Minimalism has become a trendy lifestyle in recent years, but as with most things in America, the people promoting it, also have books or promote other products to get you started on your decluttering journey. I am slowly working to declutter, in several areas of my life, not only the material stuff.
After making good progress on decluttering in my house, I slipped up last week when I watched some adult coloring videos on YouTube. Being drawn to the pretty florals, I recently purchased the adult coloring book with Bible verses and a “sticker-by-number” book (photo above) at Ollie’s.
The sticker-by-number seemed simple enough, but alas it takes precision and I ended up needing to use a curved tweezers to get all these small stickers in the correct spots. Luckily, I bought a precision tweezers set for my diamond painting craft projects a year or so ago.
For the adult coloring book I pulled out some colored pencils and markers from years ago when I purchased an adult coloring book for my late husband. I had hoped coloring might help him keep his mind active and help his manual dexterity with his advancing dementia. That effort was a total fail, because he had no interest in it. I even bought a coloring book with cuss words, thinking since he was a grunt, who cussed a lot, he’d find it funny.
The point of this tale is I already had supplies on hand to color in my new coloring book, but enter YouTube where I watched some “colorists” is what some of them refer to themselves. They turn coloring book pages into amazing artistic creations. Along with explaining the shading, blending and other technical advice to transform these coloring books into works of art, comes all the special supplies they recommend. And I felt myself getting sucked down another hobby shopping trap. I try to avoid all videos that have “haul” in the title, because invariably something will catch my eye and next thing you know I’m adding it to my Amazon wish list, but how-to videos usually have supply lists too.
Fortunately, I stopped after buying some more coloring books, a better quality colored pencil set (not the best, that’s for sure), a set of moderately-priced alcohol markers (not Copic) and a few other small supplies, like a new pencil sharpener and a precision tip eraser.
YouTube can be a consumerism hellscape, with almost everyone selling you stuff with their sponsors and the products they talk about. Luckily, a video about how social media is ruining every hobby showed up in my YouTube feed last night. This young lady made some very good points about how many of us fall into buying too many products based on social media or other online advertising, especially when it comes to hobbies. She explained that many people fall into overconsumption, some even buy stuff only to use for their own video content to share online, wanting to be part of online communities.
I spent years working in a Walmart Supercenter, so I’ve seen it all with people’s buying habits and I’m also well aware of my own temptations to buy too many craft and sewing supplies. The astronomical amount of consumer debt Americans keep racking up, shows that overconsumption is a serious behavioral problem in a culture awash in mountains of consumer goods everywhere we look. Being a reluctant online shopper in the early years of the internet, it’s amazing how quickly I, along with most people, adapted to online shopping.
More stuff does not lead to happiness.
I thought my issues with modern life made me a freak, but realize I’m not alone. Too much online scrolling is detrimental to my attention span and I feel a twinge of anxiety with too many choices with these streaming services, often choosing to turn off the TV, after several minutes of scrolling options and not being able to decide.
A psychologist, Barry Schwartz, wrote a book, The Paradox of Choice, explaining the research into what we believe about choice and what the reality is. Most people believe having more choices equals freedom and that freedom leads to happiness. However, the research indicates that there’s a certain level of choice that people are comfortable with, but too many choices lead to what economist, Fred Hirsh, termed the “tyranny of small decisions.” Too many choices require more and more of our time and energy. And people with many choices express less satisfaction with their choice. when compared to people who were offered fewer choices.
It’s easy to start believing “if only” we have all these new gadgets and gizmos our own projects will turn out as amazing as what we see online. The same goes for clothes, make-up, home decor, etc. and in turn we believe we’ll be happier. Long before the internet, I realized more craft and needlework supplies didn’t lead to more projects getting completed or happiness. It led to more time being wasted sifting through too many supplies, too much time wasted deciding on what project to work on and worst of all starting too many projects and ending up with a growing pile of “WIPs” (works in progress).
Online crafting & needlework communities abound with content of people waxing on about all their WIPs and showing all the ways they work to manage their mountains of WIPs. Working on fewer projects and focusing on completing those, before starting more, is a much more efficient and less stressful way to actually get more projects completed. This applies to almost any tasks you embark on. If you start too many tasks at the same time, you’ll likely end up with very few completed tasks and feel more stress.
Hopefully, I caught myself before going too crazy buying “adult coloring supplies.” This morning I was just thinking about this, because as kids, my siblings and I, just shared our container of crayons. New crayons got tossed in that container over the years and none got thrown away. We happily colored without a mountain of special supplies. So, while I await the arrival of my $32 Ohuhu, 80 color, adult beginner alcohol marker set from Amazon, I pulled out the Crayola markers, some Sharpie markers my son left here and various colored pencils and pens in my scrapbook/journaling supplies and just started coloring.
It’s doubtful I’ll ever become an amazing “colorist” or artist, but I enjoy dabbling and find it relaxing. I’m also trying to learn how to draw and watching an artist, Danny Gregory, on his Sketchbook Skool YouTube channel. My first adult coloring page:
Sure, I want to learn some better shading and blending techniques, but most of all I just want to relax and enjoy coloring as much as I did when I was a kid… when we made do with what we had.
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