How Digital Minimalism and Physical Decluttering Collide
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But while I believe a lot of this is good, there’s a growing trend of people buying retro tech in the name of intentionality to recreate a version of the ‘90s that felt simpler… even if it means buying more stuff.
The result?
A kind of nostalgic clutter that claims to fight consumerism but often actually feeds it.
I’ve fallen into this trap myself, and in this post, I want to reflect on how digital minimalism and physical decluttering collide, and how the nostalgia we seek often gets sold back to us by big companies.
Perfectly Imperfect
We millennials grew up with grainy home videos, badly composed photos, and accidental camera flares.
We romanticize old film photos and VHS players as intentional and authentic, but in reality, most of those printed photos were forgotten about in boxes, and "be kind, rewind" was actually quite an inconvenient task.
Our nostalgia felt by browsing those old boxes of photos and VHS tapes makes the blurry and soft quality of capturing the world back then feel truer than our hyper-edited digital content today.
This has all resulted in a weird cycle where we try to apply the intentionality of minimalism to fight consumerism with digital decluttering, which results in buying retro tech in an effort to be offline more.
But for many of us, being offline most of the day just doesn't feel plausible, so the retro tech often ends up getting forgotten about when the convenient digital options are still at our fingertips.
Minimalist Tip: Be sure to ask yourself if any purchases in the name of digital decluttering are actually worth the clutter in your physical space.
The Record Player Experiment
When my husband and I moved in together, we bought the classic millennial retro item: a new record player from Urban Outfitters.
And of course, we needed albums to play, so we started by thrifting some, but we also wanted modern music, so we went back to Urban Outfitters and bought a bunch of shiny new albums, too.
We thought it would make us so much more intentional about how we bought and consumed music.
And we used the setup… maybe three times.
In reality, people rarely want to listen to one album, in full, multiple times when other options are available.
And no matter how cool our record player looked, we returned to Spotify because of the convenience and variety available with a couple of taps on our smartphones.
For years, our “anti-consumerist” setup was nothing more than aesthetic clutter.
Minimalist Tip: An experience is not necessarily more “authentic” just because it takes more work to do.
The DVD Shelf Debacle
Millennials have seen DVDs become the new tech, then seen Blu-rays kind of go nowhere, and now everything is becoming obsolete with streaming.
My husband and I had a couple of shelves worth of DVDs that were purchased before streaming services were a thing, and it hadn't seemed practical to let go of them.
But of course, to watch them, we had to buy a DVD player, and looking back, I see that this was us falling into the sunk cost fallacy (though in a small way).
When we decluttered using the KonMari method back in 2020, we even proudly kept our top DVD picks and displayed them in a way that hid our ugly Wi-Fi modem, and of course, we held onto our DVD player to play them.
It felt both minimalist and practical.
But we only ever watched the DVDs a handful of times.
The ones we owned were all on streaming services we already had access to, so, once again, we chose to use the convenience of just a few taps on our smartphones.
Minimalist Tip: If your old tech spends its time unintentionally living only as decor, then it's just clutter.
The Wii that Wasn’t
Nostalgia tends to conveniently edit out many of the annoying parts of using retro tech.
When my husband and I wanted a gaming console for our apartment, the Wii instantly popped into our heads.
We conveniently forgot the constant sensor recalibration, tangled cords, and awkward pointing motions that only worked half the time.
Thankfully, practicality won, and we chose the Nintendo Switch because it's modern and versatile while also taking up very little space.
We realized we had initially been drawn to technology we already understood how to use.
Ultimately, the Nintendo Switch does use nostalgia against us by just remaking old games and forcing people to buy them again for their new consoles...
And the awkward point motions are still sometimes a thing (or that left drift).
BUT it had been a long time since either of us had owned a console, so it all felt new, and we weren't buying copies of games we already owned because we didn't own any.
Had we gone hunting for a Wii and actually gotten it set up, we would have been limited by all the old games (no more are being made for an old device), and having to go out of our way to find them somewhere in the first place.
Minimalist Tip: Buying something because it used to make you happy isn’t the same as buying something that will make you happy now.
It’s Okay to Use the Convenient Option
Many talk about convenience like it’s a moral failure, as if choosing the easier option automatically makes us lazy consumerists.
But convenience from tech can be good, and it continues to offer more accessible options for people.
I don't have a desire for the lights in my home to be controlled by voice command, but if doing that makes your life easier - great!
New tech solutions are offering us more and more ways to make better use of our time, which is kind of the minimalist dream.
The draw to digital minimalism is then very rooted in the battle to not waste that time saved doing something like doom scrolling, which is a worthy fight.
We are operating within a seriously flawed system, but that doesn't mean you have to make your life harder to prove you are a good person by being on some high horse of not using modern tech solutions.
And if any new tech feels overwhelming, do some research and ask the people around you before engaging with it.
Us millennials want to avoid being the new generation that won't "get with the times."
Be intentional as you embrace tech that makes your life easier while continuing to demand better and more ethical options from the people creating these digital solutions.
Minimalist Tip: Using modern tools doesn’t make you less intentional, but wasting your time resisting them might.
Maybe it's Not About the Tech
The real challenge isn’t choosing between analog and digital...
It’s learning to see what actually adds value.
Buying old tech doesn’t automatically make someone more mindful, and deleting apps or turning off notifications doesn’t automatically make someone less consumerist.
Clutter, put simply, is anything that gets in our way.
And minimalism is about minimizing clutter (of any kind) to make space for ourselves to live the life we truly want.
If nostalgic items bring joy and truly add value, keep them.
If modern tech is fun or makes life easier, embrace it.
In the end, the conflict between digital minimalism and physical decluttering isn’t really about tech at all.
It’s about confronting our habits, desires, and the stories we tell ourselves about what makes someone or something "good."
This is a great article, and a subject that I think about often. Digital options have been great, but the over abundance and higher cost of subscriptions have me looking back to analog alternatives. Digital is convenient. However that convenience has come at a huge cost - environmental impacts, unethical work practices, etc. I like analog options when it doesn't require acquiring more new things. Ive reduced the amount of streaming subscriptions and leaned into watching the movies and shows that I have on DVD. Challenging my need to always be watching something brand new. I love that people are buying used dvds and vhs from thrift stores, however its unfortunate that those things do stop working over time. More people striking a balance between Digital and analog is great and keeps us more mindful about our consumption habits
ReplyDeleteThank you! I have been so intrigued by digital minimalism and it was nice to finally put some of my thoughts into words. I'm curious how our purchasing of movies/TV shows will adapt because turning on my subscription every time I want to watch a comfort movie is terrible. And while we do have options for buying digital content, It's doesn't offer the same feeling of ownership.
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