The Joy of Less, a Minimalist Living Guide (9 page)

Limits also help tame those ever-multiplying craft and hobby supplies. Whether you’re a beader, knitter, scrapbooker, model builder, woodworker, or soapmaker, limit your materials to
one
storage bin. When it starts to overflow, use up some of your old stash before acquiring anything new—it’s great motivation to finish the projects you’ve started. Not only does it reduce your clutter, it’s a good reality check: do you enjoy doing the craft as much as collecting the materials for it? If not, perhaps you should rethink your hobby; and if so, you should have no problem using up those supplies.

Limits can, and should, be applied to just about everything. Have fun setting boundaries for your stuff: require that all your DVDs fit on their assigned shelf, all your sweaters in their designated drawer, all your makeup in one cosmetic case. Limit the number of shoes, socks, candles, chairs, sheets, pots, cutting boards, and collectibles you own. Limit your magazine subscriptions, and the number of items on your coffee table. Limit your holiday decorations to one box, and your sports equipment to one corner of the garage. Limit your plates, cups, and utensils to the size of your family, and your garden supplies to the needs of your yard.

Back in the old days, limits were applied by external factors: most significantly, the price and availability of material goods. Items were generally handmade and distributed locally—making them scarcer and more costly (relative to income) than in modern times. It was easy to be a minimalist a hundred years ago, as it was difficult enough to acquire the necessities—let alone anything extra. Nowadays, we can zip over to our local superstore and purchase whatever our heart desires; mass production and global distribution have made consumer items cheap, widely available, and easy to obtain. Sure, it’s convenient; but as many of us have learned, it can be too much of a good thing. If we don’t voluntarily limit our consumption, we can end up drowning in stuff!

Setting limits not only helps
you
; it also eases other members of your household into a more minimalist lifestyle. Explain to your family that stuff must fit into the space allotted—and that when things overflow, they must be pared down. Limit your children’s toys to one or two storage bins, and your teenager’s clothing to the size of her closet. They’ll benefit enormously from this guidance, and develop valuable habits for later in life. At the very least, limit each person’s possessions to what fits into his or her room—be it a child’s bedroom or playroom, or a spouse’s office, craft room, or workshop. That way, you’ll prevent personal stuff from spilling over into family space.

Of course, the ultimate limit on your possessions is set by the size of your house—which, as a minimalist, you may someday decide to reduce. Stuff expands to fill the space available (I’m pretty sure there’s a physics equation for that!). Limiting that space means less stuff, less clutter, less worries, and less stress. If you don’t have a big house, you can’t have a big houseful of stuff. Imagine moving from a studio apartment into a house with an attic, basement, and two-car garage—those storage spaces will undoubtedly fill up just because they’re
there
. If you stopped using an exercise bike in your small apartment, you’d likely dispose of it; but in your bigger house, it would surely end up in the basement. Smaller digs put a natural limit on the number of things you can own—making it that much easier to live a minimalist lifestyle.

You may initially think that limits will be stifling; but you’ll soon discover that they’re absolutely liberating! In a culture where we’re conditioned to want more, buy more, and do more, they’re a wonderful breath of relief. In fact, once you’ve discovered the joy of limits, you’ll be inspired to apply them to other parts of your life. Limiting commitments and activities can lead to a less harried lifestyle and free up valuable time. Limiting your spending slashes your credit card bills and boosts the balance in your bank account. Limiting processed, fatty, and sugary food can reduce your waistline and improve your health. The possibilities are, well…unlimited!

Sometimes we declutter, and declutter, and declutter some more—but when we look at our homes, we don’t see any progress. We can’t understand it—we’ve filled up trash bags to put on the curb; we’ve filled up our trunks with stuff for charity; and we’ve filled up boxes to give to our brother-in-law. Yet it seems like we have just as much stuff in our closets, drawers, and basements. We’re working hard, and we want to see results. What’s the problem?

Think of your house, and all the stuff in it, as a bucket of water. Decluttering is like drilling a hole in the bottom—causing the bucket to empty slowly, drip by drip, as you rid your household of unwanted things. Great, that sounds like progress! As long as you keep up the good work, your stuff level should steadily decrease.

Here’s the catch: the stuff level only goes down if you stop pouring more in the top. Every item that enters your home is inflow into the bucket. So if you’re still shopping, and buying things, and bringing home freebies from business conferences, those drips out the bottom won’t do much good. The bucket will never empty, and may in fact overflow!

You can solve this problem by following a simple rule: if one comes in, one goes out. Every time a new item comes into your home, a similar item must leave. For every drip into the bucket, there must be one drip out. This strategy ensures that your household won’t flood, and threaten the progress you’re making.

The One In-One Out rule is most effective when applied to like items. For every new shirt that goes in the closet, an old shirt comes out. For every new book that joins your collection, an old one leaves the shelf. For every new pair of shoes that waltzes in, an old pair takes a hike. It’s very straightforward. If a new set of plates moves in, the old set moves out. If a new duvet says hello, an old duvet says goodbye. If a gorgeous new vase makes its household debut, a less gorgeous one takes its final bow. You can mix it up a little if you feel the need to rebalance your possessions. For instance, if you have too many pants and too few shirts, ditch a pair of trousers when you buy a new top. Keep it equitable, though: tossing socks to offset a coat—or trading a paperclip for an office chair—doesn’t fit the bill!

Too often, when we buy something new, we keep the item it’s supposed to replace. Here’s how it usually goes down: we spy something in our house that’s no longer up to snuff—perhaps it’s out of style, falling apart, or just doesn’t meet our needs. So we set out on a shopping mission, eager to ditch the old version in favor of a better, brighter, shinier, more technologically up-to-date one. We do our research, compare prices, read reviews, and finally make our purchase. Then something strange happens: when we bring home our new model, the old one doesn’t look so forlorn. Although we’d deemed it “not good enough” to use, it still seems “too good” to throw away. We begin to imagine all the scenarios (however unlikely) in which we “might need it.” (As if we’re expecting its brand-new, state-of-the-art replacement to up and stop working the following day.) Before we know it, the tired old thing is comfortably ensconced in our basement or attic, “just in case” it’ll come in handy.

The One In-One Out strategy helps you show your rejects the door—rather than house them in their retirement. As soon as that new model enters your home, bid your final farewell to the old. There’s no magic to the system, but it does require discipline. I can tell you from experience that it’s tempting to cheat, and promise yourself you’ll purge something “later.” You’re so excited to wear that new sweater, or play that new video game, that you don’t feel like finding an appropriate swap. Nevertheless, summon up your minimalist powers, and commit to “one out” before you open, hang up, or use the “one in”—because unless you do it immediately, it’ll likely never happen. I’ve gone so far as to keep new items, still packaged, in the trunk of my car until I was able to oust something old.

When you’re starting to declutter, the One In-One Out rule is a wonderful stopgap measure. It caps your number of possessions, and keeps you moving in the right direction. There’s nothing more disheartening than working to purge ten items—agonizing over the decisions, summoning the strength to let them go—only to discover you accumulated twelve new ones in the meantime. Following this principle prevents such a scenario. From the second you commit to it, your household enters a steady state of stuff: as long as you stick with the program, you’ll never own more than you do at that moment.

Better yet, as you continue to purge your possessions, you’ll see a marked decrease in your stuff level. Since you’ve “shut off the tap,” those drips out the bottom have a noticeable (and satisfying) effect. Of course, the more stuff you get rid of, the more rewarding the result; so in the next chapter, we’ll turn the decluttering trickle into a steady flow.

In the previous chapter, we learned how to achieve a steady state of possessions, by offsetting each item entering our home with a similar one leaving it. Fantastic! Now we no longer have to worry about taking one step forward, and two steps back. With this system in place, each additional item we purge gets us that much closer to our minimalist goals.

To really make progress, though, we need to kick our decluttering efforts into high gear. Streamlining isn’t about getting rid of a few things, and then going on with business as usual. Quite the contrary! It’s designed to help us reach the holy grail of minimalist living: owning just enough to meet our needs, and nothing more. Therefore, when it comes to the stuff in our closets and drawers, and in our modules and zones, we have one mission: to narrow it down.

Ideally, we want to reduce our possessions to the bare necessities. Now, before you get worried about having to live in a tent or sleep on the floor, let me explain. The “bare necessities” means different things to different people. The minimalist residing on his sailboat may be able to meet his culinary needs with a single hotplate. Those of us with full kitchens, on the other hand, may consider our microwaves, pizza stones, and rice cookers indispensable. At the same time, the scuba gear he deems a necessity would likely be superfluous in our households.

Our personal essentials depend on a wide range of factors—like age, gender, occupation, hobbies, climate, culture, families, and peers. Minimalists in professional jobs may find business suits and dress shoes
de rigueur
, while those working from home can get by with smaller wardrobes. Parents with young children will have a different list of essentials than a bachelor living alone. Bookworms will have different necessities than sports enthusiasts, students will have different necessities than retirees, men will have different necessities than women.

Therefore, there’s no master list of what’s in a minimalist home. No decree outlines the items we should have in our kitchens, living rooms, bathrooms, or bedrooms. (That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?) In fact, contrary to popular belief, there’s not even a magic number. It doesn’t matter if you own fifty, five hundred, or five thousand things—what matters is whether it’s just enough (and not too much) for
you
. You must determine your own list of must-haves, then narrow your stuff down to match it.

This step, then, is about reducing our possessions to our personal “optimum” levels. Whenever we pick up an item, we should stop and think if we really need it—or can just as well get by without it. When we discover we have multiples, we should immediately cull the excess. When we unearth a box of unused stuff, we should seriously consider just dumping the lot. The good news: as we progress on our minimalist journeys, our number of “necessities” will slowly but surely decrease.

In addition to simply decluttering our stuff, we can also “narrow it down” by more creative means—like choosing multi-functional items over single-use ones. A sleeper sofa eliminates the need for a separate guest bed. A printer with a scanner function means one less piece of office equipment. A smartphone can do the work of a calendar, wristwatch, calculator, appointment book, and more. Our goal is to accomplish the greatest number of tasks with the least amount of items.

By the same token, we should favor versatile items over specialty ones. A large sauté pan can do the same job as a drawer full of specialty cookware. A classic black pump coordinates with both work and dress clothes, doing double duty in our wardrobe—as opposed to those fuchsia heels that hardly go with anything. An all-purpose cleaner can keep our homes sparkling, replacing separate sprays for the sink, tub, mirror, and countertops.

As we’re happily narrowing down our items, however, some things will stop us in our tracks—and more often than not, they’ll be sentimental or commemorative in nature. Things with memories are just difficult to part with. But don’t worry—we minimalists have ways of dealing with them, too! “Miniaturizing” them, for example, is a tried-and-true strategy. No, I don’t mean turning a shrink ray gun on them (although that would be fun!). Rather, we simply save a
piece
of the item instead of the whole thing. The logic: if an item’s purpose is to evoke memories, the same memories can be evoked by a smaller piece.

Consider “miniaturizing” items like old wedding gowns, christening outfits, baby quilts, graduation memorabilia, sports uniforms, and letter sweaters. For instance, rather than keep the entire wedding dress, snip off a swatch; display it with a photo, invitation, or dried flower from the bouquet. Instead of squirreling away your college mortarboard, keep only the tassel. Do the same with collections you inherit: rather than stash all twelve place settings of your grandmother’s china in the attic, keep just a single plate and display it in a place of honor. Alternatively, take snapshots of the items, and then declutter them; the photos preserve the memories, without taking up the space. They’re also more accessible—and easier to enjoy—than an item tucked away in storage.