The End of Minimalism
When I go home to visit my parents a few times a year, my mom and I have a little dance we do. She asks me to go through some of the stuff in my childhood bedroom and decide what I want to get rid of. I tell her I will, and then I do not. I wouldn’t know how to begin sifting through the drawers and storage containers brimming with high-school notebooks and old sweatpants, and my mom offers no guidance. Instead, we both gesture at a mutual effort to declutter, and that’s enough to tide us over until the next time I return to Atlanta.
My mom and I did a version of this dance even before I left home for college, 16 years ago. I’d tease her about how many cans of on-sale soup were in the pantry; she’d banter back about the CDs I kept trying to sneak into the house. My
