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Comment by jseban | Hacker News Reader

If you are always travelling then yeah, I guess it makes sense. The problem I have with minimalism is that it also minimises the activities you can do. Any sport and hobby requires stuff, the more stuff you have, the more activities you can do.

Painting, playing music, going swimming, skateboarding, playing tennis, running, picnic/barbecue, hiking etc etc.

If you don't have any stuff, you can't be active. I just get bored to death when the only thing I do in my free time, is looking at things and eating/drinking.

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Some hobbies certainly require a lot of gear, but I think it's also possible to massively overdo the stuff-to-fun ratio. We go for four-hour hikes with our trainers, our badminton rackets weigh almost nothing and take up almost no space, and so on.

> If you don't have any stuff, you can't be active

This is simply false. We're currently on a little island and there are boats and stand-up paddle-boards to rent, we have a scooter and helmets we've rented and go for long drives, there are lots of multi-hour walks we've done in our sneakers, lots of scuba and snorkleing optins, there's kilometers and kilometers of beach to walk along. My only concession to this is travelling with a rash-vest for being in the sun, plus most of my shorts are very happy to get wet / be in the water

It also requires exponentially more stuff to be active year around, and adapting to a full time work/weekend schedule, compared to temporarily with a flexible schedule.

Just the beach walk will require a whole wardrobe of suitable clothes and shoes if you want to do it year around and live in a place with seasons. The scooter doesn't work in the winter.

Renting things also requires you to have a flexible schedule and be outside of the normal work week/weekend, because on a sunday when the weather is nice, everyone wants the stand-up paddle board and all the other stuff at the same time, that's the whole point of owning stuff, that it's there for you when you want it. Renting always means you get it when (most) other people don't want it.

It really depends on how much money you have or want to spend. Skiing frequently is way cheaper over time if you own your own gear. Same with climbing, biking, kayaking, surfing, etc.

Some gear you absolutely cannot rent for liability reasons, like most rock climbing gear.

It also depends on how good you get. I’ve been kayaking for 25 years and whatever I can rent down the street is not likely to work for what I typically want to do.

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