The Joy of Less, a Minimalist Living Guide (8 page)

Horizontal surfaces are a magnet for clutter. Walk in your front door with your hands full, and I guarantee the contents will land on the first available surface. Their large, flat expanses are an irresistible invitation to stray items; you can almost feel the gravitational pull.

Take a look around at the surfaces in your house. Is there anything on your dining table besides plates, flatware, and perhaps a centerpiece? Is your coffee table free of objects, save any drinks or snacks currently being consumed? Do your end tables hold anything other than lamps, or maybe the remote control? How about your bed? Are its contents limited to the sheets, blankets, and pillows you’ll use tonight? Are your kitchen counters completely clear, ready for the preparation and serving of your next meal? How much of your desk can you still see?

Unless you’re already a full-fledged, dyed-in-the-wool minimalist (or an exceptionally good housekeeper), you’re likely struggling with some sort of surface problem. It may be confined to one area, like your desk or workspace; or perhaps it’s affecting all the tables and counters in the house. It may be a recent phenomenon, caused by something like an upsurge in your children’s craft activities, or a pile of work you brought home from the office. On the other hand, the problem may have been building for weeks, months, or even years—to the extent that you’re no longer quite sure what the top of your dining room table looks like.

What’s the big deal, you ask? Well, if we don’t have clear surfaces, we don’t have space to
do
anything. Clear surfaces are full of potential and possibility; they’re where the magic happens! Think of all the things we can’t do when our surfaces are cluttered: we don’t have room to prepare a delicious dinner, we don’t have a place to sit down with our families and enjoy it, and we don’t have the space to play a board game afterwards. We don’t have a spot to pay our bills, do our homework, or enjoy our hobbies. In some cases, we may not even have a place to lie down at the end of the day.

Never fear! All we need to conquer our surface clutter is a new attitude, and enthusiastic adherence to the following principle:
surfaces are not for storage
. Rather, surfaces are for activity, and should be kept clear at all other times. Put this minimalist principle into practice, and you’ll be thrilled with the results: not only will your home look neater, more organized, and more serene, it’ll be infinitely more useful and easier to clean.

To achieve this, we have to change the way we think about surfaces—in particular, how we imagine their physical properties. By nature, surfaces are “sticky;” they’re big, flat, and extremely adept at providing a resting place for items. Once an object lands on one, it’s liable to stay there for days, weeks, or even months. Sometimes it stays there so long, we don’t even notice it anymore. We grow accustomed to its presence, and it becomes part of the landscape. Another one joins it, and so on, and so on. Before we know it, our surfaces are no longer smooth, but a bumpy terrain consisting of items that got “stuck” to them.

Instead, we need to imagine our surfaces as slippery. If they were slick as ice, or tilted just a few degrees, nothing would be able to stay on them for very long. We’d be able to do our business, but then anything left over would slide right off. Until someone invents such a “magic” minimalist countertop (and pays me royalties for such a superb idea), we’ll just have to
pretend
that that’s how our surfaces function. To wit: everything we place on our “slippery” surfaces leaves with us when we leave the room. If we put a cup on the coffee table, a book on an end table, or a craft project on the dining table, we pick it up and take it with us when we make our exit—and encourage family members to do the same.

The only exceptions: those items whose “place” is on that particular surface—such as the centerpiece and candlesticks on your dining table, or the reading lamps on your end tables. This special dispensation also covers the remote control on your coffee table, the cookie jar on your kitchen counter, and the alarm clock on your nightstand. If you choose to keep such functional or decorative items on your tables, however, limit their numbers—to three “permanent” items per surface, for example. That’ll keep clutter from gathering in these spots, reducing their functionality, and crowding the things that deserve to be there.

Finally, don’t forget about the biggest surface of all: the floor! It presents a particular challenge, simply because there’s
so much
of it. When our tables, closets, and drawers are full—or when we just don’t feel like putting things away—our next inclination is to pile them on the floor. Don’t give in to the temptation! The floor has no strict boundaries (nothing’s going to fall off of it), so once stuff lands on it, it tends to spread…and spread…and spread. I’ve been in houses where the floors are completely buried, save a narrow path to walk through the room. You can hardly move—let alone accomplish anything productive—in such an environment. Reserve your floors for feet and furniture, and keep them free of anything else.

After we’ve made the effort to declutter our surfaces, we have great incentive to keep them that way. Who wants to repeat all that hard work? The most effective way to maintain them is to develop the habit of scanning them. Before you leave a room or turn out the lights, survey the tables, the countertops, and the floor. If they’re not as “smooth” as they should be, spend a few minutes clearing them of their contents. This quick and easy act goes a long way toward keeping your home clutter-free. Heed this rule: if the room is empty, the surfaces should be, too.

In this section, we’re going to learn a valuable organizational technique that combats clutter, keeps our stuff under control, and helps us in no small part to achieve our minimalist goals.

We talked about zones in an earlier chapter, defining them according to rooms (such as kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom) and sections of rooms (such as the television, hobby, and computer zones in our family room). The idea was that all objects pertaining to the activities of a certain zone should reside in that zone, instead of wandering aimlessly about the house. We then went further, and broke each zone down into our Inner Circle, Outer Circle, and Deep Storage—containing those things that we use (respectively) often, sometimes, or hardly ever.

Now we’ll organize things even more, by sorting our stuff into “modules.” The concept of modules comes from systems design; basically, it means dividing a complex system into smaller, task-specific components. A computer program, for example, might consist of millions of commands. To keep track of them, programmers arrange them into modules—sets of related instructions that perform particular tasks. That way, the commands can be “stored” more efficiently, and moved around easily in the program.

Well, our households are also pretty complex systems, with lots of things to store and keep track of. They could certainly benefit from a more efficient arrangement of stuff—so let’s take this module concept and run with it! For our purposes, a module is a set of related items that perform a particular task (like paying the bills, or decorating a cake). To create them, we’ll need to gather things of similar functions together, eliminate the excess, and make sure they’re easy to access and move around when needed. In short, we’ll need to consolidate, cull, and contain our stuff.

The first step is to consolidate like items. Store all similar (or related) things together: DVDs, extension cords, paperclips, first aid supplies, craft materials, hardware, photos, spices, and more; you get the idea. Consolidating your stuff makes it much easier to find things. When you’re in need of a bandage, you won’t have to tear the bathroom cabinets apart; just go straight to the first aid module. When you want to watch your favorite DVD, you won’t have to scour the shelves, rummage through the bedrooms, or crawl under the couch to find it; it’ll be waiting for you in the DVD module. When you’re looking for a certain size screw to make a home repair, you won’t have to launch a search expedition in the basement; simply go to the appropriate hardware module, and pluck it from the pile.

Even more importantly, consolidating your stuff lets you see
how much you have
. When you’ve gathered all sixty-three ballpoint pens into one place, you know you don’t need to buy another. Nor will you splurge on another pair of earrings, when faced with a pile of fifteen others. This technique is particularly suited to curbing the accumulation of craft materials, which seem to grow unchecked if scattered throughout the house; in fact, the effect of seeing them all together can be quite sobering. (“How on earth did I get all this yarn!”) It’ll also keep you from inadvertently bringing home duplicates of things you already own. How many times have you run out to buy something, only to find later you already had one? Being able to quickly check the appropriate module for it can eliminate lots of unnecessary clutter and expense.

Now for the task all you budding minimalists have been waiting for: once you’ve gathered like items together, it’s time to cull them. As you consolidate, you’ll undoubtedly come across excess supplies of certain items; cut them down to what you actually use now, and can realistically use in the future. Few of us will ever need all the twist-ties, chopsticks, and matchbooks lurking in our junk drawers; set some of them free, and reclaim the space! Likewise, why keep all sixty-three pens when ten is more than enough? How many can you write with at one time, anyway? Consider how long it takes to use up a pen: if each one lasts six months, you have a thirty-year supply—most of which will have dried up by the time you touch them to paper. Go through your collection, and save only your favorites. Apply the same principle to socks, t-shirts, coffee cups, plastic containers, hand towels, and anything else you have in abundance.

Finally, once we’ve consolidated and culled our items, we need to contain them; this step keeps them from spreading out through the house again. The “container” can be a drawer, shelf, box, plastic storage bin, ziplock bag—whatever’s appropriate for the size and quantity of the contents. I prefer transparent containers, since you can see what’s inside without opening them. If you’re using opaque ones, label or color code them for easy identification.

The advantage of using physical containers is their portability. Suppose that while watching a DVD with your family, you’d like to work on your knitting. Simply retrieve the knitting module, and you’re ready to go. When you’re finished, you’ll have little temptation to leave your supplies on the coffee table; just pop them back into the container for instant cleanup. If you lack a dedicated office space, keep your checkbook, calculator, pens, and other implements in an office module—and tote it into the dining room, kitchen, or other space when it’s time to pay bills. Teach your children to do the same with their toys, books, and games, and you’ll have much less “picking up” to do at the end of the day.

I’d like to emphasize the importance of consolidating and culling your stuff,
before
containing it. All too often, when we get the urge to “simplify,” we run out to our nearest organizational superstore and bring home a trunkful of pretty containers. We think that by arranging our stuff into neat little bins, we can automatically create a sense of order and serenity. But if we haven’t first weeded out the Treasures from the Trash, we’re spinning our wheels. The containers may make our houses look tidy, but they serve no higher purpose than to hide our junk. Instead of simplifying our homes (and our lives), we’re merely arranging our clutter.

Instead, declutter as much as you possibly can before putting anything into a box. Pare down to the essentials first, and
then
find a convenient way to house them. Being a minimalist means going one step beyond simply straightening up and organizing our homes. In creating our modules, we’re establishing a system that eliminates and discourages excess—making our possessions equivalent to our needs, and then literally putting a lid on them.

Minimalist living means keeping our possessions in check, and the most effective way to do this is by establishing limits. Okay, I can hear you thinking, “Whoa, wait a second! Limits? I didn’t sign up for that. I don’t want to feel deprived of anything…” No need to worry—the limits are for your stuff, not you! They help you gain the upper hand over your things, so you have more power, more control, and more space. Limits work
for you
, not against you.

Let’s use books as an example: we’re all familiar with how quickly they can accumulate. We buy one, we read it, and somehow it earns a permanent spot in our collection—no matter whether or not we liked it, or ever intend to crack it open again. We reason that we paid good money for it, and devoted time and effort to it, so we may as well have something to show for it. Sometimes we’ll keep a tome just to prove we read it. (Time to ‘fess up: who has
War and Peace
on their shelf? Are you
really
going to read it again?) Perhaps the bigger our library, the more intellectual we
feel
.

Remember: you are not what you own. Storing all those books doesn’t make you any smarter; it just makes your life more cluttered. Instead of keeping every one you’ve ever read, apply a limit: for example, restrict the number of volumes to what easily fits on your bookshelf. Don’t let them spill onto the floor or end tables, or grow into miniature towers on the side of the room. Limit your collection to the allotted space, and cull it as you add new ones. Your library will be much more special, consisting of only your freshest and favorite titles—it’ll be a pleasure to peruse! Put the excess books back in circulation: donate them to your local library, or pass them on to friends and family.