Simple Living Interview: Keith of I Like Helping

This month’s simple living interview is Keith from I Like Helping. The monthly interviews are designed to give you a glimpse into people’s lives who call themselves minimalists, or are pursuing a simple lifestyle or living slow.

Each month the bloggers are asked the same questions in order to see the similarities and differences in their experiences. It’s a wonderful way to be encouraged in simplifying our own lives! You can read the other interviews HERE.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission if you choose to make a purchase. Thank you for supporting the blog in this way!

Can you introduce yourself to my readers Keith?

My name is Keith and I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I am a minimalist collector. That is a bit of an oxymoron, and that is what I blog about. My blog, www.ILikeHelping.com focuses on my thoughts, advice, and projects associated with breaking a life-long habit of expressing my fandom through the accumulation of things.

The title of the blog comes from a common phrase I say when someone thanks me for assisting them in some way. By saying “I like helping,” my intention is to remove the idea that this was a transaction and they now ‘owe me.’ Helping is its own reward.

For six months I’ve been on a minimalist path; for five years I’ve been on a slow living path; but for four decades I’ve been a collector of pop culture THINGS:

Comics
Books
Action figures
Dvds
Pop culture merchandise
and so much more.

What initially attracted you to simple living?

I have always pursued my passions – learning, writing, supporting those who create art. I’m one of those folks who had already been living a lot of slow living ideas before knowing it was out of step with the world around me. A friend gifted me Tom Hodgkinson’s book “How to Be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto” and it was a light bulb moment.

Minimalism was similar. I saw a set of tools, some of which I already used, and said to myself “if these three tools are already working well for me, I think I should try the others as well.”

My wife and I live a slow lifestyle in general. We are child-free, focused on lifelong learning, and maintain a strong separation of work and life.

My wife and I took an amazing trip to Athens in which wifey and I removed social media from our phones and completely cut ourselves off for the duration of the trip.

What are the benefits that you have found in simple living?

Minimalism has helped me financially in the past six months. Reducing spending has enabled me to pay down my personal debt, and selling a lot of items has cut that debt even further. Aside from my mortgage, I have less debt than any time since my first year of college 20 years ago.

The biggest benefit has been quieting my mind. I had a challenge with anxiety and insomnia five years ago and slow living has helped significantly. I recently did a two-week social media detox (which I wrote about for my blog) and I was amazed how calm and quiet my mind was by the end.

Is your wife also a minimalist?

No, but certainly she enjoys a slow living lifestyle. She has had fun joining me on some projects. We traded away our collection of 600 dvds after she brought up the idea of how rarely we pulled something off the shelf to watch. And when she and I switched to digital reading, we donated 300 pounds of books to a local charity sale.

Simple Living Interview: Keith from I Like Helping

On the left: 600 dvds that Keith traded for “magic beans” aka half a dozen records. On the right: Over 300 lbs of books that Keith and his wife let go of and donated

I asked her if she wanted to watch a minimalism documentary with me and she said she’d rather I just summarize the important ideas for her later. She managed to minimize minimalism!

If someone wanted to start living simply, what advice would you give them?

The first step is stop. You have to shut everything down:

Empty out your calendar
Cancel subscriptions
Cancel services
Stop shopping for THINGS.
Give yourself a moment to breath

Like a computer that is malfunctioning, you have to reboot and then restart your programs one at a time to see what is working for you and what is causing the instability in the system.

Tell me how YOU define simple living in the comments! I’d love to know.

Keith Callbeck is a minimalist and is passionate about supporting comics, movies, and TV as art forms. Keith has a Master’s degree in Religion & Culture specializing in religion on film. For five years, Keith co-hosted the podcast We Talk Comics and interviewed over 150 comic creators. Keith lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with wifey and their cat, Sicario.

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