Renting can be quite expensive, but it also has benefits. If we want to move, we just give notice. No need to wait until a house sells before we move. It also means we are not responsible for the building & maintenance of major things like plumbing, heating and electrical work.

One major downside is the insecurity. We tend to move every 18 months & the last few moves haven’t been local. We have gone from living in Manchester to Scotland and now we live in Cornwall. Moving so often definitely makes you appreciate minimalism. The ability to pack up easily and move great distances is definitely helped by living a more minimal life. However there is always room for improvement.

One item I have struggled to downsize is my book collection. Unfortunately, this is also one of the worst things to hold onto when you move house a lot. The sheer weight & bulk of my book collection has hindered our recent moves & on the last move 12 months ago I decided to address the book collection.

My wife switched to reading on a Kindle e reader around 5 years ago. Since we moved to Cornwall & I nearly ruined my back carrying boxes of books I have been slowly moving over to an E reader too. At first I didn’t want to invest in any new kit so I resorted to the Amazon Kindle app on my old iPad. This worked OK for the past 12 months & has allowed me to start digitising my bulkiest books, but the iPad is less than ideal for reading. I find the backlight hurts my eyes after reading for a long period & the screen isn’t the best resolution for text. I also find the weight of the iPad to be an issue. If you read for extended periods it does get heavy.

Another major issue with reading on the iPad is glare. Trying to read on the go was proving very difficult in any outdoor conditions. I couldn’t see the screen in the garden or on the beach.

Last month I treated myself to a Kindle for my birthday. Other e readers are available & I’ve heard great things about the Kobo, but my wife has been using a kindle for years & we use Calibre to manage our ebook collections so I decided to stick with what I know. Also, as the all new Kindle had just been released, I got a brand new kindle of the previous generation at a discount for only £49.99.

It’s only when comparing the kindle to a section of my book collection you can really understand the significance of minimising & space saving with an ebook reader. I’ve taken a few pictures of my new kindle next to a stack of my books. This is only a small segment of my collection, but most of the books present are now also on my kindle. The kindle in the picture has 62 books on it. All in that small form factor. Truly portable.

I probably have around 400 hard back and text books. I’m in the process of re-reading, sorting & donating the books I no longer need. I’ve also been buying books in digital formats for the past 12 months. I only expect to keep a few of my most treasured physical books & can’t really envisage a need to buy any more physical books with the exception of a few text books with diagrams. I may just use a lending library for those.

The kindle really is a great device. I find it comfortable to read on for extended periods & the fact that I can carry a whole collection of books on such a small device means I can really read anywhere I choose. I used to carry two or three books with me in my backpack. I would read them at coffee shops or whenever I had a few minutes to spare. I’ve found that switching to an ebook reader has encouraged me to read even more than I did before.

There are certain ethical issues with ebook readers. Some people feel that they are an invasion of privacy, some people like to buy certain books using cash for privacy reasons & I can 100% agree with that. But for the majority of reading they are very well suited for modern life. There is also the issue of DRM and being able to pass them on/sell them but I find the portability outweighs those issues for me & there are plenty of DRM free outlets & resources available. Also, selling books isn’t really feasible now due to the weight & cost of postage. I’ve only ever sold two of my text books.

There is also the issue of vanity. I used to feel as though my book collection somehow validated my intelligence. It was a physical display of my education & my culture for everyone to witness when they came to visit. Let’s just say that was a misplaced vanity & I’d rather recommend books to friends than display them year round in the hope that they spot one when they visit. I think vanity & sentimentality play a big part in all of the collections we keep. It applies to all forms of media.

I’ve already digitised my music collection & my movie collection. I have posts on both of these subjects coming up soon. The book collection was the next logical step for me and due to the bulk/weight of books I’m glad I committed to switching. If you travel a lot or move house often, this could be a great way for you to lighten the load & free yourself up. It may also allow you to take a smaller house or apartment as you won’t need loads of space to store you books.

Have you switched over to an ebook reader? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

For a long time I was following that pattern. The first few times I moved house as an adult I only needed the space in a car to transfer my belongings, as time went on that car became a few car trips, then small transit vans and finally large removal vans. At the same time, the size of my property was also increasing. We started out in a tiny 1 bedroom top floor apartment which was owned by family, sparsely furnished and housing only our most important possessions (which at the time where are only possessions).

Our next apartment was even smaller, it was essentially two rooms in a converted Victorian house in Manchester, which had both been split in two, giving us a small living room & galley kitchen downstairs, a small spiral staircase in the living room went up to a small bedroom and tiny bathroom. We physically couldn’t fit much into that space & as a result we had the bare essential items. We didn’t feel deprived & the rent was so cheap. Our bikes were locked in the communal hallway & as the rent was so cheap, we really did exactly what we wanted with our lives.

Fast forward a few years and we progressed to a bigger 1 bedroom apartment, then onwards to a 2 bedroom house, then to a 3 bedroom house before finally moving into a 4 bedroom town house with garage and driveway. We haven’t had children and our core belongings haven’t changed. We still value our computers, cooking equipment, books and media centre, but the space had allowed us to accrue a load of extras. We had extra seating in the living room in the form of massive armchairs & sofas (for guests). We had a huge dining table to seat 6 people (we are still a family of 2). A garage full of rarely used tools, a spare bedroom, another bedroom used as a dressing room. Another bedroom used as a study and 3 bathrooms. Things where completely out of control. We where earning more money than when we lived in that first 1 bedroom apartment but we had next to no disposable income, the rent was almost triple & we had run up debts.

At this time a very close friend of mine was emigrating to New Zealand. He had been travelling for around a year and had seen a lot of Europe and ended up over in Australia & NZ. While in New Zealand he had made some good contacts & did some voluntary work at a maker space. He had decided to take up an offer of employment at the maker space in Wellington & with a bit of planning was ready to go. I was really sad to see him go, we have been close friends forever but this move was a positive step for him & the lessons learned helped me inadvertently.

On the morning he was leaving, I offered to take him to the train station to start his long journey to a new life on the other side of the globe. When picking him up I was shocked & intrigued by the fact he only had his travelling backpack & a small hold all. I don’t know why, but I expected this move to be like all of my moves. Surely all of his stuff was being shipped over. That wasn’t the case, he was literally starting a new life with only the things he could carry.

For some reason that really resonated with me.

I guess we both had similar upbringings & we both seem to have an issue with being tied to anything for too long. Be that work, a location or a routine. We always seem to change things up & make drastic moves or changes. He has always been a bit of a minimalist. Never owning much stuff, never buying into the latest crap. He even held off buying a mobile phone for years & always seemed to have money. Probably, because while we were busy buying rubbish, he was saving.

Suddenly I realised that if he could start a new life with only his most important & personal items, I could slim down my life to a much more manageable level & start to downsize property & belongings. It didn’t take long.

Within a few months I’d given notice on our 4 bedroom house, sold my fancy car, sold off a ton of the extras we had acquired, donated most of my clothing & started culling every aspect of my life. Within a few months everything was sold, the house was gone & we filled a small 80sqft storage unit with our entire life. We moved in with family for a year to clear off the debts we had run up over 10 years of ‘maximum-ism’. Each day we paid off a bit of debt & regained some of our old spirit. After a year, we had paid off almost £18K & bought a tiny 11 year old Fiat Panda car. It was the start of a new chapter in our life.

The next step was to move to a new property. We found a lovely church conversion in Cornwall which was 350 miles away from where we lived. Within a month we had moved in. It’s a modest two bedroom property. One bedroom is our work office and the smaller room is our actual bedroom. It has one bathroom, one living room & a kitchen.

We are still on our Minimalism journey. Just last week I bought a kindle so I could start to give away my physical book collection & move to a much lighter digital library. All of my music is digitised & we only use streaming services for movies now so no DVD’s. I do most of my work (including writing these posts) on an old Thinkpad X200 laptop I got on eBay for £50. Before it would have been the latest & greatest Macbook. This U-turn was life changing & in part I need to thank my friend for showing me the true value of stuff in your life & how it can hold you back. If he could make a new life in a new country without all the trappings of his old life, so can I.

Minimalism is definitely something I would recommend if you have itchy feet & constantly like to be on the move. My boredom threshold is quite low & routine while useful, tends to stifle me. I like to change things up constantly. Becoming minimalist allows me to do this with much more ease. When we moved down to Cornwall I still felt like we had too many belongings. We filled a van & the panda to get down here. It’s definitely a work in progress & I would expect that most minimalists are in constant review of their belongings. We are still sorting & downsizing & we aim to pay off all remaining debts & move to Amsterdam in the next 12 months. Following in the footsteps of my friend, we may not move with just a backpack and hold all, but it certainly won’t be any more than what we can fit in the car. This prospect really excites me.

The friend in question is still one of my closest, we talk often on Skype & Whatsapp & I’m hoping as my downsizing & simple living continues, I’ll be able to afford the air fare to go & see him in his new surroundings. We haven’t seen each other since that morning at the Train Station & it would be great to see inside each others lives again. To meet his new friends & family. The day is fast approaching when that will become reality. He also currently works at a micro brewery in Wellington, so that can only mean good times, right?

If you are new to Minimalism, feel free to ask me any questions in the comments below. If you are experienced, why not share some of your best advice with new readers.