The Minimalist Way Read online

  I always knew I wanted to continue this tradition. I wanted my own kids to feel the same sense of wonder I felt every year as we pulled box after box down from our attic and opened them up to rediscover the treasures inside.

  When I began craving a simpler life, I wondered if only some festive decorations would be enough. Would the holidays feel less special? Would my kids miss out?

  Now that I’m a decade into my own family holiday traditions, I can tell you that it was enough. It is enough. When our kids were young, they’d invite anyone they possibly could into our home to see our glittery haunted house and spooky spiders—the sparkle in their eyes matching the sparkle of our decorations. I learned that we don’t need bin after bin of decorations to really soak in the magic of a holiday. More isn’t always better; sometimes it’s just more.

  If you’re just starting a collection of holiday or seasonal decorations, be selective about the decorations you choose, and buy much less than your instinct might tell you to. If you only bring in pieces you love, you’ll build a small collection that will truly delight you as you pull it out year after year.

  If, on the other hand, you have a large collection taking up space in your home, pare it down each time the special occasion arises. Take every item out of storage, hold each one in your hands, and—following the same approach we took with your wardrobe—keep only your best-condition, most-loved pieces.

  Storage Areas

  Storage areas, like the basement, attic, or hallway closet, are prime places for you to practice questioning your perception of what you need. If an item is squirreled away, buried under three boxes two layers deep in a dusty corner of your basement, can you really need it? Challenge yourself to store as little as possible.

  BEFORE YOU STORE

  It can be way too easy to shove something in a closet, telling yourself you’ll deal with it later. But this, we all know, is how clutter happens. Instead, think it through before you stash it.

  •Ask yourself: Would I rather store this item indefinitely—or re-buy or borrow it if the need were to arise down the road?

  •Make sure everything you do choose to store is easily accessible and clearly labeled.

  •For closets and cabinets, corral loose items into a basket or small bin for organization and easy access.

  •As a general rule, keep one of everything—and sometimes one spare. No more. (No, you don’t need four extra phone chargers!)

  •Twice a year, go through each storage area and make sure you still want to keep the items you’re storing. (The more you let things build up, the more you’ll put off doing this, so be diligent about assessing twice a year.)

  Mail and Paperwork

  Paper clutter has a disproportionate impact on our mental loads. Because it doesn’t take up a lot of space, it’s easy to let it collect—a pile here and a pile there. But many of those papers require some sort of action on our part, which makes clearing paper clutter a lot more daunting than the task of clearing other kinds of clutter. Any time a pile of paper catches your eye, you may think, What bill payments have I missed? How overdue is that permission slip for my child? Did I miss the deadline to sign up for classes? Is it too late to RSVP to that wedding?

  Take steps today to reduce the paper clutter that comes into your home, and you’ll lessen this pain point and free up more space inside your head.

  1. ASSESS AND UNSUBSCRIBE

  The first step is assessing what paper really needs to come into your home and filtering out anything that doesn’t. For one week, collect all the catalogs, coupons, and fliers that come in the mail. Make a pile of anything you don’t want to receive—from the coupon booklet you know you’ll never get around to using to the catalog from that store you only shopped at once. Most commercial mailers have a phone number or website listed on them. Spend half an hour unsubscribing online or calling to have your name removed from their list.

  I find that getting myself off these lists has double benefit: I have less paper to deal with in my home, and I’m less tempted to shop because I’m not regularly flipping through catalogs or getting coupon codes delivered to my mailbox. Plus, it’s less wasteful.

  Do this twice a year to stay on top of your subscriptions.

  2. BEFORE YOU SORT, RECYCLE

  After you’ve unsubscribed from anything you can, you’ll probably still be left with some mail you don’t want, so I suggest recycling it before you even step inside your home. If it never passes the front door, it can never pile up.

  3. MAKE A SIMPLE SYSTEM

  It doesn’t matter how you choose to sort the paper once it’s inside your home as much as it matters that you do. Sorting mail and paper the moment it comes into the home is critical to preventing paper clutter and the emotional weight that comes with it. I suggest immediately dividing any incoming paper into three categories: “paper to file,” “action required,” and “unopened mail.”

  In our home, I noticed that paper tends to collect in two places—our office and our kitchen—so I created a place in each room for the three categories. My husband and I take our mail to the office and immediately separate it into the appropriate categories, and our kids follow the same method in the kitchen with any papers they bring home from school, church, sports, or activities.

  4. TEACH THE SYSTEM TO YOUR FAMILY

  As a parent, I find it especially helpful for my children to know where to put papers that need my attention. Otherwise my kids end up vigorously waving their important papers in my face … or letting them slide into the hidden corners of their backpacks, never to be seen again. If you keep your processing system simple, anyone in your household can sort their paperwork appropriately, preventing it from lingering and becoming clutter—and an unnecessary point of stress—in your home.

  Common Clutter-Clearing Stumbling Blocks

  Even when armed with strategies for staying on top of clutter, the what-ifs can often cause us to stall out. What if I regret getting rid of this? What if I need it someday? What if I can’t get my family on board? What if my father-in-law comes over and notices we never hung the piece of taxidermy he gave us? While there are no easy answers, I hope this section helps you shift your perspective and ultimately create a home that’s more in line with your values and vision.

  1. WHAT IF I NEED IT SOMEDAY?

  It’s not easy—and for some people, it can even be painful—to get rid of something that feels like it’s still useful. I find it helpful to revise the question and ask myself this instead:

  “Would I rather store this item for the next year—or would I rather re-buy, borrow, or rent one if I really need it down the road?”

  Almost always, the answer for me is the latter. Storing something I don’t regularly use has a heavier mental and emotional cost for me than the potential expense of buying it again—or the simple effort of borrowing it from a friend. For instance, after my kids left the baby years, I was tempted to keep our portable crib for when my sister came into town with her baby and stayed overnight. Instead, I decided to give it away and simply borrow one from a friend when my sister visited. In the years since then, we’ve only needed a playpen twice, and it was no trouble to borrow. I’m so glad I didn’t store this bulky item for years, when it ended up being such an easy problem to work around.

  If you weigh the real cost of storing your things and are still unsure about some items, box them up and place them out of sight for a predetermined amount of time, such as six months. Set a calendar reminder so the box doesn’t end up indefinitely in the dark recesses of your basement. Once your time frame is up, if you haven’t needed anything in the box, send it on its way. (Bonus points if you don’t even open it up!)

  You can use a similar strategy for clothing. After you’ve gone through each piece and separated out any pieces you don’t love, fit, or you actually wear, you may be left with a pile of clothes you can’t decide about. Hang those items up, but turn their hangers the opposite way from all the other hangers in your closet. Once yo
u wear the piece, you can turn its hanger around to match the rest. But if you haven’t worn it after a predetermined amount of time (I suggest two months), and the hanger is still backward, commit to passing it on.

  2. WHAT IF THIS SPECIAL ITEM GETS DAMAGED OR RUINED FROM USE?

  I don’t believe our most treasured items are meant to collect dust in a box or a cupboard. What’s the point of keeping a significant piece if you tuck it away and then forget it exists? If your grandmother gave you an antique serving dish, wouldn’t you rather run your fingers across it and think of her each time you pull it out for a meal?

  The difficult truth is that a gifted piece that’s meaningful to you will probably not mean as much to your children or grandchildren, because they won’t have the same memories of the person who gave it to you. My advice: Use those sentimental heirlooms now, while you can, knowing that even if they break, at least you used them for their intended purpose and enjoyed their value while you could. The same goes for expensive items. What’s the point of buying something nice if you never use it?

  If you need permission, consider this your permission to find a new home for an heirloom you don’t or can’t use—like a vase that doesn’t go with your home décor. Storing it away indefinitely isn’t better than passing it on to someone (maybe even another family member) who will actually use, enjoy, and appreciate it.

  3. BUT HOW DO I LET GO OF SOMETHING SENTIMENTAL WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY?

  On your minimalism journey, there will be no time when coming back to your values—your why—will be as essential as when you’re considering sentimental items. Returning to the vision you have for your life and your home will make these difficult decisions easier, because you can ask yourself if each item contributes to your vision, or detracts from it.

  When I’m decluttering sentimental objects, I like to remember that getting rid of an object doesn’t mean I’m getting rid of the memory or the feeling. Your positive memories are yours for as long as your mind will keep them! And you can pull them up anytime you wish—you don’t need the item for that. (Practical tip: Take a photo of the object before passing it on to help that memory stick.)

  Barbara Kinsey, a member of my online community, shared with me her beautiful perspective on this stumbling block:

  “I want to look forward instead of backward, to see what’s in front of me and to not believe that everything good has already happened to me. Sometimes my sentimental items feel like walls that keep me from seeing what is possible.”

  4. WHAT IF MY SPOUSE OR PARTNER ISN’T ON BOARD?

  One of life’s biggest lessons is that we can’t control others; we can only control ourselves. It’s incredibly tempting to believe that if that one person—your friend, your roommate, your spouse—would just change that one thing, everything would be better. I fall into this trap as much as anyone else.

  This principle applies as you adopt a minimalist lifestyle. You can’t make the people around you take the same path. The good news, however, is that regardless of the way your housemates, spouse, or children want to live, you still get to experience the emotional freedom that comes with minimalism. You don’t have to feel burdened by another person’s reluctance to join in; you can choose to let go of your expectations and to forge ahead on your own path.

  As you begin, focus as little as possible on others’ belongings—or their unwillingness to begin a decluttering journey. Instead, concentrate your energy on reducing your own physical, mental, and emotional clutter—and really live the freedom and joy that come with owning less. At the very least you can lead by example. You never know … your loved one may be inspired by the lighter, freer you and decide to join in. But waiting for that day will only distract you from your happiness, so keep your eyes—as best you can—on your own lane.

  Your Home Is an Expression of Who You Are

  It’s so easy to get mired in the details—the exact system you want to use for mail, the precise number of kitchen utensils you want to keep, the quality of each piece inside your closet. But from what I’ve seen, it’s when people get overly bogged down by the details that they lose motivation, backslide, or even give up on minimalism altogether.

  The details must be balanced out by your guiding values and your vision. Keep coming back to how you want to feel inside your home—and what your home says about who you are.

  After all, our homes are about so much more than the stuff they contain. Our homes are the most visual representation of what we want our lives to be. Whether you want a life of adventure and playfulness, or tradition and security, your home is your staging ground. If it embodies what matters to you, you’ll build a life that matches it. That’s the power of home.

  4

  workspace and career

  Janine Bui, from Santa Clara, California, had always been a dreamer. She went to graduate school for biochemistry, planning to spend her career doing rare disease research and making an impact on people’s lives. But after she finished school in 2009, the reality of the job market set in and she realized it would be a long time before she could realistically expect to get an industry job doing the research she wanted to do.

  The job she settled for was a far cry from her longtime dream, but slowly, she followed her interests and leveraged her strengths within her role, and before long, she discovered that it was the problem-solving—not the particular problem—that really lit her up.

  “I was always talking to colleagues about the challenges in their work and trying to come up with out-of-the-box solutions for them. This eventually led to me proposing, setting up, and running a new facility in our department. I basically just created the thing I was interested in and convinced my boss it was worthwhile.”

  Janine found contentment in her own curiosity, instead of clinging to the idea that her happiness depended on her ability to achieve her original vision. While at first glance it may not seem like Janine’s career path has a lot to do with minimalism, in fact, it has everything to do with minimalism. Despite less-than-ideal circumstances, she created for herself a career based on her deeply held values: an innate curiosity and a passion for seeing the problems around her and finding solutions for them.

  Any of us can apply this same intentionality to our work lives. Our situations may be vastly different, but we can all make small but significant moves to better align our work with our values.

  Reflection

  Look back at the value tree you made in chapter 2, focusing on your top three values for your “career” life domain. Write them here, and use them as a guide as you implement the strategies in this chapter.

  1. –––––––––––—

  2. –––––––––––—

  3. –––––––––––—

  Take a moment to write in a journal or reflect on the following questions before moving on: How do you want to feel at work? Are you doing work you feel called to do? What’s your vision for your career? What’s keeping you from feeling the way you want to, doing meaningful work, and creating the career you envision?

  Solutions for a Minimalist Workspace

  Think of the strategies in this chapter as long-term solutions. They require effort and intentionality now, but spare us so much time and angst down the road—leaving us with more bandwidth to devote to the things that matter. In our careers in particular, if we can set up our systems to run smoothly and efficiently, we can create more space—physical, digital, and mental—for the work we’re meant to do.

  Digital Organization

  “My brain is like an internet browser: nineteen tabs are open, seven of them are frozen, and I have no idea where the music is coming from.”

  Have you seen a meme like this floating around the internet? To me, it expresses what so many of us are experiencing: We’re stumbling under the weight of our mental loads. And when we have too many “tabs” open at once, we’re less able to focus, prioritize, and bring our best selves to our work. This meme may have been intended as an
analogy, but it also works in a literal sense. First things first, we’re going to shut down some of those tabs.

  “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”—JAMES CLEAR

  CLEAR DIGITAL CLUTTER

  •Close half of your tabs! Do this regularly throughout your day, or create a personal limit for yourself, such as never having more than four tabs open at once. If you’re saving webpages to read later, try a new method. You could pin articles or blog posts you want to read to Pinterest, or you could use a web app (for example, an app called Pocket) to save content and read it later. You could even go as basic as creating a Word or Google document where you keep a running list of links you plan to return to later. (Your internet browser’s bookmarking feature can work, too, but I find that unless you’re deleting old bookmarks regularly, the list eventually becomes unwieldy and hard to navigate.) However you do it, the point is to practice a principle my mom taught my siblings and me every time she grabbed a toy we were fighting over and set it high out of our reach, saying in a singsong voice, “Out of sight, out of mind!” For almost everyone I’ve talked to, less digital clutter means a clearer mind.

  •Regularly clear the desktop on your computer, keeping only your most used files or folders on it. Save other files under appropriate folders and subfolders. Be sure to label each document clearly so you can easily search for it.

  •Scan through your folders and send to the trash any documents, images, and screenshots you no longer need. I try to spend a few minutes doing this monthly.

  •Whether on your phone or your computer, open your photo library and select at least a dozen images to delete. Do this weekly to avoid photo clutter. (It’s a great thing to do when you’re standing in line somewhere!)

  •Within your photo library, create albums for images you need quick access to or would like to reference later. Many of us take screenshots of information, but once those images are surrounded by photos of our kids or our food or our cats, they’re almost impossible to find when we need them. Albums are an easy solution.