490 | Blank Spaces

The Minimalists talk about the fear and joy of creating blank spaces in our lives. Discussed in this episode: What if I don't find anything meaningful on the other side of minimizing my stuff? (2:02) Blank space—do you find it terrifying or appealing? (21:21) Listener tip: New ways to get rid of your excess clothes and toys. (40:25) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcastRecorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and TK Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.

• 0:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, thank you, Alabama. Hello, everybody. Today on the show, we're talking about the fear and joy of creating blank spaces in our lives. Coming up on this free, public minimal episode, a caller has a question about what happens if she doesn't find anything meaningful on the other side of minimizing her stuff? And then we've got a question about the terror of blank spaces. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 490. That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

• 1:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to the very first episode. That's a full decade of podcast archives. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording to [email protected]. Our first questions day is from Joanna.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Hey, this is Joanna, I'm a podcast patron subscriber from the UK. I've just been thinking about how when we say minimalism isn't about things, it's about making room for important things which aren't things at all.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  I have a fear that I've suddenly realised is there about how I don't think I will find anything important at the end of this. And so I started wondering what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  And almost don't want to do it because I don't want to find nothing at the end. I've had 20 or more years of being sort of given incorrect psychiatric medication due to having autism and ADHD that weren't diagnosed until I was in my 30s and 40s, mid 40s really, nearly 50. And I masked as an autistic adult, pretended to be other people. Well, not other people, but pretended to be somebody who I wasn't, I guess, to try and fit in with other people. And now feel like I really don't know who I am, have no idea what I like. I can be doing activities and I don't know whether I'm enjoying it.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  And when I look back on things, I often have no idea what I feel about anything at all. Any, any decisions are often made because of other people's expectations or needs or wants. And then when I do have spare time or I cast sort of some time aside for myself, I really don't know what to do or what I want to do. And that blank kind of space inside me and blank time and it's, it's really quite frightening. Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Anyway, so there we go. We might be getting rid of things, but supposing there's nothing important at the end of it.

• 4:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know TK, this is more common than you might suspect. When people start getting rid of stuff, there's often this inverse consumerism or reverse consumerism. It's maybe a better way to think about it. Where we bought a bunch of things in order to make us happy. It didn't work, so we buy more things to make us happy. More must be the answer. And it doesn't work. It does give us some pleasure for a short period of time. And we mistake that pleasure for happiness. Of course, pleasure isn't happiness. And we did a whole hedonism episode about that. It might be my favorite, all time favorite podcast episode. Because just pleasure after pleasure after pleasure continue to, it continues to increase the threshold. So more, more, more doesn't work. And so instead of more, we try different. Like, oh, I bought all the wrong things.

• 4:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So I must get different things that will make me happy. A different house, a different city, a different job, a different couch, a different bed, a different mattress cover, different, different, different. It's just another version of more, more, more. And then when that doesn't work, at least in my case, and I'm roughly aged 30, almost 30, when I first stumbled into minimalism at the time, I realized like, oh, all these things won't make me happy. You know, my first thought was, well, what if I just get rid of everything? Maybe that would make me happy. But as Joanna pointed out, minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things so we can make room for life's most important things. It's about making that room. And it often starts with creating that, as she says, blank space.

• 5:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  She also uses this great term, blank time, which I'd love to unpack with you as well. That's a different kind of blank space. And so, of course, getting rid of the stuff isn't going to give us perpetual bliss. But maybe it'll allow us to make room for something different. Not something that's going to make us happy because the happiness is not out there in the externalities. But a lot of these externalities are actually making me miserable. But here's what happens. When we get rid of everything and you come home to an empty house and now you realize, uh oh, this might even be worse because I've removed all my pacifiers. At least the things that weren't making me happy were at least distracting me a little bit from my unhappiness.

• 6:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And now where Joanna is, like, I'm afraid of continuing to minimize because what if I don't find anything meaningful on the other side of my stuff?

• 6:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it's so important, and this question is a great reminder of it, to think about the value of minimalism in terms of what you say at the end of every episode. It's about the relationship rather than the results. If you think about it as a result, then there's some final stage to get to, some final boss to be defeated. And then when you get to that, if you don't experience the requisite high, well, then you lose. But if you think about it in terms of relationship, then minimizing our stuff becomes a means to an end. And what is that end? The end is redefining and reframing and revitalizing, breathing new life into our relationship with things and people. It's really about getting off autopilot with our habits of buying things,

• 7:14Speaker 04

  consuming things and possessing things and introducing intentionality to that. This is why it's so important that you talk a lot about not renouncing things. It's not the renunciation of my stuff. And so when I minimize, I'm not saying, be damned, thou evil thing. It's about saying, hey, I'm gonna let you go so that in this space, I have some room to think about if I really need you. And if I really need you, why do I need you? So on the other side, it's not like there's some grand treasure that you gotta have in order to win. It's just about saying, okay, now that you've got some distance between these things, what do you really want? And if the answer is nothing, that's important to find out, too.

• 7:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and there's an abundance component to this as well. The blank time or the blank space, sometimes that is a type of abundance. And we often mistake abundance with more things, more widgets, more consumption, as if having excess things is going to bring us excess happiness. But it doesn't do that. In fact, it brings us fear. But real abundance exists only where fear doesn't. Fear is scarcity, right? The fear of missing out. We were talking about this at Simple Haven quite a bit. We just had this great three-day retreat here in Southern California, up at Ojai, my current hometown. And it was really beautiful. We brought 30 people together and we just sort of met it

• 8:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  under the oak trees at the Ojai Art Center. And this idea of fear came up again and again and again, I'm letting go of something. But on day two, we started talking about, okay, letting go is fine. We want to let go of the things that are no longer serving us. But what am I making room for? And that is obviously the question that Joanna is asking, but she's asking another question. What if I'm making room for the nothingness? And that nothingness is terrifying.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  So here's, here's one way I like to look at the process of asking questions that might lead to perhaps a disappointing answer. Imagine you spend your whole life being suspicious that deep, deep, deep within some hidden cave in a faraway land lies a treasure that will make all of your dreams come true. And every night when you go to sleep, you wonder about that treasure. And then you decide to spend your whole life in search of it. And you find your way across the country or across the world. You make it into that cave. You exercise the bravery to go deep inside. And then when you get there, you find that that treasure isn't there. Question, have you wasted your time? It depends. Had you never gone on that journey?

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Would you have tormented yourself for the rest of your life about what your life could have been? Because if the answer to that question is yes, then you haven't wasted your time at all. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Lomack lives much of his life in regret. And in his older age, he's struggling financially. You know, he's struggling with his job and he never stops thinking about his brother, who many years ago invited him to go on an adventure with him, to take an entrepreneurial creative risk. And his brother had dreams of being, being wealthy. And Willy was a little too scared and a little too conservative. His brother goes and does it and he succeeds. And Willy always thinks, what my life might be if I had exercised that courage? And he spends his life tormenting himself. If you're going to end up being Lomack in that, in that sense,

• 10:38Speaker 04

  then perhaps you haven't wasted your time. And so I think the goal of wrestling with questions, the goal of following our dreams, the goal of going after things, isn't because life gives us some kind of guarantee that we'll win, but rather by doing things that are worth doing. By seeking after answers to the questions that burn in our hearts, we discover important things about ourselves that allow us to live life differently, even if we have to go back to the life that we always knew. And so sometimes there's this value in getting answers to your questions. So if there's nothing on the other side, you may find that it's a nothing that you can be at peace with, as opposed to staying where you are now and never getting the answer to your questions.

• 11:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I'm thinking about this courage thing that you brought up here, because several people who came to Simple Haven told me at the end, "I'm glad I had the courage to do this. I was afraid of going, afraid of wasting my time, afraid of feeling awkward, afraid of, of what was on the other side of this retreat. But ultimately, I think I also came down to a fear of letting go. I was afraid of letting go of the past, because what if those are some of the best days? And that's a disempowering story of sorts. So that's one other thing we let go of, or a lot of disempowering stories. We had everyone focus on the three things they wanted to let go of over the three-day weekend. And it was amazing when I saw people write down.

• 12:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Some people said, "I want to let go of 80% of my stuff." Okay, I get that, right? But, okay, what are you going to do with that 80% of space? You don't have to necessarily do anything with it. And I think that's the fallacy. When we talk about making room, it's not room for more stuff, although it can be. You might be making room for the things that are actually important to you, and these other things were getting in the way. But there's a courage here, and there's a trusting that there's something on the other side of this. But there's also a trusting that even if it's not the treasure that we thought it was, there's something else here that is worthwhile.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It's not about finding the right answer. It's about finding the true answer and having that courage to recognize that we're always better off knowing the truth. So if there's nothing there... That's important for you to find out.

• 12:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and by the way, let's not pathologize the fact that there might be, there might not be the treasure that you want on the other side of this, especially if we have an expectation that there's going to be, you know, the functional equivalent of winning the intellectual or emotional lottery by getting rid of my things. Yeah, you'll probably feel calmer, you'll feel lighter. The things that are harder to count, right? How many international units of calm do you get by getting rid of 80% of your stuff? I don't know, but I can tell you from personal experience, I can't measure the amount of calm that I have relative to when I was 29 years old, but it is appreciably more. And it's more regular as well.

• 13:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Before I had blips of peace and I had blips of calm amid a sea of chaos. And now that chaos appears way less frequently, but also I'm able to, I'm able to survive within that chaos because I have the space for that to show up when it does.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I know a drama teacher who gave herself five years to pursue her acting dream in LA. She went to LA, five years, didn't make it at all, went back to her hometown and taught drama and says, of course, I don't regret that. Now that I'm a drama teacher, I have a whole set of stories and experiences that really makes things resonate with my students. But I didn't get what I wanted, but I was never promised that I would get it anyway. I just went to find out and I'm glad that I found out and I gave myself a time limit and that's it. And so what's the worst thing that could happen? If you began this process of minimizing for the sake of experiencing a little bit of levity, you experience that and you get to the end of it and you say, darn it,

• 14:44Speaker 04

  I thought there was some cool prize at the end and there is nothing romantic, nothing beautiful, nothing mystical here. Okay, now what? What's the worst thing that can happen? It's not like you made a million dollar investment. If anything, you've saved money by reducing your consumption. It's not like you have, you know, bought into some like scam business. That required a 50 grand upfront investment. You've just minimized your stuff and gave yourself a little more peace. The worst thing that can happen is you just go back to the life that you once had. You say, let me bring all this stuff back. This was a waste of time. But guess what? When you bring it all back, you're going to be way more intentional and you're going to have way more self-knowledge. And so you'll still be better off in the process.

• 15:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I was just in Nashville yesterday and I was talking to George Camel from the Ramsey Solutions team. And the question he often asks folks on the money front is, and then? Remember a few, or maybe it was last week, actually, we were talking about, I had a friend who said he would, if he made $200 million, then he'd be set for life. And it's like, okay, yeah, I mean, I guess you would money-wise, right? But what's the and then? And then, okay, you've gotten 200 million. Let's say you had 199. Okay, what are you going to do with the extra money? And then? And I'm not saying that it's wrong. You may have a great reason for wanting 200 million dollars. Think of how many wells that I can build in Malawi. Okay, wonderful. Then it sounds to me like you want to do everything you can.

• 16:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  In fact, if you look at the, what's it called? The functional altruism group, you can, you can see how they are, they're willing to do really hard work and work 80 hours a week because they find that's the best way to contribute beyond themselves. Take all that money they're earning from venture capital or whatever and pour it into places that may need those resources. They have an and then. And to me, Joanna's question is an and then question. Okay, I'm letting go of the stuff and then I'm making space for X. And that X could just be, you know what? I want to be calmer. I don't know anyone who's ever regretted simplifying their life

• 16:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  because as TK said, if you want to make it more complex in the future, you always can. You can bring in more stuff. You can bring in more relationships. You can bring in more frustration. You can bring in more hours worked. I do want to wrap up this question by talking about this blank time concept. I love that term that she sort of accidentally threw in, in there, right? Because to me, that is the most valuable thing. And I didn't realize this at the time when I was simplifying. I thought, yes, I was making room to feel lighter and freer and, and maybe that would lead to more happiness long-term. I had to really identify what happiness was and, and disambiguate it from pleasure and excitement. Those can be ingredients, but it's not the, the whole thing.

• 17:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But for me, the biggest benefit is more spaciousness in the calendar, that blank time. I value it so much now compared to, wow, maybe I wasn't just wasting my money on stuff, I was wasting my time on stuff.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  That's so good. And you're better at that than anybody I know, by the way. And so I think you have given me pause, many moments in life, to think about how I can create more space for emptiness. And one of the things I think your life and philosophy illustrates very well is that emptiness does not merely lead to treasure. Emptiness is a kind of treasure unto itself. But what makes it so difficult to be open to it is, we want that foreknowledge, we want that certainty, we want that guarantee, we want that assurance that it's gonna be okay. But if a new experience could always give you the assurance that it's going to be okay, then by definition, it ceases to be an adventure.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  And our soul needs adventure. If you know what's gonna happen ahead of time, then it can't possibly be a discovery. And without the possibility of discovery, what are we doing? Whatever we're doing, it's not living.

• 18:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And last week, we talked a lot about uncertainty and how we actually need that level of uncertainty. And next week, we're gonna do a whole episode about the beauty of uncertainty. We've got some uncertain things that are even coming up for the minimalist. We're gonna save that for next week. But for Joanna, the next question for you is, "And then?" Question mark. Okay, I'm letting go. And then? Okay, I won a million dollars. And then? Okay, I wanna buy that Mercedes Benz. And then? That is always a question worth asking. I'd love to send you a copy of the minimalist's first book, Joanne. It's called Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life. And really, it's a story about finding the

• 19:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  things that matter after decluttering. It focuses on these five foundational values and identifying what is valuable to me. So Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life. We'll send you the ebook or the book book, or if you want the audiobook, we'll be happy to send that to you as well. And while we're at it, I would encourage you to download our free value Values worksheet over at theminimists.com/v. It's one of our free resources and you can fill this out and it's especially useful when you do it with a friend or a family member so you can better understand other people's values and they can better understand your values because one thing that Joanna talked about is what I call OPE, other people's expectations.

• 20:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And when we are just following everyone else's expectation, it's kind of like when you take a balloon and just let the air out and it starts flying all over the room like crazy. Exactly. Thank you, Bama. And that is, that's what happens when we live our life by other people's expectations. We're not grounded in our values, just like that balloon isn't grounded and it creams from wall to wall to ceiling to floor and goes all over the place and you don't know where it's going to go next, but you do know by the end of it, it's going to be deflated. So, download that values worksheet, identify what your values are, that will help you identify what you are making room for. It's free to download at theminimists.com.

• 20:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Alabama, before we get back to our callers, and we've got a bunch of them here, what time is it?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  You know what time it is. It's time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week.

• 20:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Now, during the lightning round, we attempt to answer your question with a short, shareable minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimists.com and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox for free, including seven new maxims every Monday if you sign up for our email newsletter over at theminimists.com. We'll never send you spam or junk or ads, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. What's the question of the week this week?

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Blank space. Do you find it terrifying or appealing?

• 21:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, blank space. Do we find it terrifying or appealing? Before we get to our pithy answers here, I want to hear from our simpletons. What did some of our listeners have to say, Bama?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Cynthia said, blank space is essential in design. It allows the eyes to rest and brings peace to the atmosphere. It also allows other elements to shine and move to the center stage. A room, wall, counter, or closet can be complete with less.

• 21:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, when we first started our blog, our website, theminimalists.com, you can go there now and there's all this blank space on the side. And we first started, I wanted to get like a sidebar. What are we going to put over here? What are we going to put here? And I just talked to Ryan about, and we both agreed like, what if we just left it blank? What if this website was memetic of what we're doing with our own lives? We have what is essential here, right here in the center. And then what if we didn't need to have the sidebar with the promotions? Or the banner advertisements? What if we didn't need the pop-up? Please sign up for this newsletter, whatever, right? You know what? It may be more calm.

• 22:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It may be the place that people go and they feel calmer when they are reading it. So I think she brings up a great point. In design, we often see a beautiful use of blank space. What did Neve have to say?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Blank spaces always bring opportunity, but not all opportunities are happiness shaped. Blank space in a new apartment or after a huge decluttering session is amazing. However, a blank space in your life from a person you miss or wish you had more time to hang out with may make you feel lost for some time before you're ready to accept it.

• 23:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Injecting blank space into our relationships has actually been really helpful for me. And I think we all recognize this when we spend too much time with someone for too long, right? I was just in Nashville, Tennessee with Nicodemus for three days and we were in the car together all the time and it was great. He's the person I could spend the most time with and enjoy it. But if it was three months straight, I would know like, oh, I need more blank space in this relationship. The thing that makes it thrive is the fact that we have that distance majority of the time.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, every relationship needs space and it's only a question of how much is needed. And if you ever think to yourself, well, here's a relationship that doesn't need any space, really ask yourself. Never? Even when you go to the bathroom, you want that person on your heels, following you, standing next to you every single moment? Even when you take a shower, you want them talking to you the whole time, standing right next to you, holding your hand? There are moments where we need that space. And so if that's true of our relationships, what is that true of? Our relationship to self, our relationship to our work, our relationship to our things, our relationship to our homes?

• 24:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Maybe tell me a little about what Neve said here. I loved this framing. Not all opportunities are happiness shaped. So blank spaces always bring new opportunities, but it doesn't mean it's going to necessarily bring you happiness. I think that's an important point here. Maybe we're making room for happiness, but maybe that is not always the point.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's interesting because space is one of those things that can produce happiness and it can make you feel terrified at the same time, which to me means that space or emptiness is really just a mirror reflecting back to us our own disposition, our own expectations, our own attitude.

• 24:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And when we feel overwhelmed by that space, it could just mean that we've felt overwhelmed for such a long time. And now we're actually processing that. We're dealing with it. We're triaging the past and finding a way to be comfortable in that space is difficult. It's like the very first time you meditate, yeah, you've turned on the volume all around you, but the volume in your head goes way, way up. And the same thing could be true if you come home to an empty house after decluttering all the stuff. Or you leave a career and now all of a sudden you've got all this blank time in your calendar, the spaciousness of your calendar. You get to this point where you're like, oh, what am I, what am I gonna do with this?

• 25:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then the fear starts to creep in and yeah, it doesn't always look like happiness, but that is okay. It's okay to be there with those so-called negative emotions, really they're just unpleasant emotions. That's part of the experience.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  That's right. True story. I convinced a buddy to try meditation when he identifies himself as like a non-meditative type. And he went and tried it and he came back to me and he says, man, that didn't work. I said, what happened? And he says, I sat down to meditate and I closed my eyes and I fell asleep right away.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  And I said, believe me, it worked. If the first thing that happens when you got yourself some alone time and you said no to everyone else and you just closed your eyes, you fell asleep, you discovered some essence, something essential about who you are and what you need when all the noise ceases.

• 26:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Let's do a couple more, Bama.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  This one comes from C. Blank space at first terrified me, whether it was blank wall space, blank shelf space, blank closet space, or blank drawer space. It felt like something was missing or that I was too poor to fill the space with something. But once I lived with it for a while, I realized it was actually a breath of fresh air, especially in the morning when I walk into my kitchen and see blank counters. It's a refreshing way to start the day.

• 26:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, we call this, well, there are a few rules here. The no piles rule is something we just did a video about for Instagram. But like, it's so easy, any flat surface, when you walk into a home, they're magnets for clutter. It could be mail or receipts or your handbag or your wallet or your keys or your earbuds or pocket change or everything that's in your pocket or everything that's in your bag. Or, you know, I've got junk mail to set it here, I'll deal with it later. And my maxim, this is not my pithy answer, but one I live by is, why deal with it later when you can deal with it now? It's sort of the anti-procrastination maxim. And it's something I'll tell myself because like, oh, I'll just get it. Nope.

• 27:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Why deal with it later when I can just deal with it now? Because the problem with dealing with it later, a lot of the time, I'm still dealing with it now. It's cluttering up my mind. I know, oh, I've got to do that thing. And it always feels so insurmountable in the moment. Dealing with that pile of junk mail on the counter, you know what? It's going to take me three hours. It might actually only take me three minutes or 13 minutes or whatever it is. It's almost never as big as I build it up in my mind.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  That's right. And by the way, when we think about space primarily in terms of the absence of stuff, then that leads to a worldview where you say, well, the purpose of space can't be fulfilled unless I keep filling it with stuff until it's full. But if you think- Of space as energy, as vitality, as room for play. Then you you you kind of look at it relationally and you say, oh, the purpose of space can be fulfilled without me filling it with things. But by me allowing it to nourish me or by me using this space to play and to create.

• 28:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The other rule that we use is the setting the stage rule, which I think goes hand in hand with the no piles rule. We did another video about that for Instagram as well. It'll be coming out soon. You can check that out if you follow us there. But the setting the stage rule is you take a timer, set it for 15 minutes. I only need five now, but give yourself some grace. Give yourself 15 minutes at the end of the day to set up your next day for a simple morning. Because there's nothing worse than you get up and you're like already tired. No, no, I've got a crazy day ahead of me. And then there's stuff on the counter, the dishes aren't put away, the dishes weren't even washed. Oh, I forgot to fold the clothes. So what we do is we just spend 15 minutes at night setting the stage for the next day. So there's no Legos on the floor, no toys in the living room. There's nothing strewn throughout the house.

• 29:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're setting up our next day for success by taking five to 15 minutes tonight, so I don't have to force my future self to deal with it or worry about it or be inconvenienced by it tomorrow. I I think about blank space, what what C is talking about here on walls. It's okay to have a a blank wall. There's no problem with that. It's not illegal. No one's going to get upset with you. In fact, it can be really calming. It doesn't mean you have to have a blank wall. So I remember when I first moved in with Colin Wright, who's been on the show several times. He's the guy who introduced me to minimalism. We started a publishing company back in 2012 and 2013. He and Ryan and I all moved into this house together in Missoula, Montana. And one of the rules he has, I don't put anything on the walls.

• 29:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, that's not a rule for him now, so he's changed that over time. But what was what was really great about that is it it showed me another way. You didn't have to. You weren't required to do anything. Everything is optional. Your couch is optional. Your coffee table is optional. You know what? Your coffee pot is optional. Even your bed is optional. I know someone who doesn't sleep with a bed. They they sleep on a floor with a little, like on a little rug. And that's not for me. It doesn't mean I have to go that way either. But everything that's in your home is optional. And that blank space is optional as well. One, one other thing we do in our kitchen real quick is we have a kitchen cabinet that we intentionally keep bare. It's blank. It's just one cabinet.

• 30:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Even though sometimes I'm like, oh, I'll just put it in there. No, what we're doing is we're proving to ourselves that we, we don't have to fill every space just because it's a blank space. Let's do one more, Bama.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  This one's from Lottie. You can feel rich with lots of space. A room with little in it can feel luxurious. It's the same trick advertisers do with printed materials. Luxury brands have large blank spaces around the content.

• 31:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, TK, talk to me about the luxuriousness of blank spaces. Because that's so true. When you think of like luxury hotels or luxury homes or luxury living, we're not thinking of like more stuff. We're thinking of more spaciousness.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it's, it's similar to how certain people who are really powerful can afford to not say anything or afford to not do something about it. You know, it's like if some drunk guy at the bar is saying, man, I could punch your lights out. A really powerful person can afford not to talk back. They can afford to not engage in a fight. In a similar way, when you're designing and you don't feel the need to fill up every crack and every crevice, you're signaling to people something that's very powerfully on an aesthetic level. We can afford to let the space speak for itself.

• 31:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm not afraid of having some blank space.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then you realize that there, that does something. Minimalism has something to do, and this is my pithy answer here, that you've heard me say it before, but minimalism is the amplification of spaciousness. But maybe also it's a type of luxury, but it's a luxury that is free. I don't need to pay any money to not put anything on the wall. I don't have to. Pay any money to not put something on the counter or the credenza or on my bedside table. Think about my, my bedroom. I don't want anything. I have a lamp on my bedside table and that is it. In fact, we did some videos in, in my bedroom recently as part of this home tour thing that we were doing.

• 32:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're putting up on, on Instagram. And to me, the bedroom is like the ultimate place for spaciousness. Because there are two things I want to do in the bedroom ultimately, and they don't involve glowing screens or more stuff or having a bunch of things on my bedside table. Things tend to get in the way in the bedroom. And so I want, I want clear space on the bed. I want clear space on the bedside table. I don't want a bunch of excess because that feels the opposite of luxurious. Clutter never feels luxurious to me.

• 33:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's so true. It usually clutter kind of cheapens things because anytime you have an excess of something, it just makes you value it less.

• 33:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, yeah. So clutter, it can cheapen your experience. You want a more luxurious experience, find ways to inject more blank space into your everyday life. How about you listeners? Blank space. Do you find it terrifying or appealing? Let us know why and you can tell us your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to our private podcast. Okay, give me something pithy TK. Blank space. Do you find it terrifying or appealing?

• 33:53Speaker 04

  My pithy answer is space is to control what fire is to gold. It removes the excess to reveal what is essential. When you place the, the gold into the fire, the impurities rise to the surface where they can be easily brushed off. But if the gold could speak, it would scream. It would say, get me out of here. This is too much. And you'd have to speak back to the goal and encourage it and say, hang in there yet a little while longer and you'll find yourself so much more valuable. And the goal would have to say, okay, I'll try. And that's what space, that's what emptiness can be like for us. Our thoughts seem louder. Anxieties and depression moves closer to the forefront and we say, this isn't working. Like I'm feeling even more anxious. I tried. This space thing so that I can get some peace.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  But I feel like I'm moving further away from peace and it's you've got to understand you are gold. And if you can learn to practice that discomfort by taking it in small doses and sticking with it over time. That space, that emptiness will indeed make you more valuable.

• 34:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's interesting too, because you're not saying nothingness. And I think Lottie pointed this out with, hey, advertisers know this and printed materials. Luxury brands have large blank spaces around what they're advertising. But they don't put a blank ad, although that could be fascinating from an artistic point of view. No, they realize the best way to highlight the thing that they really value is not to put a thousand things there. When I, when I get on Instagram and I see someone's Instagram story and there's like 1500 words on one Instagram story. I'm like, what is this? I, I, I don't, I don't find it aesthetically appealing. I don't find it particularly compelling. It feels frantic, it feels manic, it feels chaotic.

• 35:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Whereas you just see a picture of a person and it says so much. You know, the, the picture, it speaks a thousand words there. And yes, you could put some text with it as well, but sometimes you don't even have to do that. You, you're communicating something with the spaciousness, just as what you are communicating with the materials themselves.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Funny thing about blank ads nowadays, when you drive past a billboard where no one's paid for the space or you see a sign on a wall or something like that, there's usually something that says, your ad here. Call this number or visit this website. And so now, when there isn't an ad in a space, there's an ad letting you know that there could be an ad in this space and that ad could be yours.

• 36:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, on page three, we do a sucky ads segment from time to time. And I was just talking to Nick Ademas about this because he was back here in California for a few weeks. And he was talking about, I missed the advertisements here relative to the advertisements elsewhere. It's not that I, I want these ads, it's just that they're more compelling in LA because they're at least a bit more useful in the sense that, oh, did you know this TV show with Jon Hamm is out? Or did you know that? This new album, like the occasion you'll see that. I even saw Annika Harris, her new documentary. I was driving yesterday from the airport. Her new audio documentary, she was just on the podcast. They had a lights out bill or lights on billboard up there.

• 37:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And while I would prefer no ads, that's one of the great things I really enjoy about Ojai. There are no billboards all over Ojai. There are on the drive into Ojai, but in Ojai, there aren't ads. And so what Ryan was saying is, yeah, I would prefer there were no ads wherever I am. But if you go to Dayton, Ohio, or you go to Knoxville, or you go to Saskatoon, and the ads you see on billboards there, they're quite often, they don't appeal to me because, well, A, they're aesthetically displeasing quite often. They're kind of cheap. But moreover, they are, how would I put it? They're just not valuable to me. There's ambulance chasers. Have you been injured in a car accident or whatever it is? And, and I simply don't enjoy the experience.

• 37:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I was just in Tennessee and I saw so many of these ads for different law firms. And it just felt like it was cluttering the sky. And that's just, I just didn't like it. Speaking of the kind of ads you see in LA, I'm sure y'all have seen this one. I was driving on the highway and I saw an ad that said, have you been injured in an accident? Squabble up. Call Drake the lawyer.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  What?

• 38:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it's literally a lawyer named Drake.

• 38:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, gosh. Yeah, well, you can't copyright a title, so I guess, I guess I get it, but also yuck. All right, that is almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to, but first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. I sort of hinted at it a moment ago, but we've filmed a bunch of new things for social media, mainly for Instagram, but you can also find the stuff that we're doing on TikTok and Facebook and Threads and X and YouTube, but Shorts as well, wherever you like to consume your videos responsibly. And Savvy D and TK and Jordan and Ryan and I.

• 39:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're all in here in the studio. We did a bunch of really hilarious reaction videos to things and some super serious reaction videos to things as well. That was a beautiful, creative endeavor, collaborative experience. I felt like the five of us were all inputting information and, "Oh, maybe try this." And Savvy D is like, "Oh, I think it would resonate this way." And Jordan's like, "Oh, I think you want to stand here." And it worked really, really well. So if you want to see all three of us, me and TK and Ryan, all interacting to these other decluttering videos and some of the best decluttering insights, you can follow us on Instagram or any of the other social media platforms. Did you have a standout moment from anything we were doing there, TK?

• 39:42Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh, just the opportunity to have the three of us together again. That was something special, you know?

• 39:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was so fun and like, we were laughing so much, we had to like, stop at some point. And I think that comes through in the videos that we filmed as well. It was just a joyous time, having the three of us and Savvy D and Jordan here as well. I just really enjoyed spending that time with you all. We got a bunch of stuff going up on Instagram as well. Really enjoyed that. It's different from the other stuff we've ever done. Also, a bunch of stuff in my home as well. Jordan and Savvy D came up and we did a home tour for Instagram. We did several of the minimalist rules, like the no piles rule, and several other things in my home as well. You can check that on Instagram. We're @theminimals on all social media platforms. Malabam, what else you got for us?

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 40:30Speaker 05

  Hello, minimalist. This is Nina, moving from Mexico to USA. And I want to share a couple of tips that I have been finding very helpful. The first one is a free application that is called INDYX. And what it does is that you can scan your clothes. You just put the pieces over the floor, take the pictures, and the application removes the background. After that, you can mix and match what you already have, creating a different outfits.

• 41:06Speaker 05

  I have been doing this with my kids' clothes and also with my toys. I have eight different bins with eight different toys that I keep on rotation with my girls so they don't get bored. But also, I have everything in notice with my application.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  The second is a webpage that is named Toy Cycle, where you can just send them in a box all the toys that you don't need anymore. And they will sell it for you and you will get commission of that. But for busy moms like me that doesn't have the time to start selling each of the items, posting each of the items and keep an eye for each sale, it's very useful. I'm also getting my toys from this webpage because they have a very good quality on their toys. They clean them, they try to repair them, and then they put it on the sale.

• 42:13Speaker 05

  I hope this information helps for all the minimalists out there like me. Thank you.

• 42:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Nina, that is a super useful tip. I've never heard of Indie X as a clothing app. But one of the things about not needing to get new clothes is find and go and shopping in your own closet. Because you can, you might find some clothes in there, you're like, oh yeah, I forgot I own this. Another thing that we did is the hate that shirt rule. We did a video for this as well. The hate that shirt rule is pretty simple. It's like, I go to my closet and I try on a shirt and I'm kind of like, oh, or I try to just put it back in the closet, I'll wear this later. That is the sign that I want to let it go. But if I go in my closet and I wear a shirt I haven't worn in a month or two and I'm like, oh, I really like this, yeah. Okay, well, that's a sign that I actually want to wear it more. I'm going to get more value from it if I, if I start using it.

• 43:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But also with this app, it sounds like you can, you can find different combinations. And, and so you can find, you can breathe new life into your existing clothes without going to the mall and using your credit card to put your future self into debt to buy. A bunch of things that look good on a mannequin. And then Toy Cycle, and something else I haven't heard of. But yes, you know, one of the things that happens is kids play with toys and then they stop playing with them as they get older. And, and then it's really difficult. You would go on Facebook Marketplace, sell individual toys. That's a lot of work. But if you hop on a place like Toy Cycle, it sounds like they will do that for you. But then also you can buy gently used and repaired toys from an app like that so that you don't have to buy everything brand new.

• 43:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So because someone else previously used it, but they're not using it anymore, you get the benefit of that as well. If anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, you can send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, we have page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 44:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that's the first 34% of episode 490. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions, questions like, what happens when my exciting work turns out to be too stressful? Why do I feel so compelled to save other people from their circumstances? What does it take to create a staged home that always feels calm? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malibu, Post Production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Savvy D. on the board, and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn.

• 44:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you leave here with just one message, let it be this. Love people and use things because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 45:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Embrace the emptiness.