We all crave for more – more clothes, more food, more accessories, more furtniture, basically more stuff. We buy into the notion of society’s – ‘more’ is success. ‘Less’ is failure. But, with each and every possession comes the responsibility to look after it. Whatever we own, we must store it, clean it & take care of it, and the more we have, the more time is taken up with care and maintenance of that which we own. Paulo Coelho in one of his blog post illustrates with a great example that happiness lies in freedom from possessions, ’cause at the end of the day, he says, things start possessing us. He once considered buying a castle in France, but then realized that if he bought that castle, he would not be able to think of anything but taking care of it. So, he says he bought a small water-fill instead, which was easy to keep; that he could take time to go to the mountains, to walk, & spend life the way he would like to. True isn’t it? The more we have, the more occupied our mind is; The less we have, the more free we are.
Imagine yourself walking into a clean simple home with minimal possessions and contrast it with one cluttered with books, furniture, decorations lying all over the place. If one calms and soothes us, the other overwhelms us. The same is applicable to ourselves. The more ‘cluttered’ (with commitments) we are, the more restless we become. We need to say enough. We need to reduce the overwhelmingly mind numbing information flow into our lives. We need fewer commitments – to others and to ourselves. We need order amidst chaos. It is my belief that the simpler our life is, the more inner peace and contentment we’ll have.
Here are some suggestions/thoughts to simplify our life in order to gain that peace:
- Remember what matters: Think about what is important to us and concentrate on those. Focus helps in cutting-off the chaff. De-cluttering is not about giving up things we need, it’s about keeping only the essentials, and not keeping anything we do not need. Ask yourself, does this belonging add value to my life? If not, get rid of it.
- Don’t buy too much stuff: We can get rid of stuff, but the real key is to buy less in the first place and to be careful what we bring into our lives. If you want to buy something, wait a month before buying it. Then ask yourself if you still want it – mostly you won’t. Don’t buy on impulse and don’t go shopping to cheer yourself up.
- Get rid of what you don’t need: If you haven’t used it in the last year, then get rid of it. Pile all your possessions in one place, sort through it, one item at a time, and make quick decisions: trash, give away, or keep (have a trash bag and a ‘give-away’ box handy). Don’t put it back in the pile. Do this with the entire pile, and soon, you’ll know what to keep and what to let go.
- Examples:
- Old media – CDs, DVDs you no longer watch/hear
- Old books/magazines you no longer read or use
- Old clothes you no longer wear
- Toys: we all have some gear collected over time which we might have used in the past. If you are not going to use them again, we need get rid of them. No point in having them lying around.
- Unnecessary piece of furniture – anything you can get by without
- Decorations – see any meaningless decorations we brought to fill the space?
- Digital – Clean your computers: How many apps do you have? How many of them do we actually use? Can you simplify your workflow? Ask yourselves these questions and cut the garbage out.
- Examples:
The point is simple: Take a hard look at them. Can you get by without them? If yes, toss ’em!
- Go Digital: Trash all magazines, catalogues, junk mail, bills more than a year old. Training materials, clippings from news papers, notes to self, notes from others, etc. you would like to keep for reference should be digitised. The only exceptions should be important documents like warranties, taxes, insurance, certificates and others like them.
- Reduce media consumption: We are wired 24 hours a day. Between the smartphone in our pockets, the laptop at home, the desktop at work, and the big fat TV in the living room, we have a lots of media to consume. Unfortunately, that extra media does not come with extra time. So, we must intelligently limit them. Limit the RSS feeds we read, limit the number of blogs we read, limit our twitter feed, stop following everyone under the sun, stop checking email every ten minutes, configure notifications to show only important emails, reduce the number of places we subscribe news from.
Do we need follow the same website we subscribed RSS feed from, in Twitter? Think…
- Stop Multitasking: We cram too much into our lives. We want to get more done in less time. We talk on phone while we drive, we check our emails when our friend is speaking to us, we work on our projects when our family wants our time. In the guise of being more productive, we drain ourselves of energy and lose focus on what is important in life. I believe handling single tasks beats multitasking in both quality and productivity. By focusing, we can get one task done better and faster. Stop multitasking. Let’s pour ourselves into one task at a time.
- Say no: Learn to say no to people. If time is money, are we spending our time as prudently as we spend our money? Time is life. You don’t need to answer all the calls you get, leave some for the recorder, you don’t have to go to all the parties your friends ask you to, you don’t have to take other people’s responsibilities if you don’t have the time. Only by committing less, saying no, do we free our time & free ourselves from unnecessary guilt of broken promises. It saves our credibility too.
Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves. – Edwin Way Teale
P.S.: While writing this blog, I asked myself if I lead a decluttered, minimal life. The answer is no. I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff over time and now find myself a slave to it. I’m thinking out loud in this post. I need to heed to this advice as much as you my dear reader.
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