Things have gotten busy. A bout of food poisoning, a dentist appointment, working late, and a planned trip to watch roller derby. But I am committed to decluttering. Here are the 22 items for the four days, all in one fell swoop.
There is no one thread behind the books. Some I have other copies of. Some I have as ebooks. Some I will never read again (or just never read). Here they are clutter, somewhere elae they may be loved.
Giving away something that was given to me is difficult. I guess I feel that on some level I am rejecting the gift or the gift giver. But am I really honoring that relationship by letting that potentially well thought out symbol become meaningless background noise? Or worse, am I assigning meaning to a last minute, “Oh shit, I have to get Val something” selection? Either way, the importance is in the relationship, not the token.
These are from yesterday and today. Each one was a gift.
A flask from the Throttle Rockets, a Rat City Rollergirls home team. Roller derby for those unfamiliar. Jules got this for me early in our relationship. She knew I liked derby and that I needed a flask. This was the only one that she could get that combined both at that time. I have since purchased a larger one that I use more often – this was my “loaner flask”.
A handmade belt from an old SCA friend. I got it at my then local group’s Yule party. I cherished it but never got a chance to wear it.
Two wooden spoon/drumsticks. That’s right. Drumsticks with wooden spoons on the other end. A thoughtful gift, as I like cooking AND drumming. But they don’t work well for either.
A hand held Sudoku game. Kate got me this for Christmas many years ago. And I played it A LOT. However I have gotten out of my Sudoku phase and it has languished for several years.
A biography of Johnny Cash. Another present from Jules, this one from about a year ago. I’ve wanted to read it but just couldn’t. I can’t really explain why. The book (like many others) just feels wrong. Not content but how it feels in my hands. Okay, maybe I can explain why, but not until just now.
This morning I remembered the topic I wanted to write about on Friday. The problem was I didn’t actually remember what I wanted to write. I had the topic but not the details. So I went about my day, keeping the topic in the back of my mind. And this is actually quite apropos to the topic – why am I choosing minimalism?
Minimalism to me seems the best choice for living with intent and meaning. Too much of my life has been chasing money to afford more stuff and a larger place to put the stuff. And then getting myself stuck in bad situations because I can’t afford to do anything else. Or staying home doing nothing because I can’t afford a vacation, or a weekend away, or a day trip, thanks to a large chunk of my income going towards rent, excess services, debt repayment, or more stuff to assuage my overall dissatisfaction. There’s a reason it is called the Rat Race, that unthinking process of work, buy stuff, work.
That’s not what I want to do anymore. I want to do stuff, not own it. I want to be able to go to a roller derby tournament somewhere. I want to take Jules to see the full solar eclipse in 2017. I want to spend a week in a cabin on a storm drenched coast, with the winds howling, a fire roaring, and my dog snuggled next to me. I want to write.
But that is hard to do when all of your money goes to other people for things you don’t need.
These are the first skates I bought, five years ago, before I started playing roller derby. At the time I knew that I wanted to try playing and knew that I would need skates. So I picked these up at the Oaks Park skate shop. Just a few weeks later I would have to make a choice between joining a roller derby league and buying Devo tickets. I chose derby and that has made all the difference. Three or four months after this I ended up buying better skates. For those keeping track, that means these have been sitting around for four and a half years. No, I’m not going to throw them out. They will go to my league’s loaner gear.
I had a great idea for a post yesterday. It was going to be amazing. Then life happened. Had to deal with the old cell phone company about an unexpected charge in the morning. Worked much later than I usually do. Ran out of the limited hours in the day and did not write anything. So not only no post but no decluttering.
Does that mean I get to skip a day? Well, it could. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t have a deadline for this. The only ramification would be that a few things stay around longer. No need to beat myself up over that. But this week I decided to make up for it. Yesterday would have been six items and today is seven items. So I present to you my thirteen items.
From upper left to lower right:
There. Thirteen in one day. Now you may say “Val, it’s easy to get rid of stuff you don’t use!” To which I would reply “If it is so easy then why did I keep them for so many years?”
Some days get busy. Right now my work and sleep schedules mesh in such a way that I have a bit of time before work and a bit of time after work before bed. I don’t have a huge window for cleaning out the bedroom and the closet. But I have told myself that the effort will be worth it. After all, if I’m not the kind of person who can do it all at once then I have to be the kind to do it a bit at a time, like sharpening a bird’s beak on Diamond Mountain.
As I mentioned before, decluttering does not means getting rid of large, meaningful things. In fact I’m likely to be getting rid of small things or stuff that just happened and never got cleaned up, especially later in the week.
Two pairs of shoes, one of which looked good but was too small and never got worn, one of which I wore five to seven years ago. A pile of old socks that needs a new home. A plastic machete purchased for a costume I never finished and can’t remember. Old throwing knives I purchased used as a starter set years ago when I had time and space to practice.
I will admit that in some ways I am new to the concept of “minimalism”. While I have known for years that I “have too much stuff” and “need to do something about it” there wasn’t any reason behind it other than frustration. And whenever I did any research about it I ran into opinions and methods that seemed extreme. People competing to see who could keep the fewest things like some bizarre contest. Getting rid of everything and only replacing things you “truly need”. Major lifestyle overhauls that need to be done right now!
And I floundered. Because none of those methods or ideologies worked for me. And then, in a moment of pure serendipity, I found the Minimalists Podcast. Now I’m not big on podcasts. I had only ever really listened to one podcast years ago and I decided to look up that podcast to see whatever happened to it. It was still going so I downloaded a podcast app for my phone and started downloading. Well, I happened to look at the list of Top Podcasts and saw the Minimalists Podcast and decided to give it a try. After all I was trying to downsize my life. And it worked for me. The way they present it – here are some ideas that have worked for them or others, take what works for you, modify to fit you – made sense to me. I’ve taken some of their advice and mixed it with ideas I found elsewhere. I’ve finally figured out my why.
Not to say that they don’t have their detractors. I’ve read comments ranging from “they don’t say anything new” to “they aren’t extreme enough” to “they don’t think capitalism is bad”. But to all of those people I say this – how many people have you gotten to reduce their footprint in the world? How many people have you helped off the treadmill of seeking happiness through item acquisition? No, I’m never going to be in the running for title of Minimal-est and have everything I own fit in a grocery bag. But I am going to pare down because of the ideas and encouragement I first found in that podcast.
Here is what is going away today. Yarn, needles, and a knitting book from when I decided to try knitting. That experience has made me appreciate knitters even more. A small metal pail that I picked up at work one day to keep office supplies in. A book that I read 9 years ago and kept “just in case” I wanted to loan it to someone.
Decluttering doesn’t have to be about removing big items that have been stored for years. It can be a little thing that takes up space instead of making life better.
The blue pieces are from a tea set I purchased about eight years ago. Back then I was more into the “ritual” of tea than I am now. I liked the process of filling this mug, taking back to the table or the dance room (fancy term for living room with no furniture), and letting it steep while I sat. Now I’m more of a “large pyrex container and a strainer” girl. Don’t want fancy, just my tea. This may be going to my dear friend Kate who had something similar that broke in travel years ago. She’s going to try it out this morning to see if she likes it.
Next to that is a bell. Someone at work gave that to me when I broke my ankle a year ago. When your voice doesn’t carry well you sometimes need other ways to call for help when bedridden.
Finally, a PS3 box. I don’t have the PS3 anymore. Traded it in last summer. But even before that all this box was doing was holding up other stuff.
There. It doesn’t have to be meaningful. In fact, a lot of things going away will be quite the opposite – meaningless. Or at least they will no longer have meaning – everything I’ve shown so far was important to me at some point. Soon there will probably be things that never meant anything to me past the rush of pleasure at buying them.
Why am I doing this? What is driving me to get rid of stuff that I have had for decades? Yesterday I decided to get rid of things that I have had for 20 years. I’m sure that there are older items yet to come.
Simply put, I have finally come to the realization that stuff does not equal happiness. Oh, I’ve known it in my head for years. But I didn’t really understand it. It was one of those things that “everyone knows” but that no one ever follows. I was dissatisfied with something in my life and felt that the next knick knack or doohickey would bring me happiness. But now all this stuff does not support what I want to do or who I want to be.
As I said in my very first post – Jules and I want to get a tiny house but we own too much -some people would say it owns us- and would never fit into a tiny house. We talked about getting a storage unit but that seems like it isn’t the right solution. Oh, we will probably have one for seasonal items, like camping gear or winter clothing, but there is no need to store things away forever.
Now we might not end up in a tiny house. We might just move into a small apartment. Either way we cannot do that until we have less. Our stuff requires space in the form of a storage unit or a large apartment and that costs money. Prisoners of our possessions.
So, in that vein, here is what I am finding another place for today:
On top is a food mill. I used to make chile sauce out of various dried chiles I found in a local market. It was fun and the sauce was very tasty. But it went bad before I could use it all and I never started canning like I wanted to preserve it longer. Someone will use it.
The other is a bin full of nail polishes. Some of them were mine from a period when I actually used them. Some of them were presents. Some were left to me when roommates moved out. I think I’ve worn nail polish once in the last 4 years – and it wasn’t one of these.
Once I had settled on a seven day cycle for removing extraneous items from my life I knew I would start on a Sunday. Not because of some belief that a new week is a special place to start. No, just because it will be easier to remember which day of the cycle I was at. It is already going to be challenging enough without adding unnecessary mental and emotional overhead.
With the extra time I wanted the item I chose to have some importance or meaning, even though I can’t really explain what that would entail. I just knew that it would be more than an old pair of socks. And this morning I figured out what that item was:
My massage table. Twenty years ago I studied to be a massage therapist. It was something I really enjoyed and would gladly have left my IT job to pursue it if I hadn’t hurt my wrist. But I kept the table. Kept it in a closet, in a storage unit, or under a bed. It has been used perhaps three times in twenty years. The only time it hasn’t been under a bed in the last seven years is when I switched bedrooms five years ago. It meant something to me in the past but it can go to someone who will use it.
But that’s not all. While I was pulling the table out from under the bed I found even more stuff that can go.
These are saddlebags for a motorcycle I had even before I studied massage therapy. I got rid of the bike and never got another one. I’ve used them to haul stuff from one place to another when I moved.
Dog coat and boots purchased in the winter of 2008-2009. It was so cold my dog could not stay on the driveway or street but the snow was too deep for her to walk through, much less go potty. Even though she hated these they kept her safe. They have been in the saddlebags ever since I moved here from Wisconsin.
And there they go. It’s amazing how deciding to remove one thing can lead to the discovery of other things that can go along with it. It is also amazing how removing that one thing can change how you see things – from where I’m sitting I can now see at least ten things taking up space that could make someone else’s life better.
It isn’t easy to change a habit. The ingrained autopilot routines can catch us when we’re not paying attention. Just grab the remote and start channel surfing; pop open the laptop and play games; pick up the phone and check social media.
We have to put stuff in the way of those easy paths if we wish to change. Not because those habits are bad but because they impede us from being who we want to be.
My biggest reminder at the moment is this:
That is a leather bound notebook of hand made paper. I bought it months ago, wrote in it once, then left it on a shelf. I would see it and think that I should write something. The notebook now resides on my laptop. I have to consciously acknowledge the notebook’s existence and purpose every time I turn on the laptop.
And in the past few days I have written more both in and out of that notebook than in the past year. Will I keep up this pace? Who knows. I will be getting back to other things in life that mean something to me.
And I’d rather choose between meaningful things than meaningless things.
An Intentional Journey 