If you’ve ever had a painful move due to having too much stuff, you might have had the urge to become a minimalist to avoid an unpleasant experience like that again.

There’s a lot of good things about minimalism and the philosophy of needing less. In addition to being easier to move, it’s better for the environment, and less costly to have & maintain less things.

But watch out — it’s easy to go too far in the other direction and let the minimalism take on a toxic quality, where you don’t even acquire things that you really would find helpful, and would improve the quality of your life.

If you’re in that position, I’d just remind you that it’s ok to acquire a bunch of stuff, learn what is really valuable to you, then trim things down later. Sometimes to go narrow, you first need to go wide.