The Joy of Less, a Minimalist Living Guide (10 page)

Finally, we can narrow down our possessions by digitizing them. Again, we don’t need a magician’s wand or a sci-fi laser beam—we have the power of technology. Entire collections of stuff—music, movies, video games, books—can now be reduced to intangible bits and bytes. No longer must we devote shelf space to CDs and their jewel cases; we can simply store our music on our computers and iPods. Digital movies eliminate the need for physical DVDs. Electronic readers can replace entire bookshelves by holding hundreds of tomes on one device (and giving us online access to thousands of others). It’s a wonderful time to be a minimalist!

If you embrace minimalism wholeheartedly, you’ll find yourself continually on the lookout for new ways to narrow down your stuff. Be creative. Regard it as a personal challenge to do more with less, and have
fun
exploring all the possibilities. You may be surprised at what you can do without!

Once we’ve worked through all the STREAMLINE steps—starting over; separating our stuff into Trash, Treasure, and Transfer piles; making sure we have a good reason for each item we own; finding a place for everything, and putting everything in its place; keeping all our surfaces clear; arranging our things into modules; imposing limits on our possessions; heeding the “if one comes in, one goes out” rule; and narrowing down our stuff—we can’t simply call it a day and return to our old ways. Goodness no! We need to keep things up with some everyday maintenance.

Becoming a minimalist isn’t like going on a crash diet. We can’t simply purge all our possessions in a no-holds-barred decluttering session, and then check it off as “done.” If so, we’re likely to suffer a rebound effect—stuff will accumulate again as sure as rapidly lost weight. Instead, we need to change our underlying attitudes (that’s why we did all those mental exercises) and develop new habits (that’s why we learned the STREAMLINE method). We must approach minimalist living in the same way as a new, healthier diet—not as a one-off activity, but as a wholesale lifestyle change.

Most importantly, we must continue to be vigilant about what enters our homes. Remember how we discussed being good gatekeepers? To maintain our minimalist lifestyles, we can never really let our guard down; things can get out of control quickly if we let them. Fortunately, the task is easier than it sounds, and soon becomes second nature. We simply have to establish routines to handle incoming stuff—like mail, catalogs, gifts, and freebies—and stick to them. Placing recycling and donation boxes near the front door, for example, works wonders—preventing tons of potential clutter with hardly any effort.

Yet sometimes it can feel like you’re always on the defense—trying single-handedly to stop the tsunami of stuff threatening your home. But you can play offense, too: by getting off mailing lists, canceling magazine subscriptions, opting out of gift exchanges, and generally making it known that you’re pursuing a minimalist lifestyle. The last point is more important than you might think: because when they see your “empty” rooms, well-meaning friends and relatives may misinterpret your lack of stuff as a
need
for stuff. At best, you may be showered with unwanted gifts; and at worst, you may receive
their
cast-off clutter.

In addition to monitoring the front door, keep a sharp eye on clutter hotspots. As you know, clutter begets clutter. Once you let one item hang out for awhile, it makes itself comfortable and invites over some friends. Don’t let the party get started! It’s a lot easier to kick out one unwelcome guest than a whole pack. In fact, if you don’t act at the first signs of clutter, your radar becomes somewhat dulled. Think about it: there’s a big difference between a perfectly clear surface, and a surface with an item that doesn’t belong. The wayward object sticks out like a sore thumb. However, the contrast between a surface with one wayward item, and one with two, isn’t quite so jarring; and even less so between one with two, and one with three (and so on). Best to clear off clutter as soon as you see it, than risk a new accumulation.

In the process, you’ll often have to deal with OPC—other people’s clutter. As you’re generally not at liberty to dispose of it yourself, the best option is to return it post-haste to its rightful owner. If the items belong to a non-resident—like the stuff your sister stashed in your basement while moving (and still hasn’t retrieved), or the craft project your friend abandoned on your dining room table—a quick phone call or email explaining your decluttering efforts should motivate them to collect their belongings.

More often, however, the wayward items belong to other household members. In that case, simply return them to the owner’s personal space (like just inside their bedroom or office door). The idea is not to become everyone’s maid, but to establish a boomerang effect—reinforcing the concept that anything that ventures into family space will be promptly returned. With any luck, they’ll eventually get the picture and think twice before leaving things behind. Pointing out the offending clutter to its owner, and giving them the choice of removal or disposal, also does the trick quite nicely.

Finally, keep decluttering! The initial sweep through your house isn’t the be-all and end-all of your purging; in fact, it’s just the beginning. You’ll find that your minimalist powers will grow stronger with time—and those must-haves that survived your first decluttering won’t look as essential in the second round. For that reason, I recommend purging in cycles; after your initial decluttering, take another look around after a few weeks or months. You’ll see your possessions with fresh eyes and a more seasoned perspective. In the meantime, you’ll have started to experience the joy and freedom of a minimalist lifestyle—which will make you motivated (and excited) to dispose of more stuff. You’ll be amazed how much easier it becomes to part with things in the second, third, fourth (or tenth or twentieth!) round.

Practice, of course, makes perfect. Therefore, instead of purging in spurts, you may prefer a slow and steady approach like the One-A-Day Declutter. Simply commit to disposing of one item each and every day. It can be anything: a worn-out pair of socks, a book you’ll never read, a gift you could live without, a shirt that doesn’t fit, or an outdated magazine article. It takes little time or effort (just a few minutes per day), and at the end of the year, your home will be 365 items lighter. To avoid putting useful items in a landfill, keep a donation box tucked away in your basement or hall closet. Add your discards one by one, and when it’s full, donate it to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or other charitable organization.

Alternatively, set decluttering goals for certain time periods: like ten items a week, or one hundred items a month. Keep a running tab of your castoffs, to track your progress and maintain your motivation. Most importantly, have
fun
with it! The best part about minimalist living is that the rewards are immediate: every item you jettison instantly lightens your load. Do it daily, and you’ll feel fantastic. You’ll only regret that you didn’t start sooner!

How exciting—it’s time to put our decluttering skills to work! In the following chapters, we’ll apply the STREAMLINE method to specific rooms, addressing the issues and challenges unique to each. Feel free to skip around, and start anywhere you like. Just because we discuss the rooms in a certain order doesn’t mean you have to tackle them that way. Start with the easiest, the hardest, the smallest, the largest—whatever strikes your fancy. Okay, then—let the minimalist makeover begin!

In this chapter, we’ll focus on the living room (or what you may call your family room). It doesn’t matter how your walls are arranged—for our purposes, it’s the area where family members congregate, and guests hang out when they visit. In most homes, it’s the largest space, and the one that sees the most action; so our decluttering efforts here will set a wonderful tone for the whole household.

Before we begin, however, I’d like you to leave your house. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Get up, walk out the door, and close it behind you. Once you’re outside, clear your mind and enjoy the fresh air for a bit. By the time you return, I’ll have decluttered your entire home with my magical minimalist superpowers! Just kidding, of course—but there is a point to this exercise.

Okay, you can go back inside now—but when you walk through the front door,
pretend you don’t live there
. Enter as if you were a guest, with fresh eyes and an objective perspective. Act as if you were seeing your living space for the very first time, from a stranger’s point of view. (It’s an easier way to Start Over than emptying your living room onto the front lawn.) So what’s your first impression? Do you like what you see? Is your living room serene and inviting, welcoming you to stay? Or is it chaotic and cluttered, making you want to run away? More pointedly: if all this stuff wasn’t yours, would you have any desire to sit down and hang out in the middle of it?

We’re taking a fresh look at our living rooms because clutter “disappears” when we grow accustomed to it. If the coffee table has been covered in magazines, knickknacks, craft supplies, and children’s toys for weeks, months, or even years, we get used to it. We get used to the laundry basket in the corner, the books stacked next to the couch, and the DVDs piled around the TV. Somehow, the clutter becomes invisible to us; our perspective shifts, and instead of looking
at
it, we look
around
it.

After you’ve assessed the big picture, look closely at the room’s contents. Scrutinize each piece of furniture, each throw pillow, and each tchotchke. Is every one of these items either useful or beautiful? Do they look harmonious with each other, and appropriate in their places? Or does the scene resemble a flea market—or worse yet, the inside of a storage unit? If you
did
empty the contents onto your front lawn, would you bring it all back in—or would you be happy to evict a good portion?

Now close your eyes, and visualize your ideal living room. Picture which pieces of furniture you’d keep and how you’d arrange them; imagine what would be on your tables and shelves, and in your drawers and cabinets. How does your fantasy room differ from your real one? Which items remained, and which ones disappeared? Chances are, you can transform your current space into your dream space with just a little decluttering.

First things first: let’s ditch those items that didn’t make it into your dream room. Life is short—so why live with things that don’t make you happy?

Common advice says to start small, and build up to larger tasks. Not a bad idea, but let’s do something different here—let’s do something BIG. Your living room houses some substantial items, and offers a great opportunity to start with a bang. Purging just one piece of unnecessary (or unloved) furniture can make a dramatic impact—and provide wonderful incentive to slog through smaller items. It’s like that ratty old chair or orphan end table is a giant plug in your stopped-up sink of stuff; and once you yank it out, it clears the way for a gush of clutter.

So focus first on your big stuff. Is every piece of furniture used regularly, or are some items there for no better reason than “they always have been”? Consider how you and your family use the room. Do you congregate on the couch or the floor? Does anyone ever sit in the corner chair? Does the console serve a useful purpose, or is it little more than a repository for junk? Would you have more room for activities (lounging, playing games, gathering for a movie) if you had fewer pieces of furniture?

By all means, don’t feel obligated to own certain items simply because they’re expected (as in, “My goodness, what would the neighbors think if we didn’t have a recliner?”). When my husband and I lived overseas, we decided we didn’t need a couch. Although we’d never seen a home without one, it simply didn’t suit our lifestyle (we had neither a TV, nor frequent visitors, and spent our evenings and weekends out on the town). Therefore, we furnished our living room with just two lounge chairs and a coffee table. Those three pieces were enough to meet our needs; anything more would have been too much.

If you target a major item you’d like to toss—but still feel a little hesitant—move it out of the room for a few days. Temporarily stow it in the basement or attic, and note if anyone misses it. Does its absence hinder your enjoyment of the room—or enhance it? Sometimes, simply moving a piece out of the way gives you a better perspective on it; and once it’s left its spot, it’s easier to sever ties with it.

After you’ve dealt with the large items, it’s time to move on to the smaller ones—and depending on your living room, there may be quite a few. Don’t panic; this is where we’ll break things up into smaller, more manageable tasks. The best way to tackle it: go shelf by shelf, drawer by drawer, pile by pile. (One shelf doesn’t sound so bad, does it?)

Simply clear off the contents (or dump them out), and sort them into your Trash, Treasure, and Transfer piles. Clean up any garbage that’s accumulated (like packaging, junk mail, and food wrappers), and send plates, glasses, and coffee cups to the sink. Comb through your collections of CDs, DVDs, and video games, and donate those that have fallen out of favor. Clear the magazine rack of outdated issues. Go through hobby supplies, board games, and books to make sure they’re in “active” use. Size up your knickknacks and decorative items, and pinpoint those that are truly Treasures (you know what to do with the rest!).

Most importantly, don’t rush through it. Take the time to do a thorough job—even if it takes weeks, or months, to sort through every last drawer. Such attentiveness will bring far greater rewards in the long run.