Maximalism And You
I am a slob. A slob. Right now my apartment looks like a tornado hit a box set of TLC’s “Hoarders”. I used to say that it’s burglar defense; if any burglar ever broke into my apartment, they’d be all like “Oh, dude, we already hit this one. Let’s move on next door.” BOOM. BURGLARS DEFENSED. Aaron Bleyaert = All Time Brilliant Genius (also what’s going on my headstone, btw).
However, that was 2011. The Year Of Lies. LIES!
This is 2012, and it’s a year of truth. An honest year. A year of no more bullshit. It’s time to be honest with myself (and all of you), and really “come clean” about the horribly messy state of my apartment: The filthy appearance of my apartment is a new way of interior design that I’ve invented. I’m calling this groundbreaking and utterly genius new kind of interior design “Maximalism” (and before you ask: No. It has nothing to do with Maxim, although my double subscription - one to read, one to archive - has run out and I need to re-up stat).
The idea behind “Maximalism” is simple: It’s the opposite of Minimalism.
According to Wikipedia, Minimalism is “[Working to] achieve simplicity, using white elements, cold lighting, large space with minimum objects and furniture. Minimalist architecture simplifies living space to reveal the essential quality of buildings and conveys simplicity in attitudes toward life. It is highly inspired from the Japanese traditional design and the concept of Zen philosophy.”
Maximalism, on the other hand is filling a smallish sized space with everything you possibly can - mismatched furniture, books, comicbooks, pots, pans, plants, fake plants, dead plants, CDs, photos, a weight bench I never use, plastic shopping bags, fast food receipts, to do lists, buckets of depression, etc. It’s basically the idea of seeing everything you own at all times. What this ends up being may look like I never clean my filthy shithole of an apartment, but in actuality, I am living in a carefully constructed meta post-modern emotional construct, painstakingly orchestrated to draw out certain particular feelings in a sub-section of the population. In other words: I’m trying to gross people out so no one ever wants to come over to my apartment… And I can finally play my Xbox in peace.
2012. The Year Of Truth, guys. The Year Of Truth.
