Clutter For ‘Technomadism’ And The Hyper-Minimalist Lifestyle Of The Future

Have you ever wished you could pick up and move to a foreign country at a moment’s notice? Who hasn’t dreamt of spending six months in Madrid perfecting their Spanish and then flying back to New York like nothing ever happened? A new subculture of hyper-minimalist ‘technomads’ strive to make this dream a reality using all the conveniences modern technology has to offer.

In Ben Hammersley’s book Now For Then: How To Face The Digital Future, he writes that there is an emerging generation of knowledge workers who can do their jobs from anywhere in the world as easily as from an office; “For a small but ever-increasing class of work, all you need to be able to do is access your data, and therefore an ever-growing number of people are realizing they don’t have to stay home at all.”

These photographers, web developers, and programmers are increasingly choosing to travel and work in the cloud, rather than settling down and paying rent on an apartment. This nomadic lifestyle entails figuring out what to do with all their stuff, and while in the past this would have involved using storage, Hammersley writes that in the past ten years, the trend has been to just give everything away.

Thanks to devices like the ipod, the kindle, and the laptop, there’s no reason to have a whole library of physical media like books, cd’s, or records anymore, so most technomads have given these possessions away in favor of a digital library that can travel anywhere.

Hammersley and others have stated that the hyperminimalism that accompanies a technomadic lifestyle has benefited them personally. Hammersley writes that having less stuff around helps him keep focused by simplifying his “personal Attention Economy.” This echoes what professional organizer Brooke Stone told us about the relationship between visual clutter and mental clutter.

We’re all for living minimally, but some things are more difficult to kick to the curb than a stack of books you’ve already read. While some technomads adopt a Zen approach to material objects, simply getting rid of anything that isn’t absolutely necessary, others have looked for technological solutions to manage sentimental keepsakes that would be impractical to travel with.

That’s why more and more of these technomads are discovering that Clutter’s unique brand of “cloud storage” fits perfectly with their meandering lifestyles. When you store stuff with Clutter, our “upload team” creates a photographic inventory of your belongings so that you can easily access your stuff online. When you want something back, it’s as easy as clicking a button to “download it from the cloud,” no matter where you end up. Finally, there’s a way to carry all your keepsakes in your back pocket, thanks to Clutter’s cloud storage for physical things.