If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed something.

I am very drawn to the ideals of voluntary simplicity.

 This is one of my interests passions obsessions. I have an aesthetic sensibility that leans strongly toward minimalism, and the fact that this isn’t very apparent where I live causes me mental and emotional stress.

I’ve come to realize that’s just one more facet of my perfectionism.

Despite the fact that I own less than the average person (I share a rented apartment and basically live out of my bedroom), I still feel like I have too much stuff, and I’m always trying to whittle it down even more.

But I’ve got nothing on this guy.

I’m officially in awe of Jay Shafer and his 96-square-foot home.

Actually, he has since gotten married and had a child, so they’ve moved into a 500-square-foot home, with his little one pulled up next to it. Still pretty darn small, though, since the size of the average home in the U.S. was a little over 2,300 square feet as of 2004, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Jay now creates plans and builds tiny houses for others through his Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, and says that the demand for them is growing. (In fact, his house is featured on Yahoo’s front page today, and the server is so busy I can’t even get through to the site now.)

On the face of it, these little homes look like the ultimate in simple living.

But that ignores what the foremost proponents of voluntary simplicity say. For example, the front page of The Simple Living Network tells us that “…simple living is not about poverty or self-inflicted deprivation. Rather, it is about living an examined life—one in which you determine what is important and enough for you, and discard the rest.”

I like that a lot.

Jay Shafer has examined his life and figured out that he can live in extremely tiny houses. Me? I’m kind of claustrophobic, and a house I could walk through in ten steps or less would drive me nuts. Even if I were to succeed at something like The 100 Things Challenge, I’d still need some physical breathing room around me.

And then there are my books. That’s the one area where I have trouble minimizing, because I do read them again and again. I’ve long since gotten rid of the ones I don’t—and even some of the ones I do. I just ended up buying those again.

I think those of us with overly self-controlling and perfectionistic tendencies need to be careful not to (*cough*) over-complicate voluntary simplicity. Or any other movement.

As I often like to say (apparently agreeing with Julia Child in the bargain), “Everything in moderation–including moderation.”

Because the one area where we really do need to be minimalistic is in our methods of self-flagellation. We’re too good at that already.

It’s far too easy for us to tell ourselves that we must meet some arbitrarily created “simplicity standard,” such as living in a wee little house or owning a certain number of things.

But simplicity and minimalism are really about finding your own answer to the question of what is enough for you.

I find that walking this line is a challenging balancing act. What about you? How do you determine what’s truly necessary in your life? Please share in the comments—I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences!

Today’s blog post is brought to you by the term wabi-sabi.

No, it’s not something you would order at your neighborhood sushi bar. Nor is it a new character in a manga comic book. It’s a Japanese compound word which describes an entire philosophy and aesthetic in four simple syllables.

You’ve got to love the Japanese for being so elegantly efficient.

A little Internet research reveals the inevitable drama and conflict—some say that the two words wabi and sabi should never be used together. (Neither word translates directly into English. Wabi holds connotations of loneliness, rustic simplicity, humility, and quietude; sabi refers to imperfection, the aging process, and the interest these lend to things.) Others decry the new popularization of wabi-sabi in the West, and its commoditization as a new “style” in architecture, interior design, and the like.

So here’s my disclaimer. I’ve spent maybe 30-45 minutes looking into the term, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m not going to do justice to the subtlety and richness of the concepts involved. But since the object of this blog is to highlight the practice of imperfection, it feels like it would be very humble-and-imperfect of me to continue.

Of all the discussions I found online, this is my favorite. From the first two paragraphs:

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered—and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. . . . Wabi-sabi is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered. . . . It’s a richly mellow beauty that’s striking but not obvious, that you can imagine having around you for a long, long time . . .

I started this blog to talk about perfection and imperfection, but in my mind, they keep bringing me back to concepts like clarity, simplification, and authenticity. There’s a close relationship between these things and allowing myself to let go of my need for perfection, and that’s why I was excited to find a strongly resonant term that ties them all together.

But there’s also a paradox. I have a personal aesthetic that is very wabi-sabi on its surface—my dream house, for instance, would contain lots of grainy wood and irregular stone and earthy-looking fabric and soft, natural tones and comfy furniture you could put your feet on, and very little plastic and shimmer and glitter and ruler-straight lines and loud colors and modular, matched fixtures.

My desire to pare down my personal possessions to only those things I truly need, love, or both also seems to fit the wabi-sabi philosophy very well.

But I’m forever wanting to declutter, organize, buy things that look artfully distressed, and otherwise force-fit my space and my belongings into the spare, uncluttered, and peacefully serene picture I have in my head.

In other words, I think I have a romanticized notion of imperfection.

Ouch.

Rather than trying to fit myself into an idealized image of what I think imperfection “should” look like, wouldn’t it be more authentic and humble and mentally/emotionally quiet and peaceful of me to simply accept that my space doesn’t look like I want it to, and make changes slowly as I can without beating myself up over the fact that it’s all . . . erm, not perfectly imperfect yet?

This new revelation actually came about as I was writing this post. Yay! Fresh insight! Now I just have to let it percolate for a while.

I guess what it all means is that (cough) I would like to lobby for making wabi-sabi not just a hobby, but a part of my regular jobbie.

(And if I haven’t just scared you off with that, feel free to comment!)