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I am a Brooklynite living in a not-so-spacious two bedroom apartment that barely fits one grown man, one pre-schooler, two cats and our worldly possessions besides my self. We moved four times in the last 5 years, twice cross-Atlantic and twice cross-continent, during which we accumulated 3 apartments worth of stuff, ranging from unmatched plates picked up from the curve to a giant, custom-made, sectional sofa with a pull out bed (which we used for 6 months, rugged around everywhere, and finally headed to landfill to my dismay).
I am a recently converted minimalist, struggling to stick to the doctrine. I am also, a shopaholic.
This blog is about how I became an ardent advocate of not owning things that our family doesn’t need, the plan and the principle, occasional relapse to consumerism, and most importantly, how I am getting it back together, over and over again.

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How I became a minimalist. (Part 2/2)

We move a lot. I can’t use a past tense in that sentence, because every time we move, we say to ourselves that this would be for good when in fact, all of our apartments lasted less than two years. Whether it is voluntary or involuntary, moving is always such a rush — and thank god if it doesn’t turn into full-blown mayhem. I came to accept the fact that you can’t  not  rush when you move — how can you? You don’t want to pay two rents, it’s twice as expensive to hire movers across two days instead of getting everything out (or in) in one day, and no one loves the sight of brown boxes stacked up to the ceiling. So instead of taking the time to make sure we do everything right, we optimize for efficiency. We don’t think through what is the best way to pack things up, nor do we waste time marking boxes ‘bedroom’ and ‘living room’ because at the end of the day everything gets mixed up. Our trick is to get a lot of oversized boxes and just throw things in like robots...

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It’s been five months since my last post! I apologize for such a long hiatus – but, I did come back with a more exciting topic than ‘throw everything away,’, which is ;drumroll; ‘ shopping .’ Wait, what? Am I really writing about shopping? Yes, in fact, I am. After all, this blog is titled ‘minimalist shopaholic.’ And more importantly, if we buy more wisely, we can get rid of much fewer things. I love shopping. I love looking at the merchandise, comparing features, finding deals, trying things on, and giving away my hard earned money for shiny new things. I love online shopping. I love offline shopping. I love seeing my refund after returning the stuff I don’t love but bought anyways. My shopaholic-ness, as in dopamine pumping out whenever I click that ‘Buy Now’ button, directly contradicts the minimalist lifestyle and not great for my bank account, either. When I first tried minimalism, I decided to not shop at all except for groceries, paper towels, toilet paper, and soap,...

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