My love, I think you missed the point entirely.

A petty and gleeful reply that was too long for the comment section.

‘Lol - you don't need to be a minimalist to organise your things and get rid of useless junk. This is the ‘modern’ approach to life these days. Home is messy? Don’t clean. Just psycho babble it as a feature of your personality.’

The above is a comment made by someone (let’s call them Jeffrey) on an Instagram reel I made. The core idea was about accepting the fact that I’ll never be a minimalist because I love surrounding myself with lots of beautiful (to me) objects.

I’m used to people phrasing things in a way to get a rise, and I generally ignore them, but this one stuck out. Mainly, because they had completely missed the point of what I was saying.

The reel has also brought 15K new followers to my account in a month, which indicates a level of resonance with many followers.

The wording of the reel goes:

‘Eight years ago, just before moving into this house, I decided I needed to become a minimalist.

As you may have guessed… I failed miserably.

I also learned a very valuable lesson. That a far more interesting approach would be:

To wholeheartedly lean into myself and everything that I love.

Eight years later I wrote a workshop about how to do this.

Tell the Story of Your Home is about creating a home that looks and feels like YOU.’

Nothing about mess, nothing about hoarding ‘useless junk’. Psycho babble? Possibly. I would never claim to be above it, but I’m not sure that’s accurate either.

So, dear commenter, let’s break your thoughts down:

Lol - you don't need to be a minimalist to organise your things and get rid of useless junk.

Absolutely, could not agree with you more. You do not need to be a minimalist to have an organised home, purely containing the things you find to be beautiful and of use.

A big part of my workshop is about exactly this: how to create a home that works hard for you, but also feels like an inspiring, joyful place to be. These two things can co-exist and flourish.

Which leads me to point out that your truthful observation possibly isn’t relevant to my reel. Unless you have maybe taken my workshop and are simply supporting my work? If so, thank you.

Also, I personally have never used ‘lol’ but I understand what you were trying to express. A dismissive chuckle, a patronising sneer. I got you, ‘lol’ encompasses this perfectly IMO.

This is the ‘modern’ approach to life these days. Home is messy? Don’t clean. Just psycho babble it as a feature of your personality.’

I do enjoy it when people use the word ‘modern’ as a derisive term, so thank you for unwittingly indulging me.

When people say stuff like this, I always imagine them grumbling into a scratchy polyester armchair covered in doilies. I hope you have a comfier seat to cast these aspersions from.

I feel you are confusing two different ideas here:

• The idea of enjoying your life and yourself within it.

• The idea of deciding you can’t be bothered cleaning and thus will abandon yourself to a life of squalor thinly veiled as ‘being yourself’.

They aren’t really the same are they? I think there are possible common elements, but I also think you’re getting a little confused.

Idea 1:

For a brief period of time in my early thirties, I tried to be a minimalist by subscribing to the idea of living with a limited number of objects in the home. Clean lines, bare walls, simple spaces.

I quickly realised that it is not a way of living that is sustainable for me.

I LOVE minimalist spaces, I think they can be absolutely beautiful and I applaud those who can live in them successfully.

I am not one of these people, so instead, I spent a lot of time thinking about what IS sustainable for me. What brings me joy, what makes me feel at home, what encourages creativity in every aspect of my daily life and work.

For me, that is to surround myself with objects that I find to be both beautiful and useful. And because I love objects so very much, this does tend to mean there are a lot of them.

Why fight a battle against my nature, when I can instead find ways of working with myself to create a home that is both joyful and functional.

For now, I am enjoying this part of my life with a home full of objects and memories. It may change, It may not. This is me, enjoying myself within my life.

Idea 2:

This is ultimately about taking responsibility for yourself, isn’t it?

It brings to mind the current (modern?) conversations around how we are often presented with a ‘diagnosis’ for our many human foibles.

But the limitation is in thinking that we stop at the diagnosis. Where it gets interesting is when we can begin to understand the myriad of ways in which our minds work and begin to think creatively about how we can make these our superpowers.

‘Psycho babble (Oxford Learner’s dictionary): /ˈsaɪkəʊbæbl/ [uncountable] (informal, disapproving) ​the language that people use when they talk about feelings and emotional problems, that sounds very scientific, but really has little meaning.’

Jeffrey, if you think that me writing a workshop about ways in which you can make your home a space that you feel inspired and comforted by, whilst living your multi layered life within it, is void of substance, then I think you maybe need the workshop more than most.

And really, if someone decides that not cleaning is going to be a big feature of their personality, so be it. It’s not your home, thus it is none of your business.

(And we are, yet again, pulling in an idea that is completely absent from the reel. That of cleanliness.

It has been fascinating to see how preoccupied so many people are with my cleaning habits. ‘But THE DUST???? HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THE DUST???.’

I don’t know, I wipe away dust, when I see it. Often I don't notice it until the sun shines on it. How much are YOU dusting Jeffrey?)

__

It has been so interesting to see how people respond to our home and to the workshop Tell the Story of Your Home.

It tells me so much about the rigid social ideas many of us have around home aesthetics, individual expression, perceived cleanliness and what we consider to be frivolous or a waste of time.

Because at no point do I ever tell anyone to create their home in a way similar to mine. In fact it is the complete opposite, I am encouraging and guiding folk to lean into their own love story.

What I am doing is writing about our home and my many previous homes as examples and offering the lovely folk who buy the workshop a set of tools to help express what already lies within them and their capabilities.

It’s about how to make your home yours, not like the home of someone you see on instagram, or in Elle decoration or Pinterest.

For me, our home is the centre of gravity. It is where everything begins. It is where I allow my creative life to unfurl and soften.

And it clearly looks and feels very different to Jeffrey’s. As it should.

Lol.

Java x