A Beginners Pursuit to Minimalism — How adding more led to less

I would not say I’m a minimalist, but I’ve watched Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up,” I’ve moved three times in the past four years — downsizing each time, and I regularly review the contents of my closet.

Minimalism has many definitions, but ultimately it is the pursuit of living with less. So one might think that purchasing two more recycling cans may be counterintuitive to the minimalist agenda.

In the case of the two cans, another minimalism definition from becomingminimalist.com resonated with me:

[Minimalism] means living with things you really need. It means removing anything that distracts us from living with intentionality and freedom.

How did two more recycling cans produce a search and acceptance for this definition? Let me explain.

First off these are not your average blue recycling bins. They are cute, stylish, $2 Dollarama recycling cans. I bought one for my bedroom, and one for my living room. They match with my $2 Dollarama garbage cans.

*Let me address the Dollarama elephant in the room before I proceed any further: Dollarama is my best friend, and my worst enemy. She provided my cat’s favourite toy for $1 (versus $8 at your nearest chain pet store), but she also makes it so easy to buy $2 dish towels you immediately regret, the $1.50 candle that smells like dish soap, or that $3 pĩna colada mixture that has been in your cupboard for four years. Like fast fashion, dollar store trends exemplify how easily we substitute quality for quantity of dollar$.

The two (three) cuties

Back to my minimalist insight: the addition of these cute little receptacles to my apartment meant I carefully dissected each piece of waste I produced. The findings: there is so much that we throw into the trash that would be categorized as recycling, due to pure convenience of somewhere to put it.

Think about that toilet paper roll you throw in the bathroom trash every other day, paper price tags on your clothes, the tissue inserts in your new shoes — recycling. Take a peak in the waste baskets in each room of your home — you’ll see what I mean. Or you’re just better at this sorting thing than me. At any given time, both my trash and recycling bins are equally full. This is to say that, technically, I’ve reduced the amount of garbage I produce by 50%.

I’m far from the zero-waste-mason-jar-of-garbage person, but reducing — or diverting my waste by 50% feels pretty good.

Trash is not clean, sexy, or acceptable dinner-table talk, so why think twice? We put it out, it goes away. End of story? It wasn’t until I worked for a company in the waste management industry that I even began to think about how much waste I was producing. That was three years ago. Only 3 of 30 years I’ve considered my trash output.

Did you know that according to the 2018 Ontario Waste Management Association Landfill Report, Ontario’s available landfill capacity is expected to be exhausted in 14 years, by the year 2032?

That doesn’t even take into consideration the 3.5 million tons of trash that we ship to various landfills in the United States each year.

Imagine if we reduced that number by 50%? We could make our landfill space last 2048. Longer if we start to innovate on how things are packaged, shipped & designed. I’ll save that for another post.

My two recycling cans are just the tip of the tip of the landfill-sized iceberg, but knowledge is power. The awareness I’ve gained on the issue has influenced my purchasing habits, my dinner-table talk, and my trash output.

If minimalism means living with things you really need, then I needed these two cans because they allow me to [recycle] anything that distracts from living with intentionality and freedom. A good $4 investment in my minimalism career.