Tag: clutter

How a Bowl Taught Me the Truth About Minimalism

I work a lot. I not only work on this website, I am writing a book. I also work full-time at a factory job.

The factory job alone takes up 40-60 hours a week.

So after working a 10-hour shift in the heat and the dirt, I am bone tired. The last thing I want to do is fix a big meal or wash a bunch of dishes.

I usually have a meal waiting in my crock pot or leftovers in the fridge for when I get home. I toss it into a bowl, heat it up if it’s cold, and chow down because I’m starving.

Since I do dishes right before I go to bed, I leave them out to air-dry.

The next day, those are the dishes I use for my after-work meal.

I’ve had this routine for over a year now. I don’t even think about it. I grab my coffee cup in the morning and my bowl in the evening.

One cup, one bowl, and two spoons.

Those are all of the dishes I have used during the week for over a year.

While I cook a big meal on weekends, all I add to that list is a single plate and perhaps a fork and a knife, depending upon the meal.

Today I realized that, if I wanted to, I could eliminate most of the dishware in my house because of that routine.

If I had company (which I rarely do), I could always use disposable plates, bowls, and even silverware.

And yet what have I done? I’ve actually increased the amount of dishware that I own.

Minimalism is the art of eliminating the excess to make room for the important. And yet I’ve been increasing the excess while focusing on stuff that doesn’t matter.

Because it doesn’t matter if I have a matching set of dishes for when company comes. Even if they come, I still have options. It doesn’t matter if I have a glass or a cup for every occasion, especially since I grab the same cup and same bowl every day regardless.

What matters is that I have as little physical complications in my life as possible, so that I can focus on what is important to me.

And what is important to me at the moment is enjoying my life while building up my savings so that I will be ready for the Next Step.

What Do You Actually Use?

Have you ever looked at the things you actually use in your life? Do you use the same plate, the same bowl, the same cup?

Why do you have others if those are the ones you always grab?

What about gadgets? Do you have appliances that you never use that you’re still holding onto?

If so, maybe it’s time to let them go.

My bowl has taught me a valuable lesson today. My bowl has taught me that I don’t need the things I thought I needed. All I need are the things I use; the rest is just clutter.

I intend to spend the weekend clearing out some of this stuff I’ve accumulated. If I don’t use it, I don’t need it.

What about you? Is there anything in your life that you never use? Please share your stories in the comments below.

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I’ve written a lot of books sharing my odd view of life in hopes of helping others. My most notorious book is titled The Shoestring Girl: How I Live on Practically Nothing and You Can Too, but The Minimalist Cleaning Method is pretty popular as well. You can find them at the following places:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Apple iBooks
Smashwords (non-DRM)

Thank you for your support!

How I Spent My Vacation

Last week I took the first paid vacation at a public job in almost two decades.

“What do you plan to do?” Curious friends wanted to know.

“Absolutely nothing,” I grinned.

I lied to everyone prior to taking those days off. I had something special planned to mark the start of my 49th year of life. While one day had been scheduled to completely rest, the remainder of the days would be filled to the brim.

I was going to sit down, think long and hard about my life, and make some adjustments to my course.

It was time to get serious. I’d proven to myself that I could actually make money in the stock market; I had seen firsthand that those who claim that only the “experts” could make money in the stock market were wrong. With a steady hand and a serene calm, I could use the lessons gained from a lifetime of poverty to grow my wealth to the point where I would never have to worry about working a public job ever again.

If I wanted to become truly free, however, I needed to make some changes. I needed to simplify my daily existence, review my annual and long-term goals, and organize my life accordingly.

It seemed delightfully appropriate to make these adjustments while on a paid vacation from public employment. I would get paid while I plotted my escape.

To prepare I set my normal reading aside to review the stack of productivity books I’ve collected over the years. I’m working more hours than ever at my public job so I need to maximize my productivity at home. This will become even more urgent should I decide to take a full-time job in the future. My book royalties are the key to my freedom; if I could figure out a way to grow my royalties, I’ll have more money available to invest towards my goal. Since it is the primary income source I possess that isn’t connected to how many hours I work in a day, I wanted to free up some more time to devote to it.

My question was this: What can I do right now that will simplify my daily life while minimizing expense and upkeep?

The answer: I needed to run my personal life more like a business.

I had become rather disorganized in my recordkeeping. As I explored minimalism, I’d stopped using files to organize my records, opting instead for a system of envelopes, folders, and notebooks that had grown exponentially more complicated as I began to track my research, investments, writing, and daily tasks. I not only had to carry a heavy daily planner to work, I used an even heavier journal to chronicle my thoughts, and I had to dig through a stack of notebooks over a foot tall in order to locate the proper one to record stock market purchases, observations, and other important information. I would spend hours pasting articles collected from the Internet into these notebooks, indexing them in yet another notebook just to keep track. Financial records were spread between a folder dedicated to my writing business, a folder and a notebook for my stock market investments, and my daily planner for personal stuff.

I could free up an immense amount of time and potentially a lot of money if I could devise one single, simple way to keep track of everything.

As my vacation approached I began to get nervous. Nothing seemed to click in any of the books that I was reading. The Internet was filled with planners and organization systems but I didn’t want to spend a fortune; I’d already spent a small fortune on my daily planners these past two years and they weren’t working. I had no desire to throw even more money away.

Two evenings before my vacation, inspiration hit as I was counting the tills and doing the closing paperwork at my public job. My trainer took that evening to show me their filing system. It brought back memories long forgotten of how, as a new single mother, I had invested a portion of my very first welfare check into a file cabinet in order to keep track of my records as I strove to improve my circumstances.

Over the next decade, that file cabinet morphed into a storage center for everything that had been important in my life.

Pictures of the kids? Filed in folders sorted by year. Tax records? Same. Inspiration had its own set of folders, sorted by my dreams. I even kept a series of folders to store my old journals and DayRunner pages. I could locate anything in moments by thumbing through my precious file cabinet, yet I had left that system behind due to years of teasing.

I am no longer the young woman who fell prey to social pressure all of those years ago. That kid has transitioned into an old crone who has learned the hard way that the advice of the people around her, however well-intentioned, is not always the best.

The first day of my vacation, I bummed a ride to Wal-Mart for supplies. Since I live in a flood zone I opted for plastic file totes. They will protect my files somewhat in the event of a flood and be easy to grab should I have to evacuate. I added some file folders to the cart, headed home, and got to work.

I spent the next three days reviewing every single piece of paper I had scattered throughout my home. I tossed the irrelevant stuff and filed the rest. To save time I simply tossed entire notebooks into file folders; as the days move on I’ll break those notebooks down to recycle the blank pages for notes and journaling paper.

I could feel the tension leaving my body as I filed things away. I hadn’t even realized that my old organizational method was causing me stress until I felt it begin to lift.

By the end of my vacation I had not only organized my files, I had devised a planning method that not only eliminates the need to carry around an expensive (and bulky) daily planner, it eliminated the need to keep a journaling notebook as well. I returned to work refreshed, recharged, and ready to handle the challenges of my 49th year of life.

It felt good.

How do you plan to spend your vacation? Please share your stories in the comments below.