Minimalist Living: Decluttering for Joy, Health, and Creativity (8 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

What to Do With All That Stuff

“One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in.”
– Francis Jourdain

At 3:30 pm on a late summer day in England, Hilary and Bruce began a very special campfire evening. They had taken their boat to one of their favorite remote spots, and with them they had two huge bags of cards they’d given each other through the years. These cards, numbering 500 or so, were the written proof of their thirty-year romance. Over the course of three hours, they read the cards from birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentines Days past, and then set fire to them. They were fulfilling a plan that came about when they both realized that if anything should happen to one of them, it would be too heartbreaking for the one left alone to read them all. Keeping them felt like unnecessary hoarding. During the burning, they shared wine and hundreds of reminders of the love between them. They identified a few of the most special cards to keep in a small treasure box. The rest are now ash.

The experience this couple shared is a wonderful and creative example of the proper use, enjoyment, and disposal of really special belongings. It was a unique experience they created that was tailored to their own romance. It’s certainly not for everyone. Their daughter Caroline reported mixed emotions about it. “I can't decide if this is a desperately romantic or desperately sad way to eliminate the tangible evidence of a lifetime of love,” she wrote. For some, the idea of a similar campfire would be unappealing. But the important thing is that they made their choice that the bags of cards were becoming a burden, and that their life would be freer without them. They decided to dispose of them in a way that was both reflective and celebratory. Their method and the outcome matched their vision for their lives, and I applaud them for that.

A huge bag of cards from your significant other is an unusual category of stuff. Let’s talk about a more normal category of stuff — all the things that you’ve been editing away as you go about creating fresh new spaces in your home.

Once your transitional box fills up with a day, a week or a month’s worth of no-longer-needed items, it’s time to sort through it. You can do this as often as you prefer, or only once in a while. Allow a pile to build up, but don’t allow it to become so overwhelming that you begin to put off sorting it. If you're using the faster blaze method, your transitional box is likely to fill up much faster, so sort accordingly. In fact, blazers may want to have someone else sort to keep the speed of the process since otherwise the process could easily slip into gazing as you come face to face with what you’ve gotten rid of.

Whoever is going to do the sorting, create a staging area in your home, garage, or basement that will be available for the purpose of sorting until the end of your paring down project. Divide your staging
into seven sections using boxes, bins, or simply piles with signs:

1. Sell
   
2. Give Away
   
3. Recycle
   
4. Special Items
   
5. Ask Someone Else
   
6. Clean, Repair, Maintenance
   
7. Trash
   

Label the first box, bin, or pile “sell.” Put things that have financial value and are easy to sell in this area. At the end of your simplifying project, or when the “sell” pile becomes too big, have a yard sale, trunk sale, or find another way to get a few bucks for your stuff. In the U.S., yards sales typically happen on Saturdays and begin early. Prospective buyers are used to getting up early to get a chance at finding what for them could be a treasure. Put up signs around your neighborhood and consider listing your yard sale on
Craigslist
. For guidance on things that are easy to sell in your area, check
Craigslist
in your part of the country. See what people are frequently selling – that’s probably also what people are buying. For example, does there seem to be a strong market for couches? Birdcages? Antique tractors? Having the “sell” items all in one area will allow you to sell them all quickly when the time comes.

Here’s a hint that I’ve used for quicker, more profitable sales: tell your story to people. Whether it’s that you’re selling your stuff to travel the world, you’ve gotten a divorce and are starting a new life, or simply that you’re starting a new adventure in minimalism, people like to know the story behind the stuff. Having a deadline, i.e., “This couch needs to be picked up by Friday,” helps speed things as well.

For inspiration on selling to make money to pay off debts, check out the
ManvsDebt
blog. Their motto is, “Sell your crap. Pay off your debt. Do what you love.”

In the second area, place items that you don’t have the time and energy to sell, that you’d like to give to a friend or charity you think would appreciate them, or that don’t have much financial value. As long as the things in this category might have value to someone, you can donate them to a charity. Again, this is more efficiently taken care of in a big batch. There are some fun ways to give things away. When my husband and I were emptying our apartment in preparation for moving abroad, we threw a Valentine’s Day party. In the corner, we had a shelf of free stuff and we mentioned to all of our guests that they could take anything they wanted from the shelf. It’s a low-pressure way to allow your friends to take what they want but not
have
to. Betsy Warren of the
MarriedWithLuggage
blog had a “reverse birthday party” to give away 39 of her favorite items to friends on her 39
th
birthday. These are both great ideas to get your friends and family involved in your minimizing process. This is another area where you can use your creativity and come up with fun ideas to make this project enjoyable.

In section three, place items that can be recycled. Check with your local municipal services or use the website
Earth911.com
to find out where and what you can recycle in your area.

Next to recycling, place special items that can’t be taken to a standard recycling center. These things include automotive items, electronics, batteries, paint, and pharmaceuticals. Again, use
Earth911.com
to find out where to dispose of these items. Unneeded or expired prescription drugs can usually be taken back to the pharmacy where you obtained them for proper disposal that doesn’t put them into the groundwater supply.

The items you need to ask other people about go in area five. Examples of these things are: family heirlooms that don’t have a place in your home but that another family member
might want, things that belong to someone else, or things that need the help or attention of someone else before they can be used. Storing things for other people – relatives, for example – is fine, as long as it’s in the spirit of your Minimalist Mission Statement. My grandmother gave me a writing desk that I cherish, but since I couldn’t bring it with me while traveling, it’s gracing the guest bedroom of my parent’s house right now while I travel the world. It’s important to note that just because you have your offspring’s stuff in your home doesn’t mean you're obligated to hang onto it for them. Don’t store other people’s things out of guilt or a sense of obligation. Your space is yours to do what you like with. Your children will understand if you explain to them that your home is no longer storage space. Area five can also hold things you're undecided on; talk through your feelings on those items with the appropriate person. Hilary and Bruce’s wedding cards from the opening story would be a good example of items to put in this category.

In area six, put things that need your attention for cleaning, repair, or maintenance before they can be used, sold, or given away. Your favorite kitchen knife that needs to be professionally sharpened, the watch that needs a new battery before you give it to your niece, and the blender that needs to be deep-cleaned before you sell it are all examples of things that fit into this category.

In area seven, place a large trash can – preferably one with wheels. This will hold all the trash you’ll come across as you go through each room of your home. This is the “end of the line,” for things that didn’t find a home in one of the previous six sections. Throwing away consumer goods isn’t ideal, and a surprising number of things can be recycled or repurposed by someone else or by an organization. Recycling and repurposing are much better than adding to landfills. However, if finding alternative ways to get rid of something is overwhelming or is causing you to procrastinate or become stuck in your decluttering process, don’t hesitate to simply throw things away. Start fresh and commit to a less consumer-based lifestyle as your way of honoring the Earth.

Continue the paring down process as outlined in the last two chapters. Edit section by section, room by room, creating fresh new spaces, and then sorting regularly and selling, giving away, recycling, or trashing your stuff when you run out of room in your staging area.

Be patient, pace yourself, and have fun. Hold yourself to the timeline you set, and don’t let anyone else guilt, persuade, or browbeat you into going faster – or into slowing down.

How to Let Go of Meaningful Items

Generally the hardest things to let go of are meaningful or sentimental items. You don’t have to let all of your meaningful items go, of course. But they are ofte
n the most burdensome element among our earthly goods. The feelings they bring up are so complex, that sorting through them can be a source of fear and a reason for procrastination or denial. Even if you keep most of your meaningful items, consider sorting through them and figuring out why they are meaningful for you. I recommend recording these answers in some way, as they are bound to be enlightening. Realizing that the value of each meaningful belonging is almost always in the emotions and stories it provokes, rather than in the thing itself, frees us to let many of these items go.

One way to decide what to keep and what to display for your enjoyment and positive feelings is to create a treasure box and hide it away for a few weeks or months.

Hilary did this while her things where in storage when her new home was being completed. She writes, “I don't normally have a 'box of treasures.’ It was only because all our things are now in storage and I didn't want some things to be lost and so I put them aside in a box. There are more special cards and letters from family and friends, a childhood doll, jewelry of my grandmother's and mother's, special presents from Bruce, some photos and special ornaments. Amazingly, only eight weeks on from packing them up I can't remember what half of them are. So I wonder now how much I actually need them.”

If you already have a box of meaningful treasures stored somewhere, you can make use of this idea right now. Think about what is in the box. Try to remember; write down a list. Then check the list against the actual contents of the box. You might discover that the things you wrote down are the most important to you, and you can release the rest. Or, you might be surprised that you forgot about something that gives you great happiness. That discovery is an excellent reason to display that item or store it nearby where you can see it or touch it anytime.

I recommend that with each meaningful item, you choose to either record the memory and the “spirit” of the item and release it, or that you display it so it can give you joy all the time. Whether you choose to donate unneeded meaningful items or to keep them, there are three things you can do to make sure your happy-making things are indeed lifting your mood daily or that the essence of them is preserved for future generations: recording, digitizing, and miniaturizing.

Recording, Digitizing, & Miniaturizing

Before letting them go, we must make sure that we capture and record, as part of our legacy, why meaningful items are so important to us. Recording in this context simply means capturing the essence or energy of a thing – the stories, memories, and emotions that a specific meaningful item sparks in you. It could mean taking photos of the belonging, or having a friend or family member record you using a video camera as you talk about the item and tell stories about it. It could mean writing about the item or speaking into a voice recorder about the item. The important thing is that you record what the heirloom or meaningful belonging means to you, and why. It’s also vital that what you record can be passed along easily from generation to generation. Think of this as a testimony of what significance this item has provided to you and your family.

Here are some questions to consider as you write the story of your most cherished things:

• How did I come to possess this item?
  
• How old is it?
  
• Is there a story related to how it entered my family?
  
• What does it mean to me?
  
• What does it remind me of?
  
• How does this item make me feel, exactly?
  
• What relationships does it remind me of?
  
• Where, geographically, are my memories of this item associated?
  
• Are there songs, sounds, tastes, smells, or other sensations attending my memories of this item?
  
• What historical events were happening concurrent to the time I acquired this item or remember this item being used?
  
• What has it taught me?
  
• Why do I value this item above others like it?
  
• Does it have financial value as well as emotional value?
  
• Does it have historical or artistic value?
  
• If I decide to pass it along, what should I tell the new owner?
  
• What do I hope others will learn from my relationship with this item?