Far Beyond The Stars: The Archives

There comes a moment in time for all of us when we realize the rules just don’t work anymore.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

There is a moment when we decide we can’t handle one more trip to Target, when we can’t buy another McChicken nugget. This is the moment when we begin to accept the unconventional truth of being a minimalist.

There is also a moment when we decide we just don’t want to go to work anymore. We don’t want to continue to be a cog in the system. We want liberation, not another flat screen TV.

We all could just as easily sit back and continue to be part of the problem, that’s easy enough. Just keep buying $2 goods from China in bulk. Put them in your closet, or fill up the other side of your two-car garage. That’s what they want us to do, that is what is easy.

But we don’t to anymore, so we decide to opt out.

I imagine the similar change in mindset happened to Jay Parkinson, when he decided to revolutionize the medical industry. He could have of simply joined part of the problem after med school, but he didn’t.

I imagine the similar change came over Mike Horn when he started What Is Fresh. He could have just kept on going to C-Town, and buying wilty greens, but he didn’t. Instead he created part of the solution: a website that tracks exactly which farmer’s markets are open in the city.

Now we don’t have to remember that the only good place in New York to get locally grown food is on Wednesday is Union Square, because we can just check.

The same change came over me, when I decided to limit myself to 100 things, and adopt a 30-day rule for my stuff. When I decided to live and work from anywhere.

The same change came over you when you stumbled across this blog, whether by word of mouth, or Twitter, or a link from another brilliant blog on the internet.

You decided to start accepting the unconventional truth about the stuff that’s cluttering your life. Physical, emotional, manifestations of time best spent.

You want to change, enough is enough.

But change doesn’t happen without action. You can read about being minimalist for ages, becoming minimalist is a different story.

I have a list of people living with 100 things on Twitter. It’s very short, I wish it was longer. I know there are more people out there like us, I know there are more people who have made this unconventional leap.

I need your help to find them.

1. If you have less than 100 things, @evbogue me on Twitter and I’ll add you to this list.
2. If you don’t have 100 things, retweet this on Twitter so people who do are able to find me.
3. Follow the people on the 100 things list, because all of these people have made the leap. They are an inspiration.

The retweet button is either above or below, depending on if you’re one of the almost 1000 people (!) receiving free updates via RSS or Email, or you’re reading this directly on the blog.

Thank you for your part in this unconventional revolution. I could not do this without you.

–Everett Bogue

There’s a good chance that your life’s work is holding you back

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

From an early age you’ve been indoctrinated into a society that values things above people.

We are what we own, or so you’ve been told.

They all told you that you wanted the two-car garage. They told you to fill one side with stuff you couldn’t fit inside your house. Indeed, one quarter of all Americans have a two-car garage in this condition.

The stuff just sits there. You walk by it, and wish that it would disappear. Secretly you wish someone would burn your two-car garage down, so you won’t have to make the decision to get rid of that clutter.

We find so many ways to keep us from reaching our potential. Stuff is just one of those ways. We don’t want to deal with the harsh reality of our lives, the fact that we haven’t really done anything important.

So we refocuse all of our attention on the endless burden of resorting our stamp collection.

A friend of mine, the brooklyn hip-hop artist D.O.V. of Verbal Graffiti, repeatedly loses his life work every couple of years. In 2003 his house burned down. In 2009 his laptop was stolen from his living room without a trace, containing years of un-backed-up recordings.

The loss is always devastating to him. He tells himself that this is the end of his career and he’ll never make another beat again.

But this wasn’t the case, there was no devastating repercussions. Six months after the loss of his computer he had a new album on the streets.

The beats weren’t on his computer, they were in him. By clearing away all the years of junk on his computer–all of the beats that never had any potential, but he continued to mess with,–he was able to free himself to create a new album.

A clean slate can be a powerful drive to create.

What if you were able to harness this ability for a lifetime?

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D.O.V. is DJing a dance party in Bushwick Brooklyn on Saturday (tomorrow, Jan 23. 2010 10pm-4am) night. If any readers are in Brooklyn, the details are here. I’ll be there and I’d love to meet you.

You can’t make anyone but yourself become minimalist.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

Over the last couple of months I’ve received a number of comments and tweets from people who want to share their minimalist ambitions with their spouse or their entire family.

Some were so enthusiastic, they wanted to make all of their friends minimalists too!

This is great, I love that people are so enthusiastic.

However, the idea of making other people minimalist is a difficult question.

Many people relate to objects differently. I’ve met people who live with nothing, and are perfectly content. I’ve met people who would kill themselves if they lost everything — even if this would inevitably lead to them being freer.

Many people still subscribe to the (antiquated, in my opinion) mentality that we are what we own. It’s can be hard to change these minds.

So, here’s my suggestion:

Don’t worry about the other people. You can’t force them to be minimalists.

Instead, set a good example with yourself.

Adopt a 30 day rule for your stuff, get rid of all your stuff and start to live with 100 things.

Don’t bother your boyfriend about his pile of dusty CDs. Focus all of that effort you’re directing at another person into freeing your own life.

Lead by example.

Show the people who you wish were less attached to their stuff how free you’ve made your own life.

Consider starting a blog documenting your progress becoming a minimalist. This can only help communicate your intentions. Join a growing community of amazing bloggers writing about being minimalist.

With any luck your partner, your kids, and your friends will start to embrace the idea of lessening their connection to their material possessions, and begin to adopt a freer lifestyle.

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The hardest element in any relationship is having the ability to let it go when it ends.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

It’s incredibly hard to let go. I know so many people who have so much trouble with letting go that they have houses full of stuff they haven’t used in ten years. They’ve stayed in a job they don’t enjoy, just because. Or they keep crying over relationships that ended months ago.

It’s difficult to say goodbye.

This article is mostly about stuff, but this can apply to people and places and jobs that left us a tiny bit scarred.

It takes courage to stop dwelling and move to new terrain.

Forty five things in a box in a closet you haven’t touched in five years is one thing you might need to let go. Hanging out with those friends who always get you into trouble is another. Driving a car just because you always have can be something you can let go as well. Maybe you need to let go a snack food.

It takes courage to give something up, I understand that. Trust me, I’ve had plenty of my own personal battles with letting go of people, places and things. I imagine most people have.

One of the traits that most successful people share is the ability to know when to move on.

Because this is a problem that all of us face, I’ve taken time to prepare a list of 46 ways to let go of the old. I’m sure I left something out. I’m sure most of these won’t work for everyone. However, maybe one or two of these will stick and help you let go of something.

…this way you can make room for the new.

46 ways you can let go.

1. Throw it away.
2. Give it away.
3. Recycle it.
4. Tell it to go home.
5. Make a list of things you’d rather have, or be doing.
6. Don’t let yourself see it for a month.
7. Don’t keep anything you don’t use or see at least once a month.
8. Make a diagram of everywhere you spend your time.
9. Eliminate time suckers.
10. Trade one thing or activity for another that you like better.
11. Throw it into the ocean (if it won’t hurt the fish).
12. Break it.
13. Tell someone to take it away.
14. Sell it to someone who needs it.
15. Turn it into artwork.
16. Display it at an art gallery.
17. Get a second opinion.
18. Limit yourself to 100 things.
19. Burn it on your roof or backyard.
20. Tell it you love it, but you can’t be together.
21. It’s you, it’s me.
22. Throw a party and tell everyone to take something home with them.
23. Bury it in the backyard so an archeologist can dig it up in 2000 years and think it’s more important than it actually is.
24. Give it to your mom.
25. Reinvent it as something new and interesting.
26. Email a picture of it to me and ask if it’s worth keeping (my answer is usually no.)
27. Acknowledge that it’s hurting you.
28. Think about what ultimate freedom means to you.
29. Contemplate your minimalist destination.
30. Give it to someone who has nothing.
31. Put it in an outbox.
32. Bury it on the side of a mountain and tell no one.
33. Leave it on the subway.
34. Take a picture of it.
35. Post that picture on craigslist.
36. Drop it off the side of a building at night, and then clean it up first thing in the morning.
37. Destroy it and hang it from the ceiling.
38. Mail to to a random person in the phone book.
39. Sell it and donate the money to a cause that you believe in.
40. Leave it in a box on your doorstep, with a sign that says ‘free’.
41. Take a vacation from it all.
42. Stay at a friend’s house for a week.
43. Take it to your recycling center free box.
44. Tweet #minimalist and ask if you should keep it.
45. Move somewhere you’ve always wanted to live.
46. Take only a backpack.

What do you need to let go? Let me and many remarkable readers of Far Beyond The Stars know in the comments!

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” -Lao Tzu

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Just in case you’re not following me on Twitter, you might have missed this! Yesterday I wrote a guest post at Naomi Seldin’s blog Simpler Living: 6 Simple Ways to Eat More Healthfully. Give it a read if you’re interested in some simple food tips.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

I know how hard it can be to make the decision to give up material possessions.

There is always this little voice in the back of your head saying ‘I might need this someday!’

I had to give up a couple of things, when I was reducing the stuff I owned to less than 100 things when I moved to Portland earlier this year.

That little voice has a point, everything ‘could’ be useful someday. However, I’ve known people with rooms filled with stuff that they ‘could use someday’, but they never do.

Do you have rooms like this? Most of us have a closet like this, some of us have a box like this.

The problem with this mentality is that when you save everything ‘just in case’ these objects end up gradually taking more and more time away from you.

When you continue to gather stuff that you’re not using in this moment, you end up spending time cleaning, sorting, and organizing. I’ve known people who spend every free hour of their life, when they’re not eating or working, sorting through stuff they ‘might use someday.’

If you are living like this I really believe you should take action to change your life situation around now.

Some people can even convince themselves that this daily organizational duty is not a burden. I can understand that view, possessions can have a powerful control over the mind. You’ve invested your money these things, you’ve invested your time in creating a wonderful world for your things to live in. It’s only natural for a feeling of obligation to your things to spring up in your mind.

You have to fight it that sense of obligation to your things. Don’t be a prisoner to your possessions.

The time to make a change and overcome your slavery to the material world is now.

Here are a few simple methods that I’ve developed for people to learn to say goodbye to the objects that they love, but don’t use anymore.

1. Create an outbox. The simplest and easiest way to start a healthy habit towards your stuff is to create an outbox. Find a cardboard box and place it near a junk problem area. Just place one object after another into the box. Let the box sit for a month (or a week, but sometimes that can be painful.) Did you need to go back for any of the objects? Well, you probably don’t really need them. You can apply this outbox philosophy to any of the methods below.
2. Get a second opinion. Sometimes it can help to get a friend to give a second opinion. Make sure this is someone who can impartial, someone who is not family or a significant other. Ask them to give you an honest opinion as you are sorting through your stuff. Ask them questions like ‘do you think this object is useful to me?’ and ‘do you think I will use this object in the next year?’ or ‘Do you think this old ratty lamp I’ve been saving since 1979 looks cool?’ This impartial person will give you an honest opinion, and this can give you the perspective you need to make the decision to free yourself of your belongings.
3. Observe how much time you spend with your possessions. Start a notebook and record every interaction you have maintaining your stuff for one week. Do this with everything, even when you take an overflowing bag of old knitting supplies you haven’t used since second grade off of a chair and place it on the floor. That counts. After a week tally up the result. If this result is 10 hours, that’s 520 hours you will spend this year organizing your crap. That’s 5,200 hours over the next 10 years. Think about how much money you could earn in 5,200 hours of not sorting your stuff, or how much time you could spend at the beach.
4. Have someone get rid of them for you. Sometimes it might be easier just to not have to watch. Hire an impartial person (this is no job that should go unpaid…) to go through your stuff and make a series of boxes which contain your stuff. Place these boxes in a closet for one month. During that month make a list of things you think are in the boxes, and need for whatever reason. At the end of the month you are allowed to retrieve the items that you knew were in there, the rest have to go. You’ll be surprised just how much stuff you forgot was in the boxes, and hopefully this will help to break your bond with them.
5. Declare bankruptcy in the material world. Sometimes it’s all just too much. Pack a bag of 100 things, and just leave. Go to Costa Rica and sit on a beach for a month, it will do you some good. While you’re gone, arrange for someone to have an estate sale for you — give them a percentage of the sale. The rest of the proceeds can go towards your trip to Costa Rica.
6. Give them to someone who can use them. It can help, both you and other people, if you give your stuff to a place that will use them to help people in need. In some cities you can arrange for the Salvation Army or other object-oriented charity to drop by your house with a truck and load up all of your stuff for you.
7. Spend a significant amount of time away. Make yourself so busy for a month that you don’t have time to sort your stuff. You will see just how much attention they take from you. Your bedroom or house will fall into disrepair in this month. It’ll be really gross, people will think you’re insane. But by the end of the month you’ll recognize just how of your life your stuff is taking from you.
8. Set a goal that you can’t achieve without being free. You probably have some dream that you want to achieve that is being made inconceivably expensive by your stuff. Say you wanted to study aboard in France for the summer? If you have lots of stuff, you’ll have to keep paying for your apartment, and an apartment in France. This makes studying impossible, because you’ll not be able to earn money to pay for your apartment full of stuff while you’re studying. Set a goal that’s impossible to achieve without get rid of your stuff. This will give you the incentive to become free.

Your stuff is probably a prison, and in many cases it’s not your friend.

It’s keeping you from achieving real change in your life, and the time to take action is now.

Don’t wait, now is the time to make a change in your life. You can achieve minimalist freedom. You can live with 100 things.

This future is possible, but only you can make it a reality.

“The things you own end up owning you.” – Tyler Durden

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Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

Every week on Far Beyond The Stars I interview an important person on Being Minimalist. Last week I interviewed the author and minimalist legend Leo Babauta. Do you want to be interviewed? Drop me a tweet.

This week I spoke with Chris Baskind. Chris is the director of web operations at Vida Verde Media and writes the blogs More Minimal and Lighter Footstep. We spoke about the advantages of going car free and the dawn of the new minimalist century.

On to the interview!

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Everett Bogue: You’ve been blogging about being minimal for a number of years now, how has your approach to being a minimalist changed over that time?

Chris Baskind: I started writing More Minimal back in 2006. To be honest, its take on minimalism was a little scattershot, but it lead me to building Lighter Footstep, a green website with a strong “use less, do-it-yourself” emphasis. If my approach has changed, it’s that minimalism — or simplicity, if you prefer the term — is now fundamental to how I look at everything. I still write about green and environmental topics, but these flow from my conviction that a more minimal lifestyle isn’t just necessary to restore balance to society: It’s a healthy and fulfilling way to live on its own merits.

Everett: Do you have any current minimalist goals?

Chris: I still set goals for the same reason I look for street signs: they help you know where you are, and which way to go next. But I agree with people such as Leo Babauta that they can be a trap, too. Minimalism is an ongoing process, not a series of achievements. That being said: I still have too much stuff, and plan to further reduce my personal clutter. I’ll be exploring minimalist cooking. Most of all, I want to spend more time talking to people who are also in the process of radical simplification. I learn more things from my readers than I have time to write down.

Everett: Do you have any areas of being minimalist that you struggle with, or wish you were better at?

Chris: Productivity. I think we all struggle with this to some degree. I’m a naturally curious person, and am happy to chase every rabbit that happens past. The richness of my online life isn’t always helpful in this area. Focus is crucial.

Everett: You’re a big advocate for a car free culture, but you live in Pensacola Florida. I imagine that Pensacola isn’t a huge biker town, like Portland or New York. What sort of challenges do you face getting around on a bike in Florida?

Chris: Let me start by saying every town can be a good cycling town. It’s just a matter of getting out there and riding. Not everyone has access to multimode transportation — I can’t ride my bike to a train station here in Pensacola — but the vast majority of things anyone needs is with a few miles of the front door. Perhaps you can’t commute to work, but you can run errands in the evening or on weekends. Here, I’ve had to learn which businesses are bike-friendly. It’s tougher to find suitable places to lock a bike in a small city. There are fewer bike lanes, and people still see my cargo bike and my riding gear as an oddity. At least these tend to start some interesting conversations.

Everett: Can you recommend one way that readers can begin to transition to a car-free lifestyle in car dominated cities?

Chris: The big mind-shift is the first few times you use the bike to do something that would normally be car errands. There’s a real satisfaction when you realize your bike isn’t just a toy: it can get work done. You can do this on pretty much any bike that rolls, but I’m a big believer in being properly geared. Your bike should be safe and comfortable in any weather. That means going out and buying rain gear, proper lights so you’re not chained to daylight, racks and panniers so you can carry groceries, and tools, so you feel confident relying on your equipment. None of this stuff is cheap, but a full cycling kit only costs the equivalent of a couple car payments. Make the investment, and you’re more likely to ride.

Everett: In a recent post on More Minimal you wrote that we are entering a minimalist century. Can you describe how you came to that realization?

Chris: Every century brings change. The 20th century was all about BIG, particularly in the consumption of energy. Practically everything we think of as “progress” is predicated on the ready availability of cheap energy, which has so far meant fossil fuels. Our demand for energy and raw materials is beginning to exceed a very finite supply, and things simply cannot continue as they have. Sustainability isn’t a goal: it’s the law of nature.

People say, “Well, we’ll invent new technologies before things run out.” Our technology is amazing, but it has its limits. We let the energy crisis of the 1970s pass without really changing much, and the tools we’ll need to sustain what we all consider an acceptable standard of living require huge lead times in development and testing. It’s too late to expect innovation to be the sole answer. We’ll have to learn to use less — period. This is the heart of minimalism. Whether we like it or not, we’ll all be minimalists in the 21st century.

Everett: What changes do you think the average person needs to make in their lives to bring themselves into this new minimal century?

Chris: The first and most important change is to decouple the consumerist tendency to equate “lots” with happiness, and “less’ with want. Minimalism isn’t mere austerity — it’s being open to new ways of thinking about things and letting go of the non-essential. This leaves us more time and resources to enjoy the rest. What makes sense will be different for each person or household. For me, part of the answer was getting out of my car. So now I have the resources I’d otherwise pump into insurance, car repairs, and gasoline left to save or apply to other things. I can buy better quality clothes and food. I can pay down debt. Find something that equates to meaningful change and do it now, while the choice is still optional.

Everett: Can you recommend one simple habit that our readers can adopt as a first step in moving into a minimalist century?

Chris: Learn to move under your own power. Walk or start riding a bicycle for something other than recreation, even if it’s just short-range errands. Equip yourself. Learn the safest routes. Remind your body of the beauty of human motion, and it will quickly become habit. We needn’t be slaves to our cars and all the trappings of an automobile-based society. You’ll be healthier for it, your life will become simpler, and you’ll be creating personal equity in the Minimalist Century.

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Thanks Chris for the interview! Don’t forget to check out More Minimal and Lighter Footstep.

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about being minimalist, I’d love if you’d sign up to receive free updates via rss or email.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

Uh oh, it’s almost Black Friday.

Hopefully the idea of running out to consume, after you’ve consumed all of that turkey, gives the shudders. It certainly gives them to me. The idea of people cramming half-off things into shopping cards actually makes me want to lock myself in the cellar and reemerge after the holidays are over.

Nothing is sadder than running around a store frantically trying to buy useless things at a discount, then pawning them off on some poor friend or family member who has to deal with that object until they can safely throw it away without you noticing.

Stop buying stupid stuff, especially for other people. Please!

The whole idea behind Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate is giving right? Let’s take a moment to think about what giving actually means.

You can give by:

• Helping someone live a better life.
• Making someone smile.
• Helping someone achieve something.
• Making someone feel good.
• Giving someone an opportunity that they would otherwise have.

Nowhere that definition can I see ‘giving is another useless plastic object they can put in the closet.’

Most of us have everything that we will ever need already. I only have 97 things, and I still think that’s way too much. I don’t need anything else.

To be honest, if I received anything that I couldn’t immediately benefit me every single day of the year, I’d ask that the person who gave it to me to return it.

I challenge you to give a gift that actually means something to every person you know this Christmas.

Five minimalist Christmas gifts:

1. Dinner. I love cooking for people, this is a great way to show to someone that you appreciate them. One way to do this is to give someone a small card inviting them to dinner. If you’re a terrible cook, take them out for dinner.
2. Wine. You can share it and it makes you tipsy. Not Yellowtail or Two Buck Chuck. Good wine, the kind that comes in a bottle and costs a little more than average. A good place to start is a bottle that you’ve personally enjoyed.
3. Knowledge. Buy someone a book that they may read, but MAKE SURE it’s a good one. There are a lot of crappy books out there, and no one wants a book from the sale rack. Stick with the bestseller lists, or books that you’ve personally learned a great deal from. If this confuses you, a gift card to a bookstore will do.
4. Money. It’s usable for a lot of things, such as paying down student loan debt or buying groceries.
5. Opportunities. Get someone an interview somewhere. Give them a recommendation. Expose a person to the right environment or ideas.

Think about it, and look at that list again. You want all of those things, don’t you? Maybe not the Wine, but you can supplement that with a fine beverage that suits you or chocolate.

If you give plastic crap you will get plastic crap.

If you give what you want, you will get what you want.

It’s really that simple.

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If you want to, send this story to everyone on your Christmas card list. I promise you will get three more bottles of wine than you did last Christmas.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

I just read a story over at Get Rich Slowly about a frugal man who is trying to live a minimalist life, but was being made fun of by his peers for not owning a TV.

“My colleagues at work tell me that I live a miserable life, and I don’t give my family “materialistic life pleasures”. Those sort of words hurt me a lot. We don’t have a TV at our house and my colleague makes fun of this thing all the time.”

Am I the only one who thinks that’s silly?

J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly had a little to say about the situation:

“…I don’t see how the lack of television is something to mock. If anything, it ought to be praised. The most productive, least materialistic people I know are those who watch little or no television. This site would never have been built if I were a TV-watcher.”

Exactly.

The most productive people I know don’t watch TV.

Think about it. Television is by nature an all consuming direct form of marketing. It’s supported by advertisements trying to get you to buy the next biggest thing, the shows on it are filled with product placement and supported by ad revenue.

Companies are spending billions of dollars on psychologists and ad companies trying to get you to buy buy buy. The television shows are complacent in this scheme. — Obviously PBS is an exception, but when was the last time you watched PBS?

98% of TV is crap.

Basically, if you have a TV, you spent a lot of money on a machine that is poisoning your life. You might also be spending tons of money on cable TV, because if you think if you do that you’ll get more quality.

The average American household spends $60 on cable a month. That’s $720 a year.

Add on any On Demand movies, and that can quickly shoot past $1000. It’s so easy to order a $5 movie now, humans are stupid when they’re tired and want to watch a movie, so we just hit ‘buy’. Instead of waiting for the Netflix, or going to the library. Or maybe just reading a book?

Also, think about how many things you’ve purchased because you saw them on TV?

If you’re not outraged, I don’t know what else to tell you.

We’re being taken advantage of by the big companies marketing us products, the television companies, and the cable companies. They want us to buy and keep paying for a product that costs too much and isn’t adding anything to our lives.

In the past we had no options, but the internet has changed everything. You can now stream your favorite TV shows directly from Hulu.com and other sources. I watch The Office once a week online, it’s easy and free.

You also have free access to real information about many topics that add value to your life. Why spend an hour sitting in front of the tube when you can spend an hour conveying a revolutionary idea to an audience?

This is a call to arms. It’s time to get rid of that TV.

If you had no TV you’d be:

• Smarter
• Slimmer
• Happier
• More productive
• Richer because you’re not paying your cable bill
• Richer because you sold your TV and didn’t buy a new one
• Richer because you’re getting more work done

It’s like a win-win situation, that TV has to go.

In fact, I challenge you to get rid of it now.

How to get rid of or destroy your TV.

1. Sell your TV. Take a picture of it, fire up craigslist, and post a listing offering your TV for less than you bought it for. Try searching for your TV’s model and make on Ebay to get an approximate offering price. If you have a high quality plasma screen, you should be able to sell it in no time. If you can’t sell it within a week, reduce the price by 25%. Still nothing? Half off.
2. Give your TV to someone who needs it. If you can’t sell your TV for money, find someone who needs a TV. Maybe a homeless shelter, or school? Donate that TV!
3. If you can’t sell your TV, destroy it. You can do this with a sledgehammer, tying it to the back of a car, or dropping it from a five story building into a dumpster. Don’t drop it on someone, that would be bad. *Be careful, there can be residual charge on the back of the inside of screen, this can be dangerous!
4. Turn your TV into a work of art. A painter friend of mine in New York painted the screens of three televisions we had sitting around our house. When you turned them on they did that static thing that TVs do, and we had illuminated art work. We eventually got tired of this and resorted to the sledgehammer technique.

Also, to reader Rob over at Get Rich Slowly:  Get new friends, those guys who were making fun of you for not having a television are not going anywhere in life. They’re losers.

Surround yourself with people who are intelligent, productive, and don’t watch television. You’ll be surprised how your life will change for the better. By ridding yourself of your TV you will get more done, be happier, slimmer, healthier, and have bigger ideas.

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Think I’m crazy? Let me know on Twitter.

Destroyed your TV? Post a picture somewhere and leave the link in the comments.

Writing and photography by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

I spoke with a person recently who described themselves as ‘definitely-not-minimalist’ about how overwhelming it is to combat a world that is constantly calling on her to buy more and more.

She asked me how she could to stop the cycle of consumerism in her own life.

She was a person who have been accumulating stuff an incredibly long time. She was born in a generation that was defined by consumption and perpetuated by the prices of items falling at an incredible rate.

She bought into one of the great American dreams.

Success was stuff, America defined it. But all of that has changed, the internet has transformed our society into one that is fueled on information and ideas. We can work from anywhere, if we let ourselves see that.

Past the basic essentials that you need to live, most of the stuff we filled our lives with doesn’t matter anymore.

What people don’t realize, when they’re on a ten or fifteen year long consumption binge is just how difficult it is to dig yourself out from the weight of all of this stuff.

They want to get out, they want to be free, but it’s overwhelming.

We can all understand this position. We all know people who’ve been there are going there. We might have been there ourselves.

So, how to take the first steps toward a minimalist existence, if you don’t know how to begin?

Liberate yourself from the overwhelming weight of your useless possessions.

I firmly believe that you can’t get over stuff until you have a mindset change. Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re there already. How do you get to this realization?

The first small choice you can make is to start to comprehend how much stuff costs you.

1. It costs money to store stuff you’re not using. More stuff means a bigger house, if you have so much stuff you can’t fit in your house, then it means storing it. Bigger houses cost money, storing stuff costs money. Maybe take a moment and calculate how much you’re spending on your house and storage, paste this number on your wall. I guarantee it will scare you.
2. Material possessions restrict your freedom. If you wanted to move, could you? How much would it cost to move? Think about it, if you have one box of stuff, you could move whenever you wanted. If you got bored of Cincinnati, you could be in Denver in no time. Just pack a bag.
3. Stuff takes up your time. It takes time to sort through stuff, and the more clutter you have the harder it is to find things. This leads to more time being wasted. If time is money, then your stuff is putting you into massive debt. By erasing your ties to your stuff, it’s like your paying off a massive loan that you didn’t even know you had.

Think about it, if you had nothing but the essentials:

• You would have endless more time to do what you’re interested in.
• You would have so much more money to achieve your dreams.
• You would have the freedom to move about whenever you want.

Do you think this unobtainable? It’s not.

I live this life, I have a backpack of stuff that I use every day. I come and go as I please. My life costs nothing besides food and housing wherever I live, the rest of the money I save. I work on the internet, I could be anywhere. Most of all: I’m happy. It’s ultimate freedom, and most importantly, it’s possible for you too.

This is how you start to free yourself:

One thing at a time.

The first step: stop buying things.

If you find yourself contemplating buying something that’s not essential, take a breath, think about how much it actually costs. Walk away.

To begin decluttering: every day, just take one object and figure out what to do with it. Recycle it, donate it, throw it out. If you feel like you can do two, do it. If you feel like you can throw out a box of stuff, go for it.

This will accelerate into a cascading effect. When you realize just how important it is to live a free and enjoyable life without having to worry about possession overload, nothing can stop you.

The next step: Give it all away.

There are so many people in the world that need the things that you’re using now. They might only have money for food to feed their children. They might not have the education that you do, or the opportunities that you had. Give the stuff you these people. Donate it to a charitable organization, or put it up for free on Craigslist or Freecycle. Someone, somewhere will appreciate your stuff. It might even be useful to them.

The important part is to recognize that you don’t need it anymore, and then find the quickest way to get it all out of your life.

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What methods do you use to reduce your clutter, to clean out your life? Leave it in the comments!

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Far Beyond The Stars is a very new site, and I never imagined by this point we would have had over 6000 visitors and over 200 subscribers. Wow! It’s so exhilarating to see the traffic climb.

I’d love if more people found out about the site. If you enjoyed what you read here, I’d love it if you could share this with one friend or tweet this story. It’d make a world of difference, and I’d be eternally grateful.

Writing and Photography by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

Far Beyond The Stars subscriber Jeff Morris just sent me an email wondering if I had completed the 100 things challenge. I have indeed! I figured now was a good a time as any to whip up a quick list of my possessions.

The history and reason behind of 100 things.

100 Things is a challenge originally issued by David Michael Bruno. The idea behind it is that human beings only need 100 things to survive, but most of us have way more than that. By restricting ourselves to 100 things, we’re creating less waste, we’re more flexible in how and where we live. It’s a win-win situation! One of the more famous bloggers who has 100 things is Leo Babauta.

I mentioned in my 100 Minimalist Ideas article that I had 79 things. I was wrong, I have 97 things!

You’ll notice that some of these things are in New York, in a box that my friends are keeping at my old apartment at the School House in Brooklyn — I’ll be fetching these at some point. I also have some warm winter clothing in Chicago, which I sent to my mom when I left New York. I’ve counted all of these in my 100 things, even though they’re not with me right now.

I did NOT group my underwear or socks into one thing. I believe it’s fine to cheat on underwear and socks, but I didn’t need to so I listed them all. You’ll also notice that I don’t have any kitchen stuff (except the coffee grinder in New York,) this is because I’ve only lived in shared houses where kitchen stuff was already present. I’m probably never going to live by myself, so these things will always be shared. I also didn’t count food that I have in the fridge, because I’m going to eat that. I also didn’t count absurd things like cords and power plugs, assume these go with the computer, camera, hard drive, etc.

You’ll also notice that I have no books or CDs. I read my books in the library, or at the bookstore. When I do buy books, I donate them or sell them after I finish reading them — they’re in my head, I don’t need them anymore. Books are freakin heavy, why don’t we put them back into the system after we’re done with them? I mp3ed all of my CDs years ago, and donated them to the universe. I get all of my music online now.

Here are my 95 things, as of November 12th 2009.

1. Black Macbook
2. Canon Digital Rebel XTi Camera
3. Wide Angle Zoom Lens
4. 50mm Lens
5. Off-Camera Flash
6. Slingshot Camera Bag
7. Yoga mat
8. Lightweight black jacket
9. Medium-weight army-colored jacket
10. Heavy weight bomber jacket
11. Grey work pants
12. Belt to keep gray work pants from falling down
13. Gray hoodie
14. Fleece sweatshirt
15. Gray sweatpants
16. Brown sweatpants
17. Faded pink hoodie designed by Nathan
18. Knitted hat made with love by girlfriend
19. Tibetan hat with fleece on the inside
20. 1TB hard-drive for backup and photo storage
21. iPhone 3GS
22. Black Diamond backpacking bag.
23. Sleeping bag with fleece insert
24. Bike that I’m trying to sell before I go to Chicago
25. Heavy-duty unbreakable bike lock
26. Eureka two-person backpacking tent
27. Gray Brooklyn Industries bag for laptop
28. Work boots
29. Brown ripped up t-shirt
30. Gray v-neck t-shirt
31. Gray v-neck t-shirt
32. Purple v-neck t-shirt
33. Gray t-shirt
34. Black v-neck t-shirt
35. Gray awesome baggy shirt with buttons that I never button on the neck
36. Purple tank shirt
37. Gray tank shirt
38. Green tank shirt
39. Black tank shirt
40. Blue tank shirt
41. Red tank shirt
42. Gray underwear
43. Gray underwear
44. Gray underwear
45. Red underwear
46. Red underwear
47. Bright blue underwear
48. Black underwear
49. Black underwear
50. Pair of socks
51. Pair of socks
52. Pair of socks
53. Pair of socks
54. Pair of socks
55. Pair of socks
56. Pair of socks
57. Pair of socks
58. Pair of hiking socks
59. Pair of socks with a hole in them
60. Green scarf
61. Moleskin notebook (contains the story of Aspire and Thain, literary agents: call me.)
62. Three little Moleskins for notes, counting as one because they’re so small and rubber-banded together
63. Silver pen for writing in Moleskins
64. Deodorant
65. Dr. Bronnor’s Magic Soap (I use this for everything: bathing, laundry, etc.)
66. Razor for shaving
67. Toothbrush
68. Tom’s organic toothpaste without fluoride
69. Lightweight travel towel
70. Needle and thread for sewing damaged clothing (just used this to sew crotch rip in work pants!)
71. Parachute cord, just in case.
72. Hand lotion
73. Lip balm
74. Headphones
75. Computer screen wiping cloth
76. Business cards
77. Leatherman (in New York, I think?)
78. Computer lock (in New York, I think?)
79. Green puffy winter jacket (in Chicago)
80. Giant furry black trapper hat (in Chicago, I need this to survive the cold harsh winter)
81. 500 GB hard-drive with backup of life’s work just in case the drive I carry with me dies (in Chicago)
82. Motorcycle boots (in New York in a box – I need to get these, because my work boots are starting to leak)
83. Bike helmet (in New York, I know I know, I’m going to die.)
84. Leather jacket (in New York in a box)
85. Tweed jacket (in New York in a box)
86. Coffee grinder (in New York in a box)
87. Leather polish for motorcycle boots (in New York in a box)
88. Nice jacket for interviews and dinner with fancy people (in New York in a box)
89. Button up cowboy shirt (in New York in a box)
90. Button up cowboy shirt (in New York in a box)
91. Herringbone scarf (in New York in a box)
92. Gray blanket and sheets (in New York in a box)
93. Small JBL speaker system (in New York in a box)
94. Small freestanding halogen lamp (in New York in a box)
95. Small Freestanding halogen lamp (in New York in a box)
96. Small Freestanding halogen lamp (in New York in a box)
97. Small Freestanding halogen lamp (in New York in a box)

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Take the 100 things challenge and let me know how you’ve done in the comments or on Twitter!