My Friend Is Afraid I'll Minimalize Her Gift

I still don't dare call myself a minimalist. But ever since I started practicing it and writing about living simply, my friends seem to have filed me under that label anyway.

Yesterday I got a gift from a friend in Chongqing: a Douban 2026 reading desk calendar and a set of Empresses in the Palace blind boxes. I happily thanked her, but she wrote back: "Seeing you post about minimalist living, we were all speechless. What are we supposed to do? Are you going to 'minimalize' this gift away too?"

When I read that, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I had a feeling I couldn't quite put into words.

On one hand, I never expected my friend to have that kind of worry when choosing a gift for me. On the other, it made me wonder: what impression do minimalists give people, that a friend would feel awkward just giving one a present?

I've only just started down this path myself, so it's hard for me to say what a "typical minimalist" should look like. But in practice, getting rid of things, or "letting go," really is an unavoidable part of it.

It's just that my attitude toward things may be a bit different from many people online who are new to minimalism. I didn't throw everything out in one go. I've stayed careful, and I even set myself the challenge of "throwing out just one thing a day."

I call it a challenge because by the third week, I found I didn't have much left to throw out.

Of course, "not much" here doesn't include the clothes in my wardrobe, or the odds and ends packed away in boxes and cabinets. I plan to deal with those all at once later. Once the open spaces, the living room, kitchen, and study, truly have "nothing left to toss," I'll face them all together.

While sorting things out before, I kept running into the same dilemma: should I throw away gifts from other people? These weren't just birthday presents. They included keepsakes from classmates when I graduated from middle school, high school, and college, and so on.

The reason gifts make us hesitate is that they don't just have practical value. They carry an emotional bond. That feeling stands for the giver's kindness, and it often seals away the memory of a certain time. In my mother's wardrobe, for instance, there's still a school uniform from a middle school graduation, covered in classmates' signatures. It holds almost a whole youth in miniature.

So letting go of a gift is sometimes not just dealing with an object. It's more like saying goodbye to a memory, a friendship.

So what should we do in a situation like this?

A few days ago I was reading Fumio Sasaki's Goodbye, Things, and one passage made everything click:

"But look at it from another angle. You remember that this was a gift from someone else, but have you ever thought about the gifts you've given? If a gift I gave became a burden to the person who received it, or wasn't something they wanted at all, and they only kept it because throwing it away felt rude, I don't think anyone would be glad to see that. I'd actually rather they threw it away sooner."

"If you look at a gift someone gave you and can't help sighing, I suggest you throw it away right away. That's how you truly think of the giver. And if you ever meet someone who gets angry because you threw away their gift, that means they don't value your friendship, and you're better off keeping your distance. Never become someone who can only express friendship and love through things."

Sasaki's view is clear: someone who gives you a gift out of real friendship won't care whether you keep it afterward. If a gift becomes a burden to the person who received it, then letting it go should be understood.

Some people may find that a little cold. But Sasaki then adds one crucial point: gratitude.

"When you throw something away, always give thanks. To the person who made you a gift by hand, or went out of their way to give you something, give your full gratitude, and once you've thanked them, let the thing go... The strong gratitude you feel when you let something go stays in your heart. Even after the thing is gone, you can still feel your thanks. What's left in the end is the real treasure."

I think this is the best way to deal with gifts.

The material world never stops moving, and it's hard for any object to stay with us our whole life.

If even the bonds between people are hard to hold on to, what about things made by human hands?

So when it's time to say goodbye to a gift, just say thank you, openly, and let it go.

Maybe life is like that too. While you're here, live it fully. When you leave, move on with ease.