Grant's Space

How

1. write a list of stuff you use
2. tag it (use post-its, sticky dots, whatever). This makes it easy for you to identify what you need without taxing your brain, and lets you tell friends, 1-800-get-junk, etc, “don’t touch anything with a dot”.
3. get rid of everything else
   • categorize into sell, give away, trash, and keepsake
     • sell stuff worth more than $10-$20
     • set your own threshold here – what’s your time worth to sort, list, ship (or meet someone who is picking it up)?
     • give away anything that’s decent or useful to anyone else
     • anything you don’t use but can’t bear to get rid of is a “keepsake”. Arrange to store it somewhere (in a storage area, not in bookshelves, the floor, etc – get it out of your way). After your first few purges, you’ll want to revisit your keepsakes, because lots of it is probably really stuff you need to purge but have an emotional attachment to.
     • “throw away” anything that’s left. 1-800-got-junk is good if you have a lot of stuff, as it’s fast and they’ll try to recycle or donate anything they can (so you don’t have to feel bad about getting rid of things that could be useful to someone). Or, toss it yourself.

Why

You don’t realize how much that clutter is distracting you. Every item you have is a weight of some sort: mental, emotional, physical, etc.

For example:

• A friend gave you that planting pot. You haven’t put a plant in it in years, and you don’t do well with plants anyway. It takes up space on the coffee table, so it uses attention, because you see it and it takes up space (mental weight). You can’t just throw it out because you’d feel bad, both because it was a gift and because someone might be able to use it (emotional weight).
• your couch is in daily use, but if you wanted to, say, move downtown, you’d have to move it (physical weight).

Multiply that by all the items in your house (every book, every piece of paper, every plate, every towel, every piece of furniture, etc) and you have a lot of weight that you feel, but are so used to that you don’t even realize you’re carrying it.

Consider:
What if you wanted to travel through Europe and Asia for 2 months. You’d have to pay your rent at home, adding say $3000 to your costs (assuming $1500/month rent). You say “of course, I need a place to live”. But you’re not living there, your stuff is. You’re paying $3000 so you don’t have to move your stuff. You’re used to that limitation, because you’re used to carrying the weight.

Once you start getting of stuff you really don’t need, several things happen:

1. You feel “lighter”. You’ll see the open space in your house. Clear surfaces, room to move across the floor, etc. You’ll notice the decrease in mental distractions.
2. You want stuff less. Once you realize that the smallest item requires maintenance, a place to be, a purpose, and to be disposed of at some point, you won’t want to even take the free pen some comapny offers as swag.
3. You become free. You’ll want to purge everything you can, because without the stuff to maintain, you’re free to do what you want, where you want.