I would like to talk about my lifestyle.
People call me that I’m an extreme minimalist in terms of both the number of possession and mentality.
The idea of minimalism has been so natural to me for a long time that I haven’t noticed that I am even an extreme minimalist.
I decided to break down my lifestyle into each category to explain more about why and how I do it, and most importantly “how to construct the minimalist mentality”.
Life without the washing machine
As I have written in another article, I moved to Sweden from Japan at The end of January 2023.
My current apartment is a flat shared with three other very nice people, and of course, there is a laundry machine in the basement of our building.
However, I have never used it and I don’t think I have to use it; I wash all my clothes with my hand and hot water.
The reason why I hand wash everything
There are three reasons why I do not use the washing machine and are
- My atopic & fragile skin
- Time efficiency
- Environmental reason
My atopic&fragile skin
I was born with atopic skin.
The chemical powder and the sweat have been the evil enemy that I have been fighting against for such a long time.
When I was in Japan, I was talking to a dermatologist and I was advised to stop using any chemical or artificial soap and washing powder.
I followed the advice and in a couple of months, the skin surface which exactly touches the cloth improved drastically.
Also, The risk of contamination in the washing machine is very dangerous to me.
If I use the shared washing machine, there may be some amount of washing powder left inside the machine and it will negatively affect my skin if I use that specific washing machine.
In addition to that the reason, the reason why I don’t even use soap for my clothes is that I don’t think we need soap for daily clothes because unless your job is a very physically active job, your clothes are not that dirty after using for a whole day; it’s just sweat.
For those reasons, have been avoiding using the washing machine since then.
Time efficiency
The second reason I do not use a washing machine is that I’m washing it much faster than using washing machine.
My lifetime goal is to make free time as much as possible so using the washing machine will not help me to achieve that goal; it simply takes longer than my hand-washing process.
Given that the washing machine takes an hour to finish, washing by hand only takes five minutes.
If I stick to hand washing, in five minutes I will I’ll be done with everything because after washing, what I have to do is just hang the clothes on the central heating plate.
Sweden has a dry winter so what I do for my washing is I combine showering and washing together.
After taking a shower, I just hung them on the central heating plate, and the following morning, all the clothes are clean and dry.
Environmental reason
The third reason I do not use a washing machine is the environmental reason.
I’m not going to talk about the numbers or data here because if you google how water is insufficient globally, you’ll just know how serious it is.
I don’t want to use water that I don’t have to use, and as I have mentioned in an earlier paragraph we don’t need that much water to make our clothes clean.
I’m the witness because I have been living without washing powder and a washing machine, by the way even I live without shampoo, for many years and sometimes I ask my friend “ Do I smell bad?” and what all of my friends say is “ What kind of smell are you worried about?”.
In my opinion, we don’t need that much chemical liquid or powder to make ourselves clean.
If you think you are so dirty without shampoo or the washing machine, you shall ask yourself about how dirty people were before the invention of the washing machines and shampoo; or come visit me!!!
The disadvantage of an extremely minimalist lifestyle
In an earlier paragraph, I talked about my passion for extreme minimalism and how I managed to live without a washing machine.
I do love minimalism from bottom of my heart but I don’t want to make my blog posts distorted so in this paragraph I would like to talk about the disadvantage of an extremely minimalist lifestyle.
If you’re thinking about becoming a minimalist or even an extreme minimalist like me, you have to know that some parts of your life will be extremely inconvenient and uncomfortable.
Since we are all used to using technology and convenient lifestyle, taking comfort off is the most painful moment in your life.
The disadvantage of an extremely minimalist lifestyle is that you don’t own something that almost everyone in this century has.
When I was living in Japan, I didn’t own a microwave, washing machine, and shampoo.
This sounds crazy if you’re living a life by using those three items, so before trying out a minimalist lifestyle, I strongly suggest you ask yourself “ Which is more valuable and important? The comfort of not having, or the comfort of having?”
Personally, the desire and comfort of not having things are much more important for me than living a little bit of an uncomfortable lifestyle, so if people say my lifestyle is completely uncomfortable and inconvenient, I would say that the comfort of not having overwhelms the inconvenience; and I don’t think my lifestyle is inconvenient at all!
In this blog, I have been and will be posting many posts about minimalism.
If you are interested in becoming a minimalist or the idea of minimalism itself, I hope my blog posts are something informative to you.
Thank you so much for reading and I’ll see you in the next blog post.