Simplify

I’ve been working hard on paring down my life. Removing layers that never really added anything. That includes things, people, certain daily tasks. The biggest thing I’ve been removing has been habits. They also have been the hardest to change. I thought about this while looking at my keys. I realized that your keys will be a big indicator of how complex your life is, and what is most important to you. What needs to be locked when you leave it.

I think we all could use a little simplifying. First step for me, was to go into the garage, and start cleaning, organizing, and sorting. Did I miss any of those items? Some of that stuff had been in there for ten or more years. My family and I never went into this pile of stuff looking for an item that we desperately needed. The “just in case” pile grew and grew, but when the case came, wed forget about our pile and buy something new before we remembered what was in there. If it had been up to me entirely, I would have rented a dumpster, and thrown absolutely everything away.

I was glad that it wasn’t up to me.

It was my mother that suggested we go through things more methodically and I ended up with three totes of things that I decided to hold onto. These were things that meant a lot to me, or things that were actually useful in an actual emergency or disaster situation. My father left some very useful things when he passed away. (Thank you dad for keeping us safe and teaching us things even after your passing.)

I wanted to document this endeavor in some way. I kept thinking about our podcast , all through moving boxes, sweating, hefting bags of garbage, and whatever animals had left for us to find. And so so many spiders. How who am I to be helping people with their mental health when Im still such a mess that I let this stuff sit and rot for ten years. I looked down at my arms at the end of the day and I was covered in cuts and bruises and dirt, dust, grime, bits of insulation and wood and that was where I came to the conclusion that I'am in the trenches with everyone fighting the same kinds of battles. I may not be an expert, but I can provide the experiences of the battles in my head that might help someone through that same struggle.

So here is the real meat and potatoes of this idea.

Let. It. Go.

not as important as your brain is making it out to be. It’s not as useful as you are telling yourself it is. It’s just clutter. (You know who you are, and you know the item(s) Im talking about.

Get your values in order.

When it comes to “stuff”, what is actually valuable. Be it in usefulness, sentimentally, or monetary)

How do you actually want to live? (and what do you want to leave behind?)

This mostly comes from a place of having to go through so much stuff that my father left when he passed. Stuff that I don't know if he even cared about, and it wasn’t even as much as most people leave their loved ones.

Make a system.

There will always be things that you wont want to part with) - One solution I found for this is the 5, 5, 5, rule, but when applied to clutter, are you going to need this thing in 5 minutes? 5 days? Or 5 years? If you can’t even answer this question, its time to use the S,S,S, rule . Sell, Save, Salvage. If you aren’t going to use it in 5 years, time to get rid of it, sell that valuable item. Is this something you intended for someone else? Contact that person, and save the item for them. If its going to be a project next week, salvage it, finish that project so it can have a home.

It’s okay to feel bad about throwing things away.

No really, but its also simply okay to throw the thing away. If it can be recycled, by all means, but dont look to recycling to use as an excuse to leave things in the pile. Keep in mind, for every piece of plastic you put in a landfill, there is a corporation putting five hundred more. Im not saying your conservation doesn’t make a difference, but when doing a big declutterring project, it wont matter when you look at the big picture. Save the conservation for the weekly refuse sorting. This project is about making room in your space to reclaim it!

The Best way to clean your space is to not buy the useless thing.

“Ohh shiny!” We all want nice, new things. But is it just going to become a part of the trash pile in a few months? This one is one im still working hard to avoid, I still buy a lot of things I dont need. But at the time, I thought i needed it. Gadgets are the biggest draw for me. I have so much tech I dont actually use. And It breaks my heart. I’ve started being a mindful consumer, will I actually use this thing I’m about to hit “buy now” on?

In conclusion, I never want to clean my garage again, at least not in this way. I will sweep and put tools away, store projects properly, but I never want to have a mountain of stuff that is just taking up space again. This has been a two week project that a little mindfulness would have prevented. I hope sharing my experience helps someone reading this do the same thing.

Never skip brain day everyone!