9 – SMALL SPACE

In theme with the course being a documentary based class surrounding the ideas of place and space, I watched the 2016 documentary The Minimalists: A Documentary About the Important Things. I was actually just scrolling through Netflix and this caught my fancy, and found the film related to our course very briefly. It was about the way modern Minimalists live, and how they choose to live their life with the bare minimum that they need to sustain a fulfilling lifestyle. For some it would mean keeping the bare necessities, for others it was about trying to live within the smallest space you humanely need. These were mainly in the form of tiny houses, or really innovative apartments that would utilize a space for more than one purpose. So a kitchen bench would be able to extend into a work desk, of your bed could transform into a socializing space in the push of a button. This ‘new’ was of tech living was so incredibly crafted and it made me realise how much superfluous space I have in my home that I don’t even use. There are cupboards that I haven’t opened in months, a chair that is left in the corner of the living room used only as decoration, and an entire bookshelf that hasn’t been cleaned or given any new additions for years. My relationship to these items and spaces in my house are given no though every single day and I realise that it is genuinely a waste of space in a way. I had never thought about why I should have these things in these certain areas, but I have not even considered that having these items in the first place was something that we had to put meaning towards. It’s not something that most would actively search out, but after the documentary I kinda grasp this idea of being aware of my space, the amount of space I take up, and what I choose to put in these places. I’m not going to completely convert into a hardcore Minimalist that owns only 30 items that could fit in a duffel bag, but I think I am going to adopt some of the ideas about not wasting space on things that don’t make me happy, or provide anything to my current way of life. Like I said, that bookshelf hasn’t been properly read in a few years, and I think it’s due to my choice to study more audio/visual mediums for my future. This probably means that I’ll just donate a few books later on to free up some new space now to fill up with recording equipment, or a new library of films and CD’s instead. Either way it means I am finally acknowledging that space and realising the full potential of the space.