Thirty-one days ago I began a journey of removing what I referred to as distractions from my life. In the beginning I had a very clear picture in my head of what was ahead of me and I was relatively confident that it would be easy. After all, getting rid of unused stuff is easy, right?
Everyday we fill up garbage cans all around us with our unused stuff, stuff that we often refer to as trash. But what about those things that have a use or a purpose, maybe not at the moment and maybe not even to ourselves. Do we consider that trash as well, I didn't and I believe most people don't. That's when our lives start becoming cramped with things all around us. Our closets, drawers, garages, attics and even storage units swell with things that you might wear or could use someday and we justify holding onto it with these rationales.
Despite what the initial goal might have been, this past month wasn't just about decluttering, it was about understanding why we bring items into our life and keep them there. It's about impulse consumerism and the act of saying "no".
Many decluttering experts suggest a method of decluttering with the 'keep, store, trash' method. Where you keep the items you know you want, store the items that are a maybe for a couple months to see if you ever need them, and trash what you know you don't want. As I went through the month I realized that I was in a sense doing this same thing except I referred to it as the revisit or second pass method.
Every new area in my house that I visited this past month I seemed to make a quick pass through and could easily remove a good amount of items. I then moved onto a new area continuing the same process, but as the month wore on, I was running out of items. I started revisiting previous areas and making a second pass through. I was astonished at how much I was able to remove a second time through. Some of the items I actually held in my hands and I reflected on it, asking myself questions like:
Why did I buy this?
When was the last time I used it?
What has prevented me from getting rid of it previously?
With that last question typically the linchpin that determines the items destination. On the first pass, answers like 'it was a gift from someone', or 'it was really expensive' would automatically make me put it back. However, on the second pass you tend delve into whether those answers are really significant in any way.
I realized that some of these gifts or expensive items that have been sitting around for years, untouched, had created a sort of guilt. A guilt then cements itself around the item, making it even more difficult to let go of it, ultimately creating a vicious cycle that feeds into itself. I had many things fall into that cycle and on the second pass I was able to break it, allowing a sense of relief as I knew I could let it go.
Just like anything, the more you practice or work at it the easier it gets. In dealing with minimalism, it holds true just as well. I started getting better at making decluttering decisions throughout the month. As a result, I'm starting to look at purchases with a more critical mind.
I'm not sure if I will do a full month of the minimalism game again. Rather I will treat it like schooling in which I learned a lot and I can now apply these lessons to my daily life. In fact, my wife and I sat down on day one of this month and sorted through a whole bunch more stuff, stuff that actually made it through my second pass.
There were a lot of tough decisions that I faced throughout the month and I feel like I overcame them with a positive outcome. I'm proud of myself for what I was able to accomplish, this was a rather big undertaking to get everything together, photograph it, post to Instagram, and blog about it daily for thirty-one days.
Would I call myself a minimalist? I'm not sure, I know that I am starting to think minimalist, but I still have stuff spread across flat surfaces in my house, things on my walls and children's toys to step over. However, I know I am 498 items closer.
