When everyone had months to stare at their belongings and decide what to clear out, the internet saw a spike in Marie Kondo-type content. Minimalism emphasizes the shift in focus from quantity to quality. By curating a more intentional set of belongings, people are able to focus on personal relationships and other more important aspects of life. With YouTube acting as a breeding ground for every new lifestyle habit that is in vogue, minimalism saw an exodus from bland interior design trends and adoption into more meaningful communities. It’s a hot topic among modern followers of stoicism, like fans of Ryan Holiday. But minimalism saw a huge rise through creator Matthew D’Avella’s YouTube videos and subsequent documentaries.
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known better as “The Minimalists,” are the two primary creators who provide an array of content and services about minimalism. From budget courses to writing classes, the Minimalists have covered their educational bases in the past few years. The two were featured in both of D’Avella’s documentaries, “Minimalism: a Documentary about the Important Things” (2015) and “Minimalism: Less is Now” (2021). The latter was produced after D’Avella’s content started to blow up on YouTube.
The Minimalists focus on the philosophy that minimalism is about less of the material and more of the meaningful. By decluttering, people are freed to focus on the more important things in life like their relationships with others.
With the rise of this wave of content, people were temporarily infatuated with the desire to throw away all their belongings. Alongside other trends like the van-life movement and cabin off the grid/cottage-core style, the internet watched these themes peak during the pandemic. What all of these slow-living trends offer is escapism. But as the world starts to creep back into normality, the movements are losing steam. Minimalist content has petered out and D’Avella’s “Minimalism: Less is Now” film received backlash last year for lacking any new information about the philosophy.
There is nothing wrong with the Minimalist movement that suddenly made it obsolete. Simply, it became another commodified idea that once no longer “trendy,” lost its audience. For most people, the idea of throwing away all of their belongings isn’t appealing. But minimalism is needed now more than ever.
In the age of hyper-consumerism where we can get Amazon packages in a matter of hours, the lessons that minimalism embodies are vital. Sites like Shein and Zara make fast fashion faster than ever, despite their sweat-shop-driven business practices being ambiguous and their products lacking in any quality. As regular internet users become influencers and attention becomes a commodity, these practices are not sustainable in the long-term, environmentally or socially. While some extremists preach that you only need some arbitrary number of belongings, a large part of the minimalist philosophy is moderate. With the ease of buying more and more easier than ever, moderation in our material belongings is valuable.
