I tend to think of our contemporary internet culture fascination with owning less stuff as "Urban Minimalism" or "Urban Asceticism" -- it speaks directly to people who foresee spending the next good chunk of their lives in places where the housing is relatively small, likely rented, but surrounded by a resource-rich neighborhood. It's very easy not to own yard and garden tools if you live in a fifth-floor walk up. It's very easy to not own a washer and dryer when there's a laundromat next door. It's very easy not to own books if you can walk to the library every afternoon on the way home from work. I spent some time living in tiny houses and yurts, but always in rural contexts, which meant that outside of the living space it was absolutely essential to have some form of a storage shed -- somewhere to put shovels, rakes, sand for icy steps, etc.
I made a conscious decision this year to move to a rural community and buy a home on a multi-acre property -- which means I now own a lot of *stuff* I haven't owned in years. Part of this is just the shift from renting to owning, and having to take responsibility for house and yard maintenance. Part of it is that DH and I are inclined to DIY everything we possibly can -- we're not about to hire a landscaping company to trim shrubs and mow, for instance. So instead of paying for services, we paid for tools.
My own feeling is that a large percentage of my Millennial cohort prefers the pay-for-services model over the pay-for-goods model. I know that statistically we eat at restaurants far more often than previous generations (I cook at home more than almost any of my peers). Millennials would rather subscribe to a streaming service and pay a monthly fee than buy music on clumsy discs (and I collect records -- what a weirdo!). Most Millennials find things like checkbooks and watches to be a PITA (I can include myself in that statement). Oh, and we seem unable to communicate without the use of acronyms.
So I think there may be some generational stuff at play here. Also -- to my original point about contemporary minimalism being an urban phenomenon, I don't see many self-described minimalists decorating their homes with, say, antique Shaker furniture -- whose design principals are all about simplicity and function. The main interior design referent right now seems to be mid-century modern, which strikes me as much more urban (although, oddly enough, those post-war Danish designers were profoundly influenced by Shaker designs!).
I think within design there is always a tension between minimalism and maximalism -- think about Art Nouveau vs Art Deco vs Modernism -- all kinds of global factors that precipitated these evolutions in aesthetic values. The dogmatic people out at the very ends of the spectrum are often annoying and may well possess a higher degree of [social] capital; at the very least they can afford to take themselves seriously! The rest of us in the middle of the spectrum are just floundering along to varying degrees, looking for some guidance on how best to spend or not-spend are hard-earned dollars, trying to figure out how to obtain maximum happiness-per-dollar, or per-square-foot, or per-garment, or whatever. I think at this point the term minimalism has become too watered down to mean much of anything. I'll stick to pragmatism, simplicity and frugality as my own guiding values.
