Farewell then to paperbacks, CDs, DVDs, LPs, camera film. In principle, anything that can be digitalised is expendable. Photograph: Lorna Roach for the Observer
In Poussin's painting Landscape with Diogenes, the ancient philosopher is depicted casting away his last possession, a drinking bowl. He realises he doesn't need it after seeing a youth cupping a hand to drink from a river. True, he seems to be keeping that grubby-looking over-the-shoulder blue sheet, but let's not spoil the story.
Diogenes's spiritual descendants are everywhere, if not as radically possession-free as he was. "I can carry everything I own," says Jason Edwards. "I have a few changes of clothing, laptop, two pots, bowl, spork, futon and flask. I like sitting on the floor eating fruits, nuts, vegetables and rice."
You're probably now hating Jason, but stay with him. "The nice thing about a bare room is that you begin to notice the space around you in a physical sense and you begin to notice other things like the changing sunlight during the day . . . Many possessions tend to tie one down mentally and physically – seeing too much permanence in inanimate objects rather than being aware of the vitality of the outside world of nature."
Then there is Robby who, in 2001, had a revelation. As he drove away with his girlfriend and dog from his flooding house in Austin, Texas, he realised: "Everything we owned was back there. And it didn't matter. There was nothing in that truck that I would trade for anything else in the world, no possession left behind for which I would risk our lives. It's a shame that it took a natural disaster to teach me what was truly worth valuing in my life."
These stories came from missminimalist.com and becomingminimalist.com respectively. There are hundreds of similar sites, clogging the internet like stuffed toys in a spoiled toddler's cot. My favourite is tinyassapartment.blogspot.com: "Wish you had a five-bedroom mansion in the hills and enough money to decorate it with stuff from Anthropologie that's NOT on sale? Face it – you live in a tiny-ass apartment with only enough cash to buy . . . nothing. Here's how to still be fabulous."
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