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April 23 - May 3, 2023
FINDING A PLACE TO DONATE
When I stopped sorting and started donating, my prog...
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main criteria for a donation place is that they take everything and don...
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ensure that my amazingly awesome things wouldn’t go to waste. They would go to someone who really needed them, and I would have some control over that. But there was hassle involved. Even though I was giving things away, I was giving them away one item at a time. Each item required a description and photo to be posted online. That post had to be monitored for responses. I had to coordinate pickups, and this often meant multiple e-mails back and forth with a second or third person after the first or second person decided they didn’t want it. If I posted something lots of people wanted, I had to
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The best way for me to get stuff out of my house quickly, and without emotional hassle, is to donate. It just is.
CHANGING YOUR MINDSET CHANGES YOUR HOME
I had already started decluttering when I first heard the term minimalism. I pictured empty rooms and one-pot kitchens and closets with one shirt, one pair of pants, and maybe a jacket. Honestly, I pictured a college apartment. Specifically, the one where some of my guy friends lived.
Minimalism is a trendy topic these days. I, as a rule, am not trendy.
As the world in general rebels against excess, millennials with no kids and location-independent jobs have embraced the beauty of living with the bare minimum. For people who start adulthood this way, or for people who have naturally been living well within their Clutter Thresholds, this will result in a home with just enough, a home that is comfortable and easy to maintain.
what about those of us who can’t fit our large families (large in number and large in size) into a tiny house we tote around the country at will?
what about those of us who are just now seeing the beauty of a minimalist lifestyle and longing to live without the encumbrance of stuff but can’t even imagine how we’ll go about getting rid of everything we maniacally collected before we le...
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As the self-proclaimed table-finding hero, I asked where they’d put the old (but still new to them) one. They’d given it away. I was puzzled, and they were puzzled that I was puzzled. I couldn’t understand. How could you give away something you just got? Something so perfectly useful? They couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t give away something, even if they just got it, if they bought something that logically replaced it.
they have made a conscious decision to avoid temporary solutions to problems that could technically be solved by going without.
getting rid of things is a hassle. Getting rid of big things is a big hassle.
I understand how minimalism works in real life, but how do you embrace this concept when you’re so far away from a minimal home? It’s a mind-set. And the mind-set is that life is better and easier with less.
it’s better to live without something you might use than to have something you don’t use.
Be willing to risk not having something that you truly might wish you had one day. Maybes are nos. What-ifs become let’s-assume-probably-nots. And wouldn’t-it-be-nice-to-hav...
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change in my perspective. A difference in my ultimate goal for my home. A desire to have less ...
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My house full of stuff was a huge project. A bajillion different little decisions that I needed to make. Getting started was hard because of the sheer volume of work that would be required.
I keep the things we need and love, guilt free, because I’ve accepted the size of the container that is my house and acknowledged that these treasured things deserve space in that container more than other things that I didn’t love.
something beautiful happens: the things I love have room to breathe, and this lets me breathe as well. The things I love are now visible, and the things I need are now findable, not crowded out by a mass of stuff I don’t even care about.
the point of decluttering isn’t to get rid of things you want to keep; it’s to identify those things and then to make space to enjoy those things.
USEFULNESS AND USING STUFF
There’s a difference between something being useful and actually using something. It’s...
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most effective decluttering strategies has been to justify keeping ...
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once I use things, I use them up, and then the pain of decluttering isn’t so harsh.
USE IT OR LOSE IT
what about potential usefulness? About stuff that could be useful if. . . If I fixed it. If I ordered the missing part off the Internet. If I cleaned it up or painted it a color I like, or even if I just pulled it out of the big pile of other random, potentially useful stuff sitting in the garage.
focused on what things could be, and I ignored the reality of what they were (or weren’t) in my home. I decided to keep the things I use and let go of useful things I didn’t actually use.
Establish a donate box in the donate spot
