And here it is! A guest post courtesy of Jennifer Gresham, the fantastic blogger over at Everyday Bright. I hope you enjoy it!
I used to run marathons, which meant I was buying a new pair of running shoes every year or so. The problem was I didn’t throw the old ones away, resulting in an overflowing (and rather smelly) closet. One day my husband asked me why I wasn’t getting rid of them. I said, “Well, I might need them. They’d be great for activities like white water rafting!”
If you’re laughing really hard right now, then you and my husband had the same reaction. I’ve been white water rafting exactly two times in my 38 years. Hardly a case for keeping a closet full of shoes. Then again, our brains evolved the prefrontal cortex exactly for this purpose: to contemplate the future and plan for it. It’s the same reason we overpack for vacations (it might be cold! or hot!) and clutter our offices with papers and forms (in case the hard drive crashes).
So if you’ve been listening to Seth Godin talk about how to quiet the Lizard Brain, I’m going to talk to you about how to outsmart the Mammalian Brain.
The next time you want to hang on to something just in case, ask yourself these questions:
How likely is the event?
Like white water rafting, many of us save things for event that are extremely unlikely. Be honest with yourself. If you haven’t had cause to use the item in over a year, it’s probably time to let it go. Note that this can be especially hard with items you used to use a lot. My husband and I have been hauling around boxes of chemistry textbooks, because we used to be teachers and back then, they were essential references. Even though neither of us intends to return to teaching, we really struggled to give them up.
How bad could it be really?
Ask yourself what the consequences would be if you did need the item again, and didn’t have it. Even if you gave away your last raincoat, a pretty practical item, the worst is that…you’d get wet! When we really stop to examine the worst case scenario, we often find it isn’t nearly as bad as our lizard brains have been hinting all along.
How rare is the item?
This comes up when packing for vacations all the time, but it’s also true when you take a look at the stuff in your home. For example, every house on the block has a tool box. Why does everyone in the neighborhood need their own hammer? We happen to be living on an Air Force base, where they have a self-help shack full of lawn mowers, lightbulbs, and other handy items. But there’s nothing preventing you from starting your own “communal resources” shed. You might even gain some new friends in the process! For items that really aren’t suitable to sharing, remember that most things can be purchased or even rented if absolutely necessary.
Is it really about money?
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits recently wrote a post for people who were worried that decluttering might be wasteful. If you spent money on something, it’s okay to throw or give it away. Leo argues the real waste is to keep something simply because it cost you money in the past. But contingency keeping goes a step further. It says, I don’t want to have to pay for this again.
To combat this, I like to think about storage costs. Because it’s hard to put a monetary value on the psychic cost of storing things you might (or might not) need, ask yourself how much it would cost to have someone else store it for you? Would you be willing to pay someone even $5 a day to store your camping gear that you haven’t used in years? No? Then you shouldn’t keep it either. The cost of storage turns out to be higher than the cost of buying it again should you need it.
I’m not saying it’s easy. I still struggle to overcome my planning tendencies. But by asking yourself the questions above, I think you’ll find a whole new list of items that aren’t as necessary as you thought they were.
Jennifer Gresham is the author of the blog Everyday Bright, where she writes insightful and uplifting articles on overcoming obstacles to personal fulfillment. She is also a PhD biochemist and poet.
6 Comments
I'm a writer, minimalist, and health dork with three goals in mind: to teach you how to lose weight, move more, and be happier by living a simple, natural life. It works. Like what you read here? Get 3NL delivered straight to your inbox!
I’ve been living by “just in time” as opposed to “just in case.” The way we live in this country today, there is no reason to hoard things that we can easily run out to obtain “just in time” when we need them. It’s drastically cut down on my own personal inventory at home and made my house a calmer place to be.
Great post!
Thanks for reading and commenting, Brianne! I’m not the one who wrote it, but hopefully Jen won’t mind me sending gratitude until she gets here.
That’s an interesting perspective! Luck has it that I’m a good fifteen to twenty minutes away from most stores, so living “just in time” – though it sounds much nicer! – wouldn’t be the easiest thing on my gas budget.
Still, I like Jen’s idea: why not come together as a community and share items? You wouldn’t need to load up the car and grab something just in time if the neighborhood shed already had what you needed.
If only we actually knew our neighbors!
Matt,
Even though you live 15-20 minutes away from the store, I’m willing to guess you go to the grocery store once a week. So unless the item is for an emergency, you could live “just nearly in time” just fine I suspect.
I agree that sharing is a nicer concept, although my husband looked at me like I was an alien when I told him what I had suggested in my post. It’s definitely pretty far from normal. Our culture, at least in the U.S., is built around convenience. For example, we lived in Ohio and nearly everyone on the street had a snow blower to clear their driveways, even though each person only used it for a few hours each year. I don’t know if the idea of sharing the item ever occurred to them, but I suspect many would have argued they didn’t want to wait for someone else to finish their driveway.
there’s also another reason why we hang on to our old items- it has sentimental value for us. some of us keep clothes that no longer fit because we keep hoping that we will eventually shed those pounds & get back in them. For others its about reinforcing the belief that they have choices in life, which is why they hoard everything. My theory is that how we handle/manage/store our things has a deeper psychological meaning. Sometimes its about how a certain piece of clothing made us feel – young/ thin/ loved/centre of attention, so i think that before we look at our closets , we should do some emotional spring cleaning first. after that letting go of things we no longer use will not be so difficult.
Hi, sadya! I read your guest post over at Everyday Bright and loved it. I’ve been working on my own “to-be” list ever since. Thanks for swinging by here!
The emotional aspect of decluttering is always the most interesting one. Keepsakes, as memorable as they might be, tend to stick around longest, as it’s always so difficult to dump something that invokes fond memories. My solution? Snap a photo of each keepsake before you dump them. The photo, at the end of the day, will invoke that same emotional response, and can help overcome any lingering attachments that make decluttering – both literal and emotional – so hard.
Thanks again!
Yes, I thought your idea of taking pictures of keepsakes was brilliant. Where I worked, it was common to have all the employees sign the mat around a picture as a going away gift. But the picture was not a work of art, but usually just a photo of the building or something. So I transcribed all the comments (the meaningful part) into a Word document and then threw the whole, large picture away. Problem solved!
Sadya, I think you may be tapping into something slightly different than keepsakes. I know I kept my “fat clothes” for a long time after I lost weight because I really didn’t believe I could stick with my new eating plan. In point of fact, at the beginning of this summer, my weight started creeping up again. I finally threw the clothes away to ensure I couldn’t fit in them again. I just promised myself I wasn’t going back to that weight. Harder to do when the clothes are smaller though, isn’t it? Emotional decluttering involves some tricky maneuvers–will have to think on that some more!