“Stuffocation” — What I Learned from Getting Rid of More Than 500 Things
“The whole of consumerism is based on us wanting the next thing rather than the present thing we already have. This is an almost perfect recipe for unhappiness.” — Matt Haig, from Notes On A Nervous Planet
For the last 31 days, I’ve followed a challenge set by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemuson on their popular blog, The Minimalists.
You simply clear one thing out of the house on the first day, two on the second, right up to 31 unwanted objects on the final day. (Actually, when I went to find the link, I saw that they’d actually suggested 30 days, but that’s me. I can even complicate a game.)
In fact, I went well over the count on some days. So over 500 things have gone to the dump, been donated, gifted to friends or auctioned on eBay. Picture frames and papers. Magazines and a mattress. Clothes and general clutter. All cleared out.
The hundreds of CDs that we never play, the dusty vinyl collection. There are still files full of paperwork that need sorting, and I don’t want to think about the garden shed.
But I do now know where all the chargers and leads are. We have a drawer for tools that were previously scattered all over the house, and I can quickly find a needle and thread, a pen, tape or scissors when I want them. There are even a few spaces on shelves and in drawers.
Here are the main things I’ve learned.
Once you get going, a few cupboards or drawers get cleared and the piles lurking in corners start to disappear, it’s fun. I grew to enjoy the trips to the charity shop, handing my unwanted stuff over so that someone else could enjoy it.
I’ve tried just saying no. To excess packaging that I’ll only have to recycle when I get home. To mail order catalogues that come in the post regularly because I once ordered something from them. To ‘free’ stuff that I didn’t ask for and don’t want.
But people get really upset about it. So I often end up carrying it home and disposing of it. Or not, if I’m busy.
Which is how little clusters of clutter start to gather.
My parents are of the post-War generation who surround themselves with comforting stuff after a childhood of rationing and shortages. My dad never, ever threw anything away. When he died, we needed a builders’ skip to clear out all of the stuff he’d rammed into garden sheds (yes, plural) “because it might come in useful one day”. (It didn’t.)
But it’s space that feels luxurious to me. A clear desk. A bedside table with nothing but a clock, a lamp, and whatever I’m currently reading on it. Bookshelves with just a single row of books on them. A wardrobe only filled with clothes I actually wear.
It can disappear, and hide in plain sight. Your conscious mind simply stops registering it, after a while, and you have to really train yourself to notice it.
This is why Marie Kondo’s method, where you throw all of your clothes on the bed or pile all your books up in one place is so effective. It makes you realise just how much you have, and how little of it you really want or need. But I live in a five-floor townhouse with books scattered all over it, and just the idea of carrying them all into one place then putting them back again afterwards exhausted me.
It did help, however, to take each book off the shelf and actually hold it while I considered whether to put it back again, or donate it. It also helped me rearrange a lot of them, grouping subjects or authors together (and finding a few books I’d bought twice).
Biggest thing we’d stopped seeing: a mattress against the wall in our son’s bedroom, ready for sleepovers. Our son is 23. His friends now sleep in the guest room, not on the floor of his bedroom. Can’t tell you how much better his room looks without it.
Smallest: piles of business cards everywhere, and spent batteries.
This is obvious, yet we don’t do it. We keep our toothbrushes in the bathroom by the sink, but do we keep pens and a pad near the phone, or chargers close to the devices they’re meant to power up? I didn’t.
Putting tools and chargers together, sorting out cables and leads, putting postage stamps in the same drawer as writing paper, envelopes and greetings cards — it’s all common sense. Yet these things were stuffed in random drawers and boxes, all over the house.
Now I no longer have to hunt for new ink cartridges for the printer, or scissors, a tape measure or a screwdriver. Which saves me little moments of frustration, almost daily. These minutes add up, over time. It’s worth doing.
I found it hard to let go of a set of expensive cast-iron saucepans we’d owned for years. But they are heavy, and I don’t use them any more. Now I have a free drawer in the kitchen for pans I do use. Even better, the young couple who bought them were just setting up home together and were thrilled to have them. They’ll be used again, and loved.
As will the coat I’d never worn, the lovely picture we’d taken down and placed behind the sofa, and the teapot I inherited from a great-aunt, which I’ve always found ugly. These went on eBay; some expensive pens I couldn’t use went to a writer friend, who is using them, daily.
We ordered a case of wine with the auction proceeds. It won’t become clutter. But it will turn into a few good nights with friends.
Sometimes, you just have to dispose of it. Recycle what you can, but let go of it. I made a habit of going to the dump or the charity shop often, before I had time to invent new reasons to keep things.
Gifts from people you love. Souvenirs from special occasions. Objects you or your children loved. These things are hard to let go, even if they do now sit unseen in the attic or the garage, or fill up valuable cupboard space.
Over this month, I found some old VHS videos of our wedding, and of our son as a baby. So I paid to get them converted to a digital format. We enjoyed watching them again, and now they’re stored on my computer rather than taking up space on a shelf. I have a couple of boxes of old photos I’m planning to send off to be scanned, too.
These James Brown fake dollar bills were a souvenir from seeing the Godfather of Soul live at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem many years ago. They were sitting in a drawer. Now they’re framed, and hanging in our hallway.
It’s really hard to let go of something that cost you a lot of money, even if you don’t use it. It feels like a waste, yet storing it and not using it is worse.
I found brand new towels sitting under scratchy, stained old ones. Expensive bath products and scented candles given as gifts and waiting in cupboards for some grand occasion worthy of them. Gorgeous stationery in drawers, and all kinds of other things I’d deemed too luxurious for everyday use.
I’m now using them, and guess what? They spark joy.
There was another layer of stuff that was curious. A Spanish course on CD — a language I really do want to improve. Some high-quality watercolours that I’ve never had the skill or nerve to try. Unread books and magazines. Unfinished projects. Or all of the materials for projects never even started.
In his brilliant blog Raptitude, David Cain talks about this, proposing a year of going deeper, not wider [not an affiliate link]. The idea caught on, with people resolving to use the stuff they already had and finishing things they had started, rather than investing time and money in new projects.
It’s worth considering. As well as getting rid of stuff, I’ve found a lot of things to use, to do, to finish and to enjoy. I’ve made a list of them, on the Notes app on my phone. Before I buy or take on anything new, I’m going to refer to this list, because I suspect I’ll often find something there that I’d rather be doing.
This was interesting. The Minimalists suggest partnering with others and turning this into a game, but I decided not to nag my husband or son about their mess, or even mention what I was doing. This was about me, sorting my own damn mess out.
Yet once they saw me filling bags to go to the charity shop, they began adding stuff of their own. Both have started sorting out paperwork. Both commented on how calm my study had become, and started clearing out their own spaces.
I wanted to post here every day in order to stay accountable. I would have slipped otherwise, and skipped days when I had a lot of work on.
So I kept posting doggedly. Very few people read these posts, and they lost me well over 100 followers. (I’m a Medium newbie, so this was a lot.) To everyone I bored: my apologies. To the handful who read and clapped, thank you! I’ve now deleted the daily posts — they too were clutter.
I’m tempted to repeat it right away, but it was time-consuming. Especially towards the end, when the obvious junk had gone and I was trying to dispose of 30 or so things every day.
I have a long way to go before I could ever call myself a minimalist. I’m not sure I even want to. But this month was a great start to feeling less oppressed, less stuffocated, by the things we’ve accumulated.
“Stuffocation” — What I Learned from Getting Rid of More Than 500 Things
Research & References of “Stuffocation” — What I Learned from Getting Rid of More Than 500 Things|A&C Accounting And Tax Services
Source
0 Comments