The Magic Power of Simplicity

As I wrote here, my wife and I are going through an exercise decluttering our appartment. It’s a small appartment and having lived here for over 5 years, even though we don’t buy much, it all accumulates. However, the uncluttering is only part of the exercise. It’s part of our personal growth in the last few years that we also want to turn our backs on the mad consumerism that have dominated the west for the last 20 or 30 years, which means a complete rethink of our philosophy about posessions.

This has led me to think about the following issues and I’m interested to know what you would add.

1. Value quality over quantity. Stop buying unnecessary things. Only buy the necessities, and always ask yourself: is this truly necessary?

2. Work out what makes you happy and get rid of the rest. This is going to require some heart searching – identifying what is essential and what is an emotional belief that you “just have to keep it”.

3. Get rid of the obvious things. Do you tend to keep the boxes that software applications, mobile phones etc come in? I filled an entire bin liner just with these kind of boxes. How many do you have lying around, “just in case”?

4. Open the wardrobe – what have you got that you haven’t worn in the last year? The last 6 months? Are you ever going to wear it again? There are plenty of charity shops that can find a good home for clothing you wear only infrequently.

5. Clear all of your flat surfaces of everything except he things that have to be out in the open. Find somewhere to put away everything other than the essentials.

6. Look at all of the momentoes, the nick nacks from holidays, the gifts from other people that you had quickly consigned to a drawer or cupboard – why are you keeping them?

7. Identify your biggest buying vice and ration yourself. For me, it’s books – I can rationalise just about every non-fiction book as “research” but even so, I buy way too many books! I have rationed myself for 2010 – it’ll be interesting to see how well I stick to it but I have so many books I’ve barely dipped into, let alone read.

8. Storage – do you need more, or to make better use of what you have? Living in a small space makes you think creatively about storage, and to making several trips to IKEA!

9. Recognise that it’s an ongoing process of reduction, reduction and more reduction. Simplicity and minimalism are a journey, not a destination.

10. There are many different paths to the simple life – I’ve only looked at one aspect of it here, but even when thinking about posessions in living spaces theer are many different approaches. There’s the person who lives in an expensive house that is furnished with a few, high quality pieces; there’s the Zen approach of having a sibgle focal point in every room; there’s the person on a low budget who recycles and makes everything last as long as possible, buying very rarely. And there are many more approaches.

The key for me  is to work out what makes you truly happy; all else is commentary. But I’m keen to know – what tips would you give to anybody wanting to unclutter their lives and to lead a materialistically simple life?

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