On the Topic of 'Stuff'

About a year ago, a vocal student of mine (and friend!) told me about something her and her partner started doing that was making a big impact on their lives. They have been going through their house, item by item, holding each thing in their hands, and asking themselves 'Do I love this?'. If they can't answer 'yes', then off it goes to charity.

Now, my house has a lot of little things in it which I have collected over the years - candles, little decorative items, and of course, scads of kitchen tools and more. When I close my eyes for a second and feel my house, you know I can actually feel that 'clutter' and excess! So, I started doing their 'love' exercise, to see what would happen.

Wow. Let me just say that after 2 van loads (we're talking a FULL van too!) of stuff to a local charity, I am realizing how many items we have that our in excess of our needs, and even our wants! What's really funny is that we have been called 'minimalists' before, and still we were getting rid of bags and boxes of items, seemingly without end! And I can say that when a full bag of stuff was ready to go, and sat by the door, there was a certain lightening when it actually left the house - almost like it too was ready to go, and needed to go to the next person who maybe really did need it!

Of course, a house with less stuff is easier to clean, and easier to decorate! But not only that, I think sometimes our 'things' distract us from ourselves. With less stuff to look at or put in the 'I'll deal with it later' stack, I suddenly started focusing on more interesting things - gardening, cooking, spending time with my family, dreaming.

So, if you want to take a trip down this 'eliminating the excess' road with me, try the following!

1. Pick a room in your house to spend time in.
2. Pick up each item in your hand and ask yourself 'do I love this?'
3. When the answer is 'no', in the bag it goes.
4. When the answer is 'maybe', try putting it away for a month, and see if you miss it. In a month, go back to that room and repeat the exercise.
   
5. Once you are finished with that room, make sure that bag goes to charity immediately - don't let it sit in a corner or in a garage - you've said goodbye, and it needs to be a closed story.
6. Take your extra items to a thrift store benefiting your favourite local charity, Value Village, or even use 'freecycle' to put it up for grabs to someone else who might want it.
   

Good luck!!