*Fiction — October 13, 2022
The Minimalist Challenge
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She explains: “On the first of the month, you get rid of one thing. On the second, two things. On the third, three. And you keep going like that until the end of the month.” The empty cardboard boxes—labeled donate, sell, and trash—take up a large portion of the driveway we share. I find her during a break, sitting on the steps of her house with a glass of water with a lemon wedge. My apartment is attached to her garage, near but separate from her house. A renovation project she imagined her son would perhaps move into.
“I’m not too good at math, but that has to be a lot of things, right?” I say.
“It comes out to around four hundred and fifty items,” she says. “You’re not supposed to think about a big number because that makes it… Overwhelming. It’s not about how much you get rid of; it’s just a daily exercise to simplify and recenter your life. And it doesn’t have to be only big things. Small things count too. It’s called the Minimalist Challenge.”
I make a quick wave to her and walk into my apartment. As I close the door I hear the loud whine of packing tape and study her through my window, obscured slightly by the gauze of the curtain—she, anticipating the weight of the things she’s about to shed, is reinforcing the empty boxes along each seam.
I know close to nothing about her. I found the listing on Craigslist. The modest price and bathtub fit all my requirements. Her name is Linda. She is a single woman in her mid-fifties who lives alone. She has a son on the other side of the country. She works at a local museum as the gift shop director. She wears all black and frequently changes her hair color between different shades of brown. Her toenails are often painted in different shades of neon. She keeps her shades drawn but occasionally, on warmer days, she leaves her door open, and the smell of her dryer running comes in through my windows. Sometimes I can hear parts of her phone conversations on these warm days. I hear her say, “Send me a picture,” or “Same old, same old,” or “Exactly.” When we first met, she mentioned that she had kept the rent low because she wanted to make sure the right person would move in—“Good people can come from all walks of life.” She deemed me a good person. Perhaps it was because I recognized the framed print above her couch when she interviewed me before moving in. An Ellsworth Kelly. She must have been surprised; I saw her eyeball my car when I pulled up. She said no pets and no smoking. I told her about my rabbit but not about my smoking. She agreed to the rabbit.
The oven light is still on from last night. I turn it off and apologize out loud to no one in particular. “Minimalist Challenge,” I type into my phone. A lifestyle blog states: “It’s an easy game at first. Whoever can keep it going the longest wins.” There’s a hashtag on Instagram where I find a woman who appears to be winning. Captioning a photo of a full trash bag: Surviving cancer has made me realize what’s important. When I realize I have been scrolling for twenty minutes and haven’t yet taken off my coat or sat down, I recognize that I am wasting my life just like those articles say my generation is. I take my jacket off and carefully hang it up.
I know close to nothing about her. I found the listing on Craigslist. The modest price and bathtub fit all my requirements. Her name is Linda. She is a single woman in her mid-fifties who lives alone. She has a son on the other side of the country. She works at a local museum as the gift shop director. She wears all black and frequently changes her hair color between different shades of brown. Her toenails are often painted in different shades of neon. She keeps her shades drawn but occasionally, on warmer days, she leaves her door open, and the smell of her dryer running comes in through my windows. Sometimes I can hear parts of her phone conversations on these warm days. I hear her say, “Send me a picture,” or “Same old, same old,” or “Exactly.” When we first met, she mentioned that she had kept the rent low because she wanted to make sure the right person would move in—“Good people can come from all walks of life.” She deemed me a good person. Perhaps it was because I recognized the framed print above her couch when she interviewed me before moving in. An Ellsworth Kelly. She must have been surprised; I saw her eyeball my car when I pulled up. She said no pets and no smoking. I told her about my rabbit but not about my smoking. She agreed to the rabbit.
The oven light is still on from last night. I turn it off and apologize out loud to no one in particular. “Minimalist Challenge,” I type into my phone. A lifestyle blog states: “It’s an easy game at first. Whoever can keep it going the longest wins.” There’s a hashtag on Instagram where I find a woman who appears to be winning. Captioning a photo of a full trash bag: Surviving cancer has made me realize what’s important. When I realize I have been scrolling for twenty minutes and haven’t yet taken off my coat or sat down, I recognize that I am wasting my life just like those articles say my generation is. I take my jacket off and carefully hang it up.
I peek out the window again. Linda is on her knees, looking down at an enamel bowl in her lap. The bowl is pale blue, its lip stained with rust. She is deciding how to let go, which cardboard box is best. She holds the bowl up to the sky and light comes through it in spots where rust has collected. She is recentering her life. She sees the holes I see. She puts the bowl into the box marked Trash. I think she’s made a wrong choice—the bottom, arguably the most important part of a bowl, was fine, and that blue was so close to the color of the sky she held it against. I think in the night I may rescue it.
The apartment is essentially one room, with a short staircase that leads to a loft where I put the bed. It is full of things most would call clutter. I have used the space to its fullest potential, in that there’s hardly any space left. I have a problem called accumulating, which seems hereditary. It gets worse the more you live.
The apartment is essentially one room, with a short staircase that leads to a loft where I put the bed. It is full of things most would call clutter. I have used the space to its fullest potential, in that there’s hardly any space left. I have a problem called accumulating, which seems hereditary. It gets worse the more you live.
Nana owned and ran an antique shop in a town up north. The shop didn’t make much money because Nana didn’t want to sell anything. Towards the end of her life, we moved her from her house in Belgrade to a condo in Saco. All the stuff went with her, even the things my Dad told her to leave behind—like three large Rubbermaid totes labeled acorn caps. She insisted on bringing all three. In the condo, all her things loomed large in tall piles, unable to spread across rooms and in the old barn like before. When she was almost gone, not quite fully dead, she told me: “Don’t let them get rid of my things.”
I like watching YouTube videos of hoarders. I like hearing them make meaning of all the little things. I am not a hoarder. You can’t be a hoarder at twenty-five. I would run this theory by my therapist, but I haven’t spoken to her in over a year. I am at the prime of my life.
When I look at it all at once, I think to myself, where did all this stuff come from? I think about it in financial terms, like, how much did this cost me? But when I look at the individual pieces, I remember. A can of house paint labeled “BAD”; crates full of syllabi from a college I never technically graduated from; a vacuum that kind of works, and one that doesn’t; a green vase; the first half of Titanic on VHS.
Once, I was kept in a locked unit called Hope. There a lady gave me a small pillow stuffed with lavender with my name, misspelled, embroidered in red floss. I’ve also kept the double-sided grip socks, the halfhearted coloring pages, the red tags that say “This bag has been checked,” and a macaroni necklace made by an adult woman who told me she fucked a president, but she wasn’t allowed to say who.
I’ve started collecting all the hair that falls off my rabbit, Snowball. He will soon turn six and I’m afraid of him growing any older. Sometimes I cry at work paranoid of the worst. I call my Dad when these fits happen. Just yesterday: “Dad, I’m afraid that Snowball’s dead.”
“He’s just fine, he’s always fine.”
“But someday he will die.”
“Yes, that’s what happens. That’s what makes him special.”
I paused. “What’s more special is an immortal rabbit.”
I let Snowball out and after a few minutes of darting between walls he is tired and stretches out long underneath the woodstove. He is breathing delicately, his eyes closed, and his nose moves like language.
I let Snowball out and after a few minutes of darting between walls he is tired and stretches out long underneath the woodstove. He is breathing delicately, his eyes closed, and his nose moves like language.
A man who fully regained his sight later in life did not have the storybook ending where he could see and everything made sense. To understand objects like houses, things too big to be touched all over, he touched a model, which enabled him to see the real thing.
I am holding the lavender pillow that I was given at Hope. Its smell has long since dulled. The name embroidered, not quite mine, but I’d still answer to it. I roll the pillow over in my hand, a habit, this time so hard the stitching splits open. Quick, I think, before it disappears, and I spoon the insides into my mouth.
I don’t know what to do with any of it. I know it means something larger, something so big that it will give order to things. I’ll wrap the apartment in packing tape to make sure nothing leaks out. With water, I swallow.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 10. View full issue & more.