A Thousand Tiny Anchors

*I wrote this over a week ago, and was about to post it when I realized that our internet had been prematurely canceled.  Read this pretending that we haven't already moved, and I promise I'll post house pictures soon.  And yes, this blog will probably have a new theme/layout every time you visit.  What?


We are not pack-rats.  Moving every single year, while a huge pain, has also given us a yearly opportunity to get rid of stuff we no longer need or want.  That we aren't overly sentimental, or at least that we don't tend to overvalue objects in the name of sentimentality, makes the process much easier.

This move is no exception - we're being brutal.  But there's something else different this time, too.  The spirit of the purge, I suppose.  With every move before, the motivation to toss something is that it's one less thing to pack and unpack.  There was nothing particularly satisfying about putting something in the Goodwill box instead of the Keep box.  This time, though, every item purged feels like shedding skin, it feels like I'm breathing cleaner air, opening a window, like I've been carrying that Thing on my back for five years and now it's gone.  I feel unburdened.    

There are a few reasons I think I'm wanting to simplify right now - it started with the fact that our new house, while about the same in actual footprint, has much less storage space than our current home.  Small closets, no garage.  I started tossing things out right after Christmas, just knowing that it needed to happen.  I packed up kitchen boxes (don't really need a rice cooker on a Paleo diet, right?), went through junk drawers, did a first round (of many) of my wardrobe.  

Then something magical happened!  I realized I was enjoying it.  The house was easier to keep clean.  It was easier to find something to wear, because anything I grab will be something I really like (something I really like now, not something I really liked last year).  I had enough room in drawers to actually organize them.  I appreciated the things I kept that much more.  

So it started out in pure practicality, grew into appreciation and enjoyment, and is swiftly moving its way to philosophy.  I'm sure you've seen news segments on radical 100-possession minimalists - don't worry, I'm not aiming to be one of those.  But those radical minimalists live by a code that really resonates with me right now.  

I mean - why do we have fifty pens?  We are two and a half people.  We will never need fifty pens.  What’s worse is that we dig through a cup full of pens looking for a good one.  Not only do we have fifty pens, we have forty-five crap pens and five good ones.  Let’s just keep the five good ones!  Ladies (and long-haired gentlemen) will understand this phenomenon - you buy a pack of hair ties, and they all disappear in a week, but you keep track of that last one for months.  I think we should feel about all of our possessions the way we feel about that one last hair tie: worth hanging onto because we would be lost without it. 

The purging part is great, but without taking on a minimalistic way of living, I'm just going to fill our new house with as much crap as I just got rid of.  That is the hard part.  I know that for some people it's the letting go that's hard, but for me it will be the not wanting more.  Advertising is effective, man!  I read a while back that the extreme possessiveness that toddlers display is partly innate as a means of survival, which makes perfect sense.  Duh!  If there's limited food and resources, the most possessive kid wins.  It seems to follow that that drive to want moremoremore carries into adulthood, and is further fueled by a cultural standard of consumerism and status symbols.  The American Dream, anyone?

It’s a tune I’m sure you’ve heard a thousand times before, and I’ve rolled my eyes at people who say exactly what I’m about to - I’m just really, really tired of it.  The ads, the pressure to buy more, to have more, wanting things that are just out of your reach.  It keeps you from contentedness because you’re always wanting.  Your perception of what’s important gets skewed.  Wants and needs get muddled; it’s so easy to be convinced that you need or deserve some object that will eventually become junk.  That’s some unhappy shit, as Switters would say.  I say, there’s another way to be.

I can’t tell you how freeing it is to walk through Target and only buy what you went there for, without an internal struggle of whether or not to buy an on-sale tank top (can you have too many tank tops?  YES).  It isn’t just freeing, it’s actually kind of a feeling of power, to transcend and rise above the influence (wait, isn’t that an anti-drug commercial?).  Your tricks won’t work with me, Evil Ad-Man!  Shed a tear as I leave your sale untouched!    

I’m no expert at this, by any means.  I have far more than 100 possessions, and I definitely own much more than I truly need.  What I’m hoping for is the happy medium, where I’m always honest about what I need, where I regularly let go of what’s no longer useful, and where I keep new purchases to the barest minimum.  

If I may then be so bold as to share the tidbits I’ve been picking up, with you understanding that I’m no authority, and that even the title of this post was hoisted from Miss Minimalist:

>>Not wanting something is as good as having it.  Simple as that.  

>>Treat yourself with something non-tangible.  We work hard, and I think we deserve to reap the benefits of that.  But it doesn't need to be a new pair of shoes, or a new TV, or whatever shiny silver thing Apple just released.  Get a massage, a pedicure, eat at a fancy restaurant (note: the reward is the special outing, not the food; don’t reward yourself with food), or see a movie instead.

>>Make a wish list.  Okay, this might not work for everyone, but it works for me when I get a case of the Wants.  I make an Amazon wish list and I go crazy adding stuff to it.  99 times out of 100, within a day or two I've totally forgotten about it.  The things I'm so sure that I need as I'm looking at them don't seem so important when I realize I survived a day without it.

>>Think about it.  Give it time.  If it's still gnawing at you at you (like the continuous-brew kombucha set up I've been thinking about for weeks), then it might be something that will really be useful to you.

>>Have a halfway box.  If you have a hard time getting rid of things, put the things you aren't sure about in a box, and put the box in an out of the way place.  Revisit them a week or two later - did your life go on without it?  Did you even think about it?  It probably did, and you probably didn’t.  Toss it.  

>>If it doesn’t fit in with your life right now, toss it.  Clothes you’re hoping to fit into one day - toss them.  A hobby you wanted to try but don’t have the time for - gift that yarn to someone who’ll use it.  I parted with a lot of cute, quality dresses because my life is 100% jeans and tees right now.  I don’t miss them.  Want to, one day, when I have time, but it’s so cute - I promise, that kind of stuff is holding you down.  

>>Reframe your perspective.  It might be kind of corny, but honestly - think of those adopt-a-kid commercials.  “Enough” is relative.  Be okay with less.  

>>Quality over quantity.  It’s better to have ten shirts that you really love wearing than thirty that suck.  Spend $150 on a quality pair of jeans you love and skip the $20 Old Navy jeans that are going to fall apart in a month.  

>>Figure out what’s really going on.  When I suddenly feel like shopping, 100% of the time it’s because I’m stressed out or had a hard day and want the little thrill of getting a new thing.  This is usually where the wish-list comes in.  Journaling helps, too; just recognizing the underlying feeling is usually enough to be content again. 

Got any more tips?  Lay ‘em on me!