I know what you mean, whenever we go thru a sudden cleaning frenzy before company, it takes me a couple of days, if not more, to find all my tools. I "lost" the calibration mic for my HK home theater receiver a couple of months ago and just found it again yesterday, saving me 40 dollars plus shippng for a replacement. I certainly share your pain re the redo after you thought you were done. I'm sure something else will rear it's head after I think I'm finished. Entropy has been kicking my backside lately.

Interesting about the new house going up, it sounds beautiful. Back when I lived in Orlando the basketball players were the ones who were buying up all the property and building big home theater rooms. There was one dealer that really, for a time, made some money off that market, but eventually it faded too. I guess not enough turnover in players to keep new construction of home theaters profitable.

I watched a show on televison here recently about a man who restored a Frank Lloyd Wright house up in Rochester, New York. I never knew a Wright house was up there or back when I had to go there a few times for business years ago I'd have made it a point to drive by and look. Fascinating show, but I kept wondering how much he paid for the restoration. I'm amazed at what I'm spending here, but the Wright house had serious, serious damage, rotting wood, termites eaten about a third of the structure, major restoration of wood by, get this, not replacement but taking it apart, cleaning almost a hundred years of paint and stain off it, and restaining it and putting it back up. Also restoration of original Wright furniture by conservators, not furniture repair guys at the local shops.

It turned out just stunning, and I'm glad he had the money to do that, but as I say I couldn't help but think he was well into 7 figures just for the restoration not counting the house price. Funny story he told, he bought the house and went to restore it, and one architect asked "does the roof leak?" and the answer was, "of course, it's a Frank Lloyd Wright house!" Wright, when one of his clients complained that rain was dripping in on his desk, told him to move his desk. Apparently a common problem with his houses.

What a great topic of discussion!

Minimalism is a frightening label in our culture of mass consumerism. Adopting a lifestyle where less truly is more allows real connection to the objects in your life. I have always been a firm believer in buying something once and buying it right, to last as long as possible. Minimalism never goes out of style and provides a stage where each object is a treasure to be had. I have done this since I first moved out for university years ago and have been patient to only select the exact things I want to own. Where others were willing to buy any and everything as fast and cheap as possible, I was patient going without certain things for years until I could find and afford exactly what I wanted. At 25 years old I now have a living space that was worth the 7 years it took to acquire and hopefully will enjoy it for decades.

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Absolutely beautiful home! Clean and minimalist, and you have great taste in furniture as well as audio equipment. 😐 I love the huge windows.

You make an excellent point and one that I'm amazed you learned so young, and that's that it's far better to do without or wait and get one thing of high quality than many things that aren't. There's an old saying that you'll remember the quality long after you forget the price, and it usually proves true. I'm a bit older than you, over twice the age apparently, so you tend to acquire more stuff as you go along, but I'm better than many. Most of my stuff is books and such, old hifi pieces which I admittedly have to much of. A lot of that came about pre-B&O for me as I played the new stereo every year game for too long, this component would cure my ills, that one would, etc. In the 80's I fell in love with the B&O of the time but balked at the price, however if I'd just gotten the stuff then I would have saved myself several iterations inbetween of this and that trying to achieve the same look, functionality and sound.

I have some pieces that show that though. Before I got out of college I bought most of my furniture, teak Danish modern stuff. It's now 34 years later and I still have the coffee table, small dining room table/set, and George Nelson bubble lamp, and three book cases from then. The cheaper stuff that was laminate has been replaced but the good pieces are still with me. The lamp has been put up over the dining table in every house and apartment I've lived in.

I'm now trying to come to a unified look for the house, something that took me about 20 years for my last place. Figures, I had just finally figured out the lighting in the living room and put stereo speakers throughout the house, then I move. I think I've mentioned it, but I have some things that come from being married that personally I'd rather have the empty space but have to make room for. They are not unattractive but the minimalist in me would like the emptiness. They are, a pedal harp, a Steinway baby grand piano, and a spinett harpsichord. All beautiful instruments that no one plays anymore, and the harpsichord is small and gorgeous in teak with reverse keys,but I'd rather have the space even in this large a house. But, they are treasures to my wife so there you go. 😁 And I have to admit they are beautiful pieces, perhaps now with more time my wife will return to playing them, who knows.

Another thing I've found is when setting up a house or apartment is not to rush into buying things, take a while to let youself settle into the space and get a feel for what will be practical and look good. Often I've found that what I thought would be just the thing upon further thought turns out not to be a good idea. Right now we are playing that game with several pieces of potential furniture, from a dining set to an AV cabinet. It took us three months to decide on a new bed for the master bedroom but the result is worth the wait over what we were thinking about at first.

Patience, along with being uncompromising on quality...good tenets of minimalism I think.

Orro - that is an awesome flat. I could only dream of something like that with London property prices. I definitely share your view on minimalism and waiting to get fewer, quality items. I also have a BC9500 that I inherited from my grandparents who bought it new in the very early 90s and I love how it still looks futuristic and is beautifully functional. What speakers are you using with it?

Jon

Cleviebaby wrote:

There seem to be two approaches to the concept of 'minimalism'. One is an architectural style and one an approach to living in our 21st century world.

 

I suppose the ultimate expression of the latter would be to remove oneself from the consumerist society altogether. That is becoming virtually impossible for a whole variety of reasons, not least the impossibility of living without a bank account.

 

 

As other contributors to this thread have inferred, it comes back to the old mantra of 'less is more'. A desire to buy products that are designed and built to last and not to be replaced with next year's model.

 

 

Dieter Rams, the great German product designer has suggested we need 'less but better'. One of his designs, the 606 shelving system, is still in production today 60 years after he designed it. It reflects a far saner approach, with the expectation that the system can be added to at any time and it is dismantled and taken with you when you move.

 

 

Cleve

I agree with the less but better approach. One thing that gets in the way somewhat is when you have lived a long time and acquired say furniture that fits one house that you don't want to get rid of due to nostalgia, money invested, inability to sell it for what you think it's worth, whatever but may not be right for a new house, something I'm dealing with now. I guess I'm fortunate in that I have an apartment downstairs to furnish with my cast offs. It was going to be where my mother lived but she unfortunately fell ill and passed away before she could occupy it. So, it will be a nice place for family or friends to stay when they visit, and I can furnish it well with my overage.

One thing that tends to create clutter, books. If you are an avid reader and don't get them out of the public library you tend to acquire a lot of books, and most book peopel don't like to let them go. I see a lot of very modern houses packed to the rafters with bookcases that still look good, but it's not completely minimalist. Living in a small house we had to do periodic purges of books, an often painful process where you had to choose your favorites. If you love books it's like having to choose your favorite children and sell the others for medical experiments. The advent of e-readers has changed this a lot, we were able to get rid of a lot of books that we have electronic copies of, and tend to buy electronic rather than hard copies now. Again, kind of a friction as on the one hand if you're a book person you tend to love the look of books, but if you are a minimalist you like things cleaner looking.

A lot of modern society now is geared towards disposable items, electronics are often made so that you have to break the case to open it, making repair difficult to impossible. I can understand the rationale, make it as cheaply as possible, especially for those areas where technology is changing so quickly that it will not be worth repairing it, but I hate it at the same time. I feel insulted if I can't get inside to try and fix it. Theres an old engineering saying, if I can't fix it it ain't broke! That's why I find old computers so hard to throw away, even after they are so obsolete no current OS will run on them, as a life long engineer I understand just how much work, thought, and human effort went into designing them, how many thousands and thousands of hours of effort went into designing, testing, and manufacturing just the chips involved. It seems insane to think that in a few years these things have degenerated into basically electronic doorstops, but it's true.

Another change in electronics that's helped minimize things is that we no longer have desktop computers. I have one, a small Lenovo, I use in a cabinet for a music server, but for our main PCs we use laptops, wirelessly connected to a printer that's out of sight. If you want to clean up, just put the laptops in a drawer, no more making room for a large invasive destop, the performance of laptops has gotten as good as most desktops unless you are into high end gaming.

Before I bought B&O I tended to change amps every couple of years, change speakers about as often. I've used the same B&O gear now for over 15 years and am still completely happy with it, the only thing is I feel in the larger room I have now I need a subwoofer added. I owned the same 42 inch plasma and DVD player for 8 years, and both work fine. I only went with a bigger panel, 65 inches, as my new living room is substantially larger, and added a BluRay player. The existing 42 incher and DVD are consigned to the downstairs apartment where the exercise bike is, so they aren't wasted, but something changed when I hit the B&O phase, I became less interested in swapping gear every time something new came out and it carried over into video as well as audio.

Buy better and less often.

jkhamler wrote:

Orro - that is an awesome flat. I could only dream of something like that with London property prices. I definitely share your view on minimalism and waiting to get fewer, quality items. I also have a BC9500 that I inherited from my grandparents who bought it new in the very early 90s and I love how it still looks futuristic and is beautifully functional. What speakers are you using with it?

Jon

I use a pair of CX50's in the kitchen, you can see one of them wall mounted in the photo, and a pair of CX100's in the living room with a Cona Subwoofer. The unfortunate drawback to living in a building comprised of so much glass is that noise travels to my neighbors above and below with ease, so I can't play anything too loud.

Ah yes, I see it now. Very discrete - perfect installation. I have a pair of CX100s and would like to add a Cona, but they don't often come up for sale!