed into a public space. The pandemic did shake me up and I am made different from it.