How little can you live with?

I need a good non-stick wok, a lid and a sharp knife.

[mk_dropcaps style=”simple-style”]A[/mk_dropcaps]fter decluttering for the past four months, I was almost queasy walking into a shop today. Seeing things for sale on shelves that I’ve been purging for my life must be like a not-quite-recovered alcoholic walking through a liquor store. Well, or maybe the opposite: I didn’t want what was on the shelves and in fact, it was making me want to run out of there so we didn’t buy anything.

It didn’t happen that way. We bought: (bed) pillows, a good non-stick wok, some peanut M&Ms and I’m-not-sure-what-else. But I didn’t want to buy anything. I don’t need 12 knives, I need one knife (OK, maybe a good serrated knife, too). A good wok-like pan with a lid. That’s it for the kitchen.

After purging and cleansing and decluttering and selling and giving away for many months, I don’t even want to see stuff any longer. I don’t want to go in stores, especially stores with nice products and cut-rate prices. I don’t want to need anything, but we’ve moved, we have an empty house, we actually need things.

I’m not a monk. I’m not a hermit. I’m not a purist or even a minimalist. Remember the film where the guy ate at a fast-food place for something like a month straight, breakfast, lunch and dinner and he gained weight and felt terrible? That’s how I feel about stuff right now. It’s almost become a game to see how little we can get away with.

I saw a truck today at the market and it was loading a forklift that had some kind of kiosk chock full of books. I love books. I write books. But even books I don’t want. My very first thought was:

“I could fit that entire truck on my Kindle.”

What do I want? A Vitamix. I saw several items today that don’t need to exist if you have a Vitamix:

1. Blender
2. Food processor
3. Soup maker (this was really a machine)
4. Smoothie maker (a small blender)

OK. I’ll stop. I feel like I’m venting. It’ll get better. I just need to recover.