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To some, the point of minimalism isn't about minimizing consumption - it's about minimizing the cognitive and emotional upkeep that comes with owning things. That mindset is compatible with buying new stuff more frequently if you shed the old.

Minimalism makes sense for traveling, though otherwise it seems like more work to constantly borrow and rent things.

Minimalism just means keeping close to some minimum. It can make sense in any context, the minimum just changes.

When you don't own much, there's not much to fix.

I own a lot of tools too (I do pretty much all of my own car maintenance - including replacing the head gaskets (a 2 month project I wouldn't do again)), but I doubt that is more environmentally sustainable than hiring experts (with their own tools), and I'm not saving any money unless I count my own labor as "free".

If you working on that car meant that it wasn't scrapped, if the job you did for free was a job that a pro would charge more for than the car's value, then owning the tools to replace head gaskets is the more environmental approach. The energy needed to generate a new car from base metals is immense.

I guess we have to draw a line between those minimalists who want to just own fewer things for the zen of reduced clutter, and those who equate minimalism with efficiency or anti-consumerism. That's why the Amish still own and use modern tools. Their minimalism is more practical than ideological.

I'm not a minimalist for any moral reasons. I'm a minimalist because owning things stresses me out.

I could move to the other side of the world and carry all my belongings in a backpack. No storage, uhauls, etc. In fact, I have done it.

I could lose everything I own (apart from my laptop and phone) and it'd cost a few hundred bucks to replace. This happened when I got a horrible bedbug infestation in my backpack in Thailand. It was a bummer to have to start from scratch, but not really a big deal in the end.

Not sure what you're getting at with the tools comment. I have nothing that I would need tools to fix.

I guess it depends whether you define minimalist as someone who uses fewer resources (their own and other peoples'), or someone who keeps their item count down. I tend to fall into the first camp, and I find it really annoying when people claim to be being frugal when what they're really doing is pushing most of their living costs onto the people around them.

The other aspect, also, is that it's fine to live out of a backpack when you're single and have no dependents. Once you have other people relying on you, you need to maintain the resources to keep them covered as well as yourself.

Haha, it's amazing how new you can make your stuff look when you add a filter to it! Just to give you a snapshot, I wore my last dress shirt until my bare elbow was hanging out of a tear in the sleeve.

But yea, as others have mentioned, I am not 'minimalist' in the sense of reducing consumption. I am minimalist in the sense of reducing choices.

It feels like you're being too challenged by the notion of a minimalist to get the idea behind it.

I'm a minimalist by necessity - thrice now I've basically had to upend my life in the matter of a few weeks and start brand new elsewhere, and having that sort of threat lingering over you makes you really cautious to have a lot of things. But it also makes you care a lot about the things you own as well. I probably have more clothing than the author claims to have, but I also take pretty good care of it as best I can. I cycle through clothing probably a little less regularly than other people do, but just as anyone else might discard a shirt they haven't worn in a year or that doesn't fit right anymore, I will too -- I just try to get a little more out of it if I can.

I do agree that posts like this come off as challenges; they're "look at me!" posts showing off a little and it can read a bit pretentious, but I don't think there's a need to project flaws onto such a post or person. Once I got past the shock of getting rid of a bunch of things I held attachment to, it started to feel really nice. I just no longer had to worry about a lot of stuff that just sat around, I stopped fretting over money so much, I learned to be a lot more self-reliant and how to do without. I learned a lot more about home repair, about cooking, about sewing, and got healthier as I now walked everywhere.

It's not a panacea, and it's not a superior lifestyle or a magic way to be happy, it's just one way of looking at life. We really do live in an era when you can consolidate down, and being free of just so much stuff feels nice to me. Like you I believe in reuse - I've done the few repairs and replacements that were necessary for my 2012 Macbook Air, and prior to that I had a 2007 Macbook that I repaired until there just wasn't any modern software it could run. Cobblers are still plentiful and fairly priced where I live right now, so I fix my nice pairs of shoes instead of replacing them whenever I can. I carry a small screwdriver set that has been used for countless repairs as well.

It's not a contest, it's just sharing how one lives their life. I know that some people who are minimalists do it to show off - they do it because Jobs did it, or because Zuckerberg did it or because they never got past being 13 and watching Fight Club for the first time. But many people also just do it because they were tired of the clutter. They were tired of having to worry about where to put a bunch of stuff they don't need, what to do if they have to move, or just worrying about having shit that was important only because they spent money on it, not because they actually cared. My folks are like that - they have so much stuff in their house that they constantly complain about, but whenever we try to prep for a rummage sale or for deliveries to a second hand store, it's a battle over every last item, from the old beat up and perforated pots and pans to fake flowers from a floral arrangement side project that never got off the ground 15 years ago. Hundreds of porcelain figurines, several sets of fine dinner plates and cutlery for parties they never have, and the less said about my Mom's Christmas decoration collection the better.

For me, it's just nice to not have to worry about 'what am I going to do with all this stuff?" I culled the lot down to what I absolutely needed, and what the people would let me put on a plane, and that was it.

For me, the usefulness of these types of posts is to see what gear they get by with. You could compare that list to others and quickly put together a gear list based on what you think would work best for you. It's easier to work based off the experience of others rather than having to reinvent the wheel.