Drowning in Stuff

The realization has been coming for a long time that I have been drowning in stuff. Too many t-shirts, shoes, pairs of jeans, books, momentos, and of course papers. I look around my bedroom or living room and it's awash in stuff. Most of the stuff has a purpose, is still servicable, but I seldom use one tenth of the things I own. Still, it's not so bad...

Until, that is, you look in the "office" or the "garage". If you happen to go in there you might be lost for weeks. Fortunately you would probably find some stray food from the last time my wife or I attempted to clean or organize either space. Truthfully, I have seen worse places, mostly on television shows like "Hoarders".



But does the fact that there are worse cluttered spaces make it alright for me to live with what I consider too much stuff?

My answer is simply, no.

About a year ago I stumbled on Leo Babauta's blog about minimalism, and then found a great blog by Nina Yau about living a very minimal life. In both cases, the writers had to go through a process to pare down the excess stuff in their lives and begin to live in a more minimal way. Often I would read Nina or Leo's posts and think, "I'd like to do that," but frankly it seemed hard. Every now and then I would make an attempt to get rid of stuff, to organize things, but then I would fall off the wagon and just stop working at organizing or paring down.

Yet in my heart I feel that I need to change, that if I do not minimize and get rid of the nonessential stuff that is cluttering up my life I cannot be the person I want to be, nor do the kind of work that I really want to do. The clutter is dragging me down and keeping me down.

So, I thought that creating this blog would be a good way to place my intention to minimize out in the universe for all to see. I'm a writer, after all, so I use writing to process my world, to make sense of things. Why not write about the experience of becoming a minimalist and have fun with the process. There are no set rules for this blog or for this lifestyle change for now. The bottom line is that I know that something needs to change and I am damn well ready to begin.

Leo Babauta writes a lot about making small, steady changes and creating habits you can maintain. That is what this blog is about, creating a sustainable life change.

Here's my start for the day: my nightstand after minimization.





It just makes me happy.