SIMPLECITY

Urban is a complicated world, with complex systems and even more complicated technology. There’s so much going on all the time, we feel like we’re constantly on the go, trying to catch up with ourselves. But Urban is man-made. We do this to ourselves. We’ve created this elaborate construct and called it society. We work at things that very often aren’t real (or at least aren’t materially real or necessary for basic survival) for a shared dream called money that we invented as a comparative and common measure for worth, for value. Why did we bother to complicate our lives so much?

Was it, and more to the point, is it, really necessary? Especially as it seems we’re not any happier than we used to be.

This blog is about simplifying in the complicated urban context most of us live in. I should clarify from the start that I am not a minimalist, but Occam and Newton were right  - “It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer.” (Occam. Newton wrote in similar terms about not looking for more causes than actually necessary to create the effect you’re trying to explain).

I’ve always been a city girl. I live in London and work in the industry I always wanted to work in. I am not against modern technology, I definitely see the attraction of the “iLife” and storing my entire business and entertainment on a laptop, my wardrobe in a carry-on.

A few months ago I was overcome by a feeling of restlessness and discontent. Trying to pinpoint the origin of this dissatisfaction led me to question everything about my urbanite lifestyle.

The fact is that it’s often the smallest moments, the simplest things that make or break a day. And yet… in our largely urban world, we seem to spend an awful lot of time pursuing the complex, and complicating every step we take.

When the unshakeable feeling of discontent first struck me, I couldn’t just go out and buy all my dreams, so I started to question them instead. It was the obvious solution, after all. I needed to figure out what was really important to me, so I decided to strip my life down to see which absences I missed. I started to simplify, to edit my life.

ANYTHING GOES – WHY NOT START WITH CLOTHES?

I started with clothes, because, if I’m honest, I had no idea where else to start. Thoreau believed we should “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes” and like most women, my cupboard was full of nothing to wear. I once heard of a cinematographer who owned nothing but 2 identical pairs of blue jeans, 10 white t-shirts, a pair of boots, a suit jacket and a leather jacket (both black). I’m guessing he owned underwear and socks as well, but even so – what a wonderfully simple wardrobe, and how easy to decide what to wear in the morning. If you have no choices, you can’t waste time deciding, and you get to sleep in. It sounds good to me, but like most city women, I have too many roles to play to limit my wardrobe so severely. The trouble most of us run into is that we either don’t think about those roles enough and impulse buy clothes we never wear, or we think about them too much and go shopping every time we do. And we fall into the fashion trap of wishfully thinking new clothes will somehow change us. Yes, that trap keeps the money going round, but it doesn’t really solve anything.

“If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? … we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.” Thoreau may be a little extreme on this one, but the point is valid – what we wear doesn’t change who we are even if it changes people’s first impression of us. Right up until we open our mouths.

            If I haven’t got my wardrobe down to a single carry-on yet, I’ve at least got it down to a single suticase, and I’m working on the rest of my life.

            In a sense, clothes are the easiest place to start – most of us have done a closet clearout before. We know the questionnaire for it, as it were: how many garments do I actually need for work? For weekends? For going out? For the gym? For specific activities? Which items can multi-task? It’s a bit like packing for a trip, except that you have to take the logistics of laundry into account, instead of how many days you’d be away.

            The clearout is the easy part. The hard part is preventing yourself from making a list of things you still “need” and then going shopping. Again. I may be the only person in Britain who’s glad VAT’s gone up. So far it’s served as an effective reason not to visit the January sales.