Get Rid of...

Verizon and At&T. I don't want you anymore.

I want a "pay as you go phone." How many phones can one household justify? How many phones can one person go through? I'm on my third phone. I took the first two to an electronic waste collection center in Glendale. How many phones does a person living in the crapitalist system dispose of?

I understand the value of the IPhone as the Swiss-army-knife of modern gadgetry. It is a powerful minimalist tool. My friends have them and wink-nod that I should get one. But in my mind, I respond, Hell No! I don't want to worry about losing it. I don't want to worry about funding it. It's another hassle.

Also, I like being inaccessible and reducing other's expectations. I let people know I don't have a smart phone so they know I won't be responding to them ASAP. It's not an emergency. It's not urgent. I'm a slow-poke. I am okay with 'missing out'!

Axis Minimalist

ax·is min·i·mal·ist
  1. an imaginary refuge for human bodies to connect on the topic of living simply, sustainably, and minimally, despite the distractions of crapitalist modernity.
  2. a diary of one modern person's experiential experiments into minimalism.
  3. the center line of living well in modernity is to live as a minimalist.
  4. a person who favors a reductive and curatorial approach to objects, who advocates non-commodified space and who prioritizes time and relationships over shopping for new things that have been advertised and mass-produced.
  5.  a person who chooses to reduce and refuse crap and crapitalism.

Detox from the Desire to Desire: 3 steps I took to combat the Crapitalist's Discourse

Reduce your desire to desire crap by limiting companies' access to your precious consciousness. You can detox from crapitalism.


Three First Steps I took to Remove Toxic Desire to Hunt and Gather Crap


1. I got rid of cable.
I stopped watching television and all its advertisements. I literally unhooked the cables in the middle of the night. I came to the realization that I have little control over my television viewing habits. I was too enthralled by crappy shows. I admit I started watching tv again through unnamed internet outlets, and I must rehabilitate. Nonetheless, physically removing cable has drastically limited my exposure to ads. This was the very first thing I did and I'm so proud I did it when I was pregnant. My kids see tv commercials only at other people's houses. It's less stressful knowing I don't have to change channels or turn off/on the tv to circumvent commercials. Yay!


2. I refused junk mail
After a month or two of vehemently refusing and rejecting mail inserts, crappy ads and crappy catalogs, I am junk-mail free. This process is on-going. Every time something comes in the mail I did not order, I deal with it immediately. Otherwise, the problem can get viral. Catalog companies seem to sell your information to each other: hence, one annoying catalog can become a horrible infestation. I see friends and family with catalogs stacked high in their living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. I contribute to the problem by browsing through them to give the false impression that catalogs are sanctioned, when in truth, catalogs fuel the desire to desire crap and fill our homes with landfill-destined crap. I took the steps outlined by Bea Johnson's post "Junk Mail War" in her blog Zero Waste Home. 
  • In addition to creating accounts with  http://www.dmachoice.org, http://www.optoutprescreen.com and http://www.catalogchoice.org, I also clicked over to "penny saver" and "red plum" to stop mailing me their dreadful junk mail. Maybe this does not pertain to you, but as an Angeleno, I called the crappy Los Angeles Times at 626-472-5242 and left a message detailing my request to be removed permanently from getting their crappy Local Values insert. I said my address twice. I don't want to be responsible for getting rid of these things. I hate land-fill guilt, don't you?
    3. I stopped bringing magazines home
    Some of my worst, most shameful purchases were "inspired" by magazines. For me, the culprit was Martha Stewart's Living. I spent thousands of dollars on organization products after reading her magazine one stupid year. Now I realize she is a crapitalist hoarder. I have no respect for her and her empire of crap! I love to make beautiful things by hand, so I was drawn to her, but she has really led me astray with her vision of disposable, crapitalist, land-fill crap.  I am also disenchanted by Oprah and her O magazine. I have wanted to say that for a long time, her emphasis on stuff has turned me off. Too bad--she seemed cool once upon a time. Magazines and their mentality of "must buy," "new" and "fashion" suckered me for a long time. I'm an aesthete. I love beautiful, warm 'nouns' (people, places, things). And as a homo sapien, I am susceptible to hunting and gathering crap. Hence, to love myself and get closer to my reality, I have let go of magazine distraction. As part of my magazine purge, I donated and recycled French and Japanese magazines I had hoarded for years. It felt so great!!! I kept back issues of Marie Claire Idees because I love that magazine. Yet I limited that love by stopping my subscription of several years. I don't want the spanking new that screams I upgraded cause I felt existentially insecure. Now I prefer, as Pony Rider says, "the worn-in and comfortingly familiar."
      Any tips on detoxing from media crapitalism?

      What to stand for and What to refuse

      Starting Point of Axis Minimalist:
      Reading blogs on minimalism and zero waste--Miss Minimalist, Zen Habits, Zero Waste HomeThe Minimalists and Cat's Meow--has inspired me to create a blog where I can examine (my situated) life in the throes of capitalism and by extension, crapitalism. As a mode of love, knowledge, change.


      What to Stand for:
      1. Pro-health, zero-waste food that promotes sustainability of the organic over the inorganic
      2. Empathy for self and the global out-there-like-me who live in a world (the capitalist world-system) designed to make humans (especially women sadly) fixate and obsess over amassing crap (despite self-disdain when the desire for crap, often gorgeous, creeps up)
      3. Empathy for how psychology + advertisement apparatus imprisons individuals (despite contempt for the Joneses and their Alliance of Alienators)
      4. Love, love, love of The Human rather than The Inhuman posing and imposing
      5. Love of Children, their imagination, their emotional well-being
      6. Sleeping more
      7. Acceptance (rather than denial) that adults model existential ontology for children at all times
      8. Micro-moments of resistance (hence heroic happiness) to the allure, mystification and wishful thinking commanded by the crapitalist's discourse
      9. To use one's purchasing power to support the best one can afford that is consumable, perishable, experiential and sustainable
      10. Beauty in Nature. The crapitalist's discourse wishes you to believe nature is boring, unfeeling, dead and that their malls and other outlets are exciting. This is false. Nature is passionate, complex and alive.
      What to refuse, even though it can be hard, inconvenient and annoying:
      1. Comparing self with others in any way
      2. Plastic and plastics
      3. Junk Mail!!! How I hate thee!
      4. Logos. I see logos, I see a fool. No logos, brands and other corporate crapitalist signatures, especially on my personhood.
      5. Supposed gifts. Please stop the insanity of goodie bags. What waste we generate for the generations in the name of birthday parties! No, I don't want your pen, mug or other crap that's been sullied by your logo. And gifts from well-meaning but out-of-control shoppers: please keep your crap to yourself! I prefer a genuine hug to a plastic-coated card any day!
      6. Poverty mentality. When people show off their latest buy from Target, I don't think that's a real relationship to frugality. It's a cheap thrill to buy the latest fashion from H&M or wherever, as long as you stay in denial about its actual reality. The reality is that after you take it home, it will start to fade, unravel and lump up immediately. Because the fabric is so cheap, it will require extra attention like ironing--something you don't have time for. After a very short while, less than a year, it will have lost all its luster. It'll be clutter, not true love. Who's gonna wear it after you? It's not made to last. It's destiny is landfill. I speak from experience. One crazy winter, after I had my first baby and was feeling so frumpy, I bought a lot of clothes crap from Target, hoping I could look cute on the cheap. I bought from their Go! International line. I spent two or three hundred dollars over a single year. I have none of those clothes; instead of feeling cute, I felt mass produced, unoriginal and desperate. On the other hand, I have a wool coat I bought twenty years ago at a thrift store for $20 that still looks and fits amazing. It's made in France by "Weil Paris" and was sold through I. Magnin & Co. That was money well spent.
      7. Stuff made outside the United States, unless of exquisite, durable quality
      8. Disposables
      9. People stuffed with stuff. Inhuman people: workaholics, shopaholics, perfectionists, automatons. But know your evaluation of others reflects your psychology and projection.
      These are my aspirations. If you came to my home now, as much minimizing as I have achieved, you will find a lot of crap with corporate logos made secretly in unadvertised sweatshops. You may find me eating food that makes me crappy. You may find me lusting after crap as I have not severed the cord to crapitalism. But this is really what I want after all the distractions are swept away. This is my existential dream: to be free of crap and be (mind)full of closeness to the demystified real.