Low Tech Life

Friday, 16 October

A quiet place to come back to.

An ink drawing of a quiet, almost empty room with pale wooden floorboards, a low table holding a single handmade bowl and a cup of tea, a folded blanket, one branch in a vase, and morning light falling through a paper screen.

One Good Bowl

Minimalism 14 min read

On living with fewer things — what the people who counted their possessions learned, how to choose the few that stay, and why a nearly empty room can feel so full

A man threw three stones out of his window because they needed dusting. A woman in Japan wrote that we should keep only what we find beautiful. A father sold the model trains he'd been saving for years. What the people who live with less have learned about choosing the few things that stay.

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Earlier

  1. The Laptop on the Kitchen Table

    A new machine, a very small business, and a quiet road to freedom — what you can build with almost no money, one evening at a time

  2. Cold Start

    On the long distance between wanting and doing, why the fire comes after the first step and not before, and the quiet urgency of beginning today

  3. The Net and the Arrow

    Catching everything you want, choosing the few things that matter, and walking a straight line towards them — with Mark Joyner's Simpleology, Leo Babauta's power of less, and a pencil

  4. Do One Thing Well

    The third brick — boxes inside boxes, the six lines that answered ten pages, and why the best systems are made of small things that fit together

  5. The Art of Mending

    On fixing things instead of replacing them — toasters, trousers, tea bowls, bodies and the people we love — and why a mended thing becomes more truly ours

  6. Unhooked

    Getting free of debt, of attention traps, of clutter and of the quiet chains in your own body and mind — one small link at a time

  7. The Fewest Doors

    A field guide to building software that is secure by default — from the principles of 1975 to the xz backdoor, and from your own code down to the silicon

  8. The Keyring and the Drawer

    A simple, essentialist way to decide what matters in your digital life, protect it properly, and let the rest stay small

  9. The Last Evening

    On living a life that matters — noticing small joys, putting down what you were never meant to carry, thinking like a curious outsider, and arriving at the end able to say: it was well worth it

  10. Mechanical Sympathy

    The second brick — why remembering has a distance, what a racing driver taught the fastest programmers, and why your kitchen is already a cache

  11. The Computer That Knew What to Drop

    Apollo 11, the 1202 alarm, and the clearest lesson in essentialism ever written, in 2,048 words of memory

  12. A Ladder of Small Movements

    Free, simple ways to move at home that build on each other, rung by rung, for more energy and a longer, steadier life

  13. A Small House With Good Locks

    Privacy and safety for a quiet digital life, from the family laptop to the code you write

  14. Be Like the Headland

    Thinking for yourself in an age built to think for you, with a little help from some very old philosophers

  15. Four Thousand Weeks at the Kitchen Table

    On the shortness of life, the impossibility of doing it all, and the relief of choosing

  16. Remember, Change, Send

    The first brick — what a system is, and why every computer, program and database is built from just three simple acts

  17. The Gentle Kindness of Death Cleaning

    A Swedish habit of clearing the house, not to make it empty, but to make it lighter for the people you love

  18. The Phone at the End of the Lane

    On letting tools into the house one at a time, and asking each one what it is for

  19. The Plate That Gives Energy Back

    On eating simply, cooking plainly, and the quiet strength of food that doesn't need a label

Themes