Hi there

I've paired down the stuff in my kitchen too, and it is amazing how little you actually need to cook great meals. Saves on storage and also on washing up etc. etc. I gave to the charity stuff that was either duplicated or not as good as something else. I did keep my 1960's kenwood cheff as it is so beautiful and missed the best bread dough - much better than a newer kenwood that my parents gave me. Something I read was having Zones for particular stuff and this works well also, for example the kenwood is on a shelf in a cupboard alongside all the ingrediants and stuff stuff for making bread. My slow cooker is next to canned tomatoes, beans and lentils etc. - so it's the least effort to get stuff out and put it back and keep everything tidy.

Since starting the post, I've learnt and appreciated quite a lot from everyone, I have decided against being completely minimal but just keep the things I love and appreciate and replace things I don't want either with nothing if it serves no purpose or with things I have always wanted. So I now have two Eileen grey tables as bedside tables with a Tizio lamp on one - that's replaced two brown ottomons which went to the charity shop - a Charles Eames Chair instead of an old one and am now looking at the Tulip Table and Chairs rather than the table I have. I think that will be it then as I may end up going overboard and the flat look like a furniture store!

I managed to get rid of terrestrial TV and don't pay a TV licence now - the freedom in terms of reclaimed time has been enormous, now there is time to listen to music, read and walk the dog - Netflix and Lovefilms seem to have everything I need and there are no adverts or annoying presenters. Wether or not I will still have two Beovisions in a years time is another matter.

My next dilemma is what colour to paint the walls - my kitchen cupboards are dark wood and the walls were a dark grey. I have painted them white and it looks great and is a much nicer space to be in in the morning, the rest of the walls are what can best be described as a cappuccino colour, with all the other furniture being rosewood in my living room and mahogany in my bedroom should I go white throughout or would that be too stark? I know that the B&O equipment will look great against white but is it one step too far?

ajames wrote:

I've paired down the stuff in my kitchen too, and it is amazing how little you actually need to cook great meals.

Exactly

ajames wrote:

I know that the B&O equipment will look great against white but is it one step too far?

The first thing I did when I bought my apartment was too paint all the walls white. I couldn't live with another color. The best thing is that the white walls adapt the color of the outside environment. Grey skies have a very different effect than a wonderful sunrise or sunset. The only problem I see is that the contrast with rosewood and mahogany would be too big for my liking.

I've found places in the kitchen to stash more things, but there are some things that are used too often to hide completely. For example, soap dispensers for hand and dish soap, knife block, pepper mill, oil bottle, salt cellar, I have stashed a lot more lately, but still have a microwave, toaster oven, bread box, coffee pot, and stand mixer (Kitchen Aid) out. I could lose the stand mixer, but I haven't a good place to put it right now, things like slow cooker, food processor, etc. are already hidden. I wanted a cabinet mounted microwave to save space and such, but there was no good place to mount one, usually over the cook top but the gas cook top I have puts out a lot of heat, and the way the vent hood plumbing is laid out it wasn't possible unfortunately. So it sits on the counter.

I don't have a lot of useless kitchen stuff, I follow the Alton Brown Good Eats approach. He eschews any uni-tasker, that is one job only thing, other than a fire extinguisher. I break ranks with him in that I have a rice cooker, as I do a lot of Asian cooking and it's very convenient. I keep it in the cabinet though.

I've never thought of keeping the appliances with the type of food, it's an interesting approach. I don't think it'd work well in my kitchen unfortunately as it's pretty clever. I do have food distributed around based on how and when I use it that's similar though, a pantry on the other side of the attached dining room for less used stuff, spices and staples like bread crumbs, rice, noodles, etc. closer, bread making stuff in a cabinet over where I make bread, etc. I'm about to do another reorg, as I've been here 6 months, long enough to notice some moves of all kinds of stuff that will aid efficiency and free up space with things I hardly use.

I like the idea of getting rid of less attractive furnishings and replacing them with more iconic designs, the Eileen Gray tables have always been a favorite of mine. Right now I'm bound and determined to find someplace where a George Nelson bench will work, as I've always wanted one. I replaced a small teak dining table and chairs with a Saarinen tulip table and chairs (chairs should be here in a couple of weeks, yay!). I have a much larger living room now, and managed to find two mint condition Siesta chairs to add to the couch and lounge chair I had. I'd like to get something nicer as a lounge chair but that may be a while.

As for wall color, I'm a big fan of white, for its clean look, brightness for lighting and such, and it just doesn't get old. I did break with that in the bedroom, choosing a dark gray wall behind the bed and lighter gray walls elsewhere. It looks great, and for a bedroom the darker effect works well, darker for sleeping and such. I am going to do something similar in the library, right now it has dark blue and red walls and dark wood built in shelves. I got a couple of lighted glass display cases to put some treasures in, and their top and bottoms are light gray. I'm going with a very light gray wall paint, and a darker gray for the built in shelves. I think it'll look good and make it brighter in there, it's kind of a cave now. The living room is white walled and will have white cabinets for the AV stuff, and the combined sun room, dining room, and kitchen are all white. As are the Saarinen table and chairs.

Lighting is always an issue, I was finally satisfied with the lighting in my old house after 26 years, hopefully it won't take that long here but the living room and library need work. There's a place to spend money, I am consistently amazed at how expensive designer lighting can be.

As someone about to retire I have found the need to reassess what I actually need has, for some reason, become really pressing.

I have already posted on this thread of my discomfort in promoting minimalism as a philosophy as well as an aesthetic whilst owning 5 separate Beosystems. With retirement imminent and a number of plans fully developed for my excursion into 'the third age' I find I am looking for liberation from the tyranny of possessions rather than a comfortable, settled existence surrounded by 'beostuff' however well designed it may be.

For the best part of twenty years I owned little - not much more than would fit in the back of my old SAAB 900 (with the back seats down!). But now, here I am about to make a major change in my life and wanting again to have that sense of freedom a truly minimalist approach offers.

If 'less but better' is truly the way forward, then perhaps I should part with the 9500, the 2500, the 6500 the 7007 and just keep the 8000/8002/9000/CDX.

But the original Beolab 8000 system is hardly a minimalist approach - anything but- it takes up 8 feet of storage space!

But the ultimate expression of 'Less but better' - in B&O terms anyway - is pretty obvious - the Beolab 5s. My 6500 CD player and the digital out connection straight to the Lab 5s. A perfect retirement present to myself. All I have to do is convince the lady of the house!

I knew there would be a catch somewhere.

Cleve

I can well understand where you're coming from. In my earlier years I didn't have as much junk as I have now, but more than would fit into a car trunk, as I had a collection of Danish Modern furniture right out of college. Over the years acquisitiveness tended to overcome me now and then, and I have gone thru numerous purges when living in a tiny house. I spent 26 years in a 1200 sq ft house, which required periodic purges of books and audio gear and such. Last book purge was right before we moved to this ~3000 sq ft Midcentury Modern house, and I eliminated most of the books based on how easily I could get electronic copies, which considering I had a large number of paperback classics eliminated most of those as most are available free in E format.

When we moved up here all was chaos, we were moving my mother in to live with us and sadly her health declined so rapidly she never got to even see the apartment we had built downstairs for her, but due to the confusion we had to pay people to just cram things from both houses into boxes and then we had tons of stuff left here in this house by the previous occupants. So it has taken a lot of time to just get halfway in order, and we've thrown out tons of stuff and donated, etc. I still have more to do, because like you I am feeling weighted down by possessions and junk. I have way too much audio gear, I still have my first decent speakers from after college, a pair of DCM Time Windows, and about 2/3 of that system.I have too much audio junk. I want a setup for my workbench, but for my main house I am using my central BS9000/BL9 setup and masterlink to other rooms, using my old BL8000 and a couple of BL2000s.That is a pretty low profile approach compared to as many Beosystems as you have, mainly just speakers in each room that needs them. ML was a great system.

It is too easy to get seduced by stuff, lately I'm viewing it with the if I haven't used it or thought about it in a year, it can go approach. It's hard, because I look at something and think, that's got to be worth something, when I don't want or use it and would be happier if it was gone and I had less to store. This is something I have to actively work on as with this large a house, with a huge area below the house we call The Catacombs, I can store a ton of useless junk and never see it. But I know it's there! 😉

So, I definitely grok your position and can agree with it. Thanks for resurrecting this thread, hope we get more minimalist discussions. I think your approach of just a CD player and a pair of BL5s would be awesome, and if you wanted to stream music a simple Playmaker to the analog inputs would suffice. Then you could get rid of your CDs. 😎 For a brief while until my cables got straightened out I lived with a PM directly to my BL9s. If I didn't have the BS9000 which I want to keep as a work of art, I could happily live with this approach, it was very simple, straightforward, and clean. I don't use the CD player anymore, I don't listen to FM as there are no stations here in rural podunk worth listening to, and I could run the Beogram directly into the aux in on the PM, which I do now anyway. The only thing that would go away is the ML hookup which would be a bother, but for one room the simplicity had a lot to recommend it.

 

Seven years on!

What happened to these properties and posters?

Graham

vikinger wrote:

Seven years on!

What happened to these properties and posters?

Graham

I'm still here. Still embracing minimalism. I've changed the curtains in my apartment, something which I wanted to do for a long time. They're white, obviously 😁

Good to hear from you Freerk!

I wonder what happened with one of main contributors to this thread, ’Jeff’? Looks like his last big contribution was to a now deleted thread on US store closures about a year ago. He always made great forum contributions including the 'What are you reading now' thread.

vikinger wrote:

I wonder what happened with one of main contributors to this thread, ’Jeff’? Looks like his last big contribution was to a now deleted thread on US store closures about a year ago. He always made great forum contributions including the 'What are you reading now' thread.

Graham

As I recall he was banned by Lee.

vikinger wrote:

Good to hear from you Freerk!

I wonder what happened with one of main contributors to this thread, ’Jeff’? Looks like his last big contribution was to a now deleted thread on US store closures about a year ago. He always made great forum contributions including the 'What are you reading now' thread.

link

Graham

Thank you, Graham. Good to hear from you as well. I enjoyed the conversation with Jeff on the "What are you reading now' thread as well. We shared a lot of insights there. I hope to have more time for reading again soon. It would be good to revive that thread again, even though it might not have a lot to do with Banana & Oranges (I'm sure you remember those days, Graham 😁)