What Do You Do With All The Stuff When You Minimize?

What do you do with all the excess "stuff" when you minimize a room or a space? This is definitely a problem, one that I cannot put off solving.

First, by cleaning up and minimizing the stuff in my office, I have created chaos in the hallway outside of the office, and on my kitchen table.

Do I have a solution? Yes, but take a look at the scene of chaos I created by clearing the office...


Even using "artistic" black and white photography cannot cover up TOO MUCH STUFF!

Of course I knew this task was coming. Everything that came from the office had to go someplace. This is where the real challenge of minimizing comes in. Previously, when I have made an attempt to get organized and get rid of stuff, I would get an area cleaned up, create a repository of stuff (also called a "dumping ground"), and there the stuff would sit until eventually moved someplace else where it would return to its natural state of "clutter".

But this time I vow it will be different.

A key to minimizing is that there must be a place for everything, even if the place is in the garbage or in a donation box. Yes, it seems like it might be hard to get rid of things that have emotional meaning, or that I might need someday, but things are just things, they are not people or relationships. Other people need some of this stuff now - I do not need it all.

The bottom line: Rather than letting the stuff sit around and stall my quest to become a minimalist, it goes today... Yes, today! Look for a report later today to find out how I did.

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.