The Art of Enough Part One: How Much Is Enough?

I’ve always liked things with a little life in them.

My cupboards are filled with mismatched dishes. I have chipped plates I won’t part with, old furniture, worn wood, stacks of books and a kitchen that feels a little like your granny might have cooked in it.

I use the good stuff.

I don’t save the beautiful glasses for company or the fancy dishes for Thanksgiving. If I love something enough to have it, I want it to be part of my everyday life.

I also love beautiful things. I enjoy shopping. I’m not a minimalist and I’m not interested in becoming one.

But I’ve never really understood having more simply for the sake of having more.

And lately I’ve been thinking about how much our culture seems to be built around exactly that.

How much is enough?

There is always another thing waiting for us.

Another pair of shoes. Another bag. Another thing for the kitchen. A new sofa because apparently the shape of sofas has changed again. A new wardrobe because the things we bought two years ago aren’t quite right anymore.

We hunt. We find. We buy.

We get that little rush when we finally get the thing we’ve been looking for.

And then something interesting happens.

It becomes ours.

It goes into the closet or onto the shelf. The newness wears off. The little rush disappears.

And we begin looking for the next thing.

Of course I know that feeling. I love finding something beautiful as much as anyone.

But there is a difference between loving something and loving the feeling of getting something.

I think we’ve gotten very good at the second one.

What happened to keeping things?

I think about the furniture people used to keep.

A table stayed in a family long enough to collect scratches and water rings. Children ate at it. Then grandchildren did.

Furniture was refinished.

Shoes were resoled.

Things were mended.

A chipped dish wasn’t necessarily thrown away. Sometimes it simply became the dish you reached for every morning.

Things had time to become ours.

Now entire rooms are replaced because they’re no longer on trend. Furniture is made cheaply enough that sometimes replacing it makes more sense than repairing it. Closets overflow while somehow we still feel like we have nothing to wear.

And I wonder what we lose when everything becomes so easily replaceable.

Because when almost anything can be replaced tomorrow, it’s easy for everything to become a little less meaningful.

Enough isn’t an empty house

I want to be clear about something.

This isn’t minimalism.

You will not find an empty kitchen or perfectly edited closet at my house.

I like my things.

I like opening a cupboard and seeing dishes that don’t match. I like remembering where something came from. I like furniture that’s been around long enough to carry a story.

And when I buy something new that I truly love, I enjoy the hell out of it.

That’s part of enough, too.

Enough isn’t about denying ourselves pleasure.

It’s knowing the difference between something that adds to our life and simply adding another thing.

The less I have, the more creative I am

I’ve always noticed this about myself.

The less I have, the more creative I become.

Give me a refrigerator overflowing with groceries and there are almost too many possibilities.

Give me a few vegetables, good olive oil, a lemon and whatever happens to be in the pantry and I’ll figure something out.

It’s the same with clothes. Setting a table. Decorating a room.

When the answer isn’t automatically go get something else, you start seeing what’s already there differently.

You improvise.

You combine things you wouldn’t normally combine.

You make something work.

You create.

There is a kind of abundance in that which has nothing to do with having more.

More isn’t always more

I don’t believe wanting things is bad.

I don’t think shopping is bad.

And I certainly don’t think beautiful things are frivolous. Beauty matters to me. It always has.

I just think the things we bring into our lives should have the opportunity to become part of them.

Use them.

Wear them.

Repair them.

Take care of them.

Let the table get scratched. Let the linen soften from a hundred washings. Let the plate get chipped. Let something stay around long enough that one day your child says, I remember that.

Because perhaps the question isn’t really how little we can live with.

Maybe it’s whether we’re actually living with what we already have.

I’ve lived this way for as long as I can remember.

But in a world that seems increasingly determined to convince us that the next thing will be better than the thing we already have, it feels worth talking about.

So that’s what this next Journal series will be about.

Not having less for the sake of less.

Not minimalism.

Not rules about how many shoes we should own.

The Art of Enough is about allowing what we have to mean more.

 

Love + Be Well,
Natalie