Lately I’ve been spending time getting rid of things that I don’t use or need. Books, toys, electronics, tools, clothing, pictures, gadgets, trinkets.
My theory is that the things that you own that you’re not using or don’t need aren’t just a waste of money and space: they’re draining you of your energy. Every time you walk past that cookbook that you never opened, or that model airplane kit that you meant to assemble, or the oscilloscope that you haven’t turned on in a year, a little neural pattern fires that says “Someday I should..” or “I always meant to…” or “God, I really ought to take care of that.”
Each of these tiny feelings of obligation or regret is almost imperceptible on its own, but their accumulation throughout the day is a burden that you may not even know you’re bearing until it’s gone.
I’m a pack-rat by nature. I love to own things that I think are cool or interesting. So I’m naturally collecting all kinds of junk that is neat at first but that I don’t truly need. And it’s hard to get rid of these things. The crappy video eyeglasses that plug into an iPod, the mountain bike headlamp with an enormous battery that fits into your water-bottle holder, a couple of old monitors, a broken GPS, a pile of bad books.
There’s a saying among writers about the process of copy-editing: murder your darlings. You may have crafted a beautiful phrase or metaphor in this paragraph, but if it’s not serving the whole piece, it’s got to come out. You have to murder your darlings.
So as Stephanie and I go around the house spring-cleaning, we’ll hold up this or that item, and ask “murder?” Sometimes you need to use a vicious word to make a hard decision.
It’s hard to do, but the result is a house that gives you room for the things that really matter.
Posted on 18 May 2009
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I 100% agree with this. We just got rid of most of our stuff, stored almost all of the rest of it and began traveling the world with just backpacks. Giving up on all of the potential projects I had filling up my office was so liberating. Now I’m actually hacking on real, vaguely useful things rather than pottering around feeling guilty.
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Wow, Ian, you’re really living the dream! I like what you say about dropping all your projects. The state of “businesslessness.” We’re hoping to do that too some day. Looking forward to your updates!
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By coincidence I am moving next week so am in the process of de-stuff-ifying right as we speak. I wish I could bring myself to murder my books, though. That’s the hardest one for me (and not coincidentally my biggest source of stuff by volume.)
(captcha: abandons melodrama)
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Yes, moving too. And ejecting things as we can. Turns out we still have a lot of stuff even though we’ve simplified.
I’ve got this theory about the not allowing the background of your environment becoming too noisy. Those things pile up and make it hard to focus on what’s actually important.
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I love getting rid of my stuff. On the whole, the less stuff that I have the happier that I am. (Looking at our spare bedroom this afternoon, I can see I have a good weekend of getting rid of stuff ahead of me.) I think it’s because I moved out of my parents’ house onto the Appalachian Trail, where I couldn’t own anything that I wasn’t willing to carry twenty miles each day. to this day I have to remind myself, when acquiring something new, that it’s not necessarily for me to be able to haul it on my back.
There’s a point where your stuff owns you. For me that point comes a lot earlier than for most people, I suspect. But everybody should be cognizant of what that point is for them.
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to use an over-used fight club quote: “The things you own end up owning you”.
I’ve been trying to do what you suggest for a while now. I’m finding it hard, but what I’m finding even harder is to convince the people around me to agree to it. And then there’s the family members that think you need “help” and get you more junk…
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I read a nice tip somewhere for things that you would like to keep for sentimental reasons but aren’t *that* bothered about: take a digi photo of the item and keep that instead.
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Nice post… sometimes I think about that. Maybe its just our attachment do useless stuff which can help others.
Reminds me to do the same task in that week. Clean and save space with just useful stuff. -
‘The things I do possess sometimes they own me to’ (Phoenix)
Packrat as well, but I’m not convinced I should be throwing away stuff I haven’t touched for a year. My way of being forced to deal with it is painful – 1/3rd of my life is in boxes at my grandma’s place from when I moved to bcn and I can’t get to it since the house is sealed because of a family legal fallout. When I think of the old photos and love letters locked up in that house to be released at some point, at which time I will have about two days to get back there and salvage what’s rightfully mine…
Point being, I would never throw out old photos and love letters just because I didn’t look at them for a year…
‘Ah, love letter boxes. All in favor say I will blindly’
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This is a great tip– really reasonates. Thanks.
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Very eloquently put, and you raise a good point about the subconscious taking stock in the feeling-guilty aspect with regard to never getting to the stuff that was once meant to be a project.
We just recently moved and all the books that sat on my shelves that I always “meant to read”, or that I can acquire in digital format are what I’m now selling. Clothing that doesn’t fit us or items that no longer serve a useful purpose are what we’re now giving away to local charitable organizations. It goes without saying that this last part is a feel-good way of getting rid of your unused stuff. I know that people whom are less fortunate can make use of it, and while minor – it serves as a tax deduction, so it’s a win-win (I just found out about the deduction recently, but we’ve been giving stuff away for years).
Nice post, thanks!
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Agree a lot !
But instead of throwing things away you can give them !
Does not apply to useless electronic gadgets that would just tak dust on someone else’s shelf but a nice idea for books : -
Btw, GTDers call this as getting rid of “stuff” and clarifying what each thing means to you.
Check out a sample trigger list at http://www.bnet.com/2403-13074_23-52958.html to understand what I’m talking about
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I attacked this problem of excess “stuff” a couple of years ago, with great success. I wrote about it at the time:
http://kylecordes.com/2006/11/18/world-is-my-warehouse/
More recently, I purchased a document-feed scanner, and am rapidly dispensing with multiple filing cabinets worth of paper “stuff”.
Looking back, getting rid of excess unused stuff has been a great success, I’ve never missed any of it.
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My rule is: if you look at something and question yourself “should i keep or throw it?” then there is a great chance that you don’t need it. Just throw it away.
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As I always say: Everything that you didn’t use for one year is not worth keeping any longer.
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Or maybe they enrich you. How do you know without rigorous scientific experimenting?
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How are you getting rid of your stuff? Ebay, craigslist, garbage can? I’m de-cluttering too, and started squaresandwich.com to make selling on craigslist less of a hassle. On squaresandwich.com you can post your item as an auction (no fees), then just link to it on craigslist and direct people to bid if interested. This way, you don’t have to juggle emails and haggle over prices. You also don’t have to guess which craigslist replies are spam phising for your email address, just delete any emails without specific questions about your item.
If you have lots of items to sell, you can list them all on squaresandwich.com and link to your auctions page or your profile in the garage/yard sale section of craigslist.
Hope you find it useful!
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http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html may also be of interest. Delves a little more into what and why.
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It boils down to one simple concept: living within your means. If you are a billionaire, have four fully furnished homes, a couple of yachts and your own Jet is acceptable – your stuff isn’t bolting you down (although there are plenty of arguments against my example, I hope you can see my point in giving it).
At the moment, my means are few and my needs are few – I have a large book collection, some sentimental rock/mineral collections, and my DIY stuff – all of it can fit within my car.
Nomadic living is a great rule of thumb: which of these items would I end up taking with me if I had leave in five hours for good for another country?
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That Paul Graham article is fabulous. I love the comparison to food.
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Pingback from Murder your darlings « Saqib Awan on 9 July 2009 at 8:49 am
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I love this article! if only we can tag all those things with RFID and make it visually searchable althroughout the house, you can just hide it, so if you need it just search it, that would be really cool!
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Really nice posts. I will be checking back here regularly.
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