Softworlds

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.�?
-Ellen Goodman

There are those who never give a thought to simple living but still complain about having way too much stuff. There are several common solutions:

You can buy a book or 10 on how to organize your life. Probably one will do as well as 10 since the solutions are variations on a theme. (Why add to your problem by having to organize nine extra books?) These books explain how to organize papers (buy color-coded labels) handle books (buy shelves), store your clothes (buy closet thingies), and deal with magazines (buy baskets), and so on. Notice how organizing too much stuff is solved by buying more stuff.

You can hire a professional organizer — someone who charges a lot of money to put color-coded labels on folders.

You can rent storage. Move your overflow of clothing, furniture, kitchen appliances, exercise toys, electronic entertainment devices, and old software and forget about it — except at the beginning of each month when you pay the bill.

These approaches to dealing with your abundance have one common advantage: you don’t have to admit to yourself that you have bought a bunch of useless (to you) junk that will never be used. You can hold on to the — recalling some of our treasures — roller blades, croquet set, power tools, air mattress, ice cream maker, sweaters, rowing machine, tent, boots, and other goodies and maintain the fantasy that some day they will get used, that you didn’t really waste your money. Of course, everyone knows, if they’re willing to consider it for half a minute, that anything that doesn’t get used immediately and regularly, won’t ever get used. The real ghost of Christmas past is the ball and chain of barely-used gifts.

Above, I mentioned three fairly inexpensive ways that people use to deal with their overflow. But is it really inexpensive? You’ll think I’m nuts, but I propose that hanging on to the extra tvs and unused treadmills can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. When children arrive, whether by stork or adoption agency, parents inevitably crave more space. That’s sensible, children need room to sleep and play. Is it sensible, however, to double or triple your living space to accommodate two or three kids? You still need only one kitchen, one dining room, one laundry area, and one living room, but families buy homes that go far beyond providing even a generous amount of room for the humans. The extra space goes to accomodate extra tvs and unused treadmills. In the Seattle area, a couple of extra rooms can easily increase the cost of your home $50,000 or more. And homeowners know the real cost of $50,000 over a 30-year mortgage. Gives a new perspective on the ten-dollar love seat you scored at the garage sale.

Most of us who hoard unused stuff hold on to it out of a sense of thriftiness, but as I’ve pointed out, that sense is nonsense. The best way to simplify your life is to get rid of your unused stuff. Rather than buying a new house, rather than renting a storage unit, rather than paying someone to organize your stuff, rather than buying a book on how to buy more stuff so you can organize your stuff, buy a book on how to get rid of your stuff.

You might think that getting rid of stuff doesn’t need instruction, only a decision, but you may be surprised at how difficult it is. Enter Don Aslett, who took a job as a janitor to pay his way through college and wound up a cleaning and de-junking mogul. (I didn’t know there was such a thing either.) By the time he left college, he was running an office cleaning business that grew into a very large office cleaning business, and later became an author of books on cleaning and de-junking.

Don Aslett has a enough books on getting rid of stuff to require another book on how to get rid of Don Aslett books. Fortunately, you need only one. My favorite is Clutter’s last stand.