Simplify, simplify, simplify
Last night I was reading the ad inserts in the paper for today's after-Christmas sales. It got me to thinking: Who on Earth gets up at 5 a.m. the day after Christmas in order to be at the stores at 6 a.m. when the sales start? Are people that cranked up with shopping adrenaline that they didn't get enough of a rush BEFORE Christmas? Or are they just waiting for the sales to do some late holiday shopping for people they weren't going to see before Christmas anyway?
In any case, this urge to splurge confounds me. I don't understand the need to spend, spend, spend. Whatever happened to "Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify!" (Henry David Thoreau)
Personally, I've been inspired by having to clear off the coffee table to make room for our little table-top tree. This is the first year we bought a tree that was less than 5 feet tall, and I'm hooked. It's so cute! And it only needed one string of lights, and has plenty of room for all our favorite ornaments.
Anyway, in making room for the tree, I went through some piles of stuff that had been on the coffee table for (ahem) a few months. OK, about 12. Lo and behold, it ALL went to the recycle bin! Outdated catalogs, magazines, newspapers, maps for a trip we took a year ago, and on and on.
So I'm inspired to tackle a few more piles tonight, a few tomorrow night, and so on. In fact, I'm even excited about it. Maybe I've finally caught the feng shui bug that I've been chasing for years that has so far eluded me, just out of reach.
I'm reading a great book on feng shui called "Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life" by Karen Rauch Carter. I have several other books on feng shui, but this one is my favorite. I'll try to remember to add some quotes from it to this blog in the near future.
One suggestion I found incredibly useful (and so obvious I can't believe I never thought of it): Place an attractive basket for recycling junk mail somewhere near the front door or wherever you dump the mail when you come into the house. Never take the junk mail any further than that basket, and don't even open it - just drop it in its place. When it comes time to take in the recycling, or put it out for pickup, just dump the basket into the recycle bin. The recycle center doesn't care if it's unopened, as long as it doesn't have stuff like CDs, pens or other freebies in it.
Meanwhile, Happy New Year, cyberfriends! May 2008 bring less clutter to your space!
Comments
Simplicity is the key to success.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville - 5th District
Posted by: Jeffrey Lytle | December 28, 2007 08:21 PM
I like the junk mail idea, but I shred everything. Credit card companies will accept even a torn up and re-taped application.
http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/creditcard/application.shtml
All mail we don't save gets chucked into a box and I shred it once it gets full. I wear professional hearing protectors (like earmuffs), which incidentally are also great when changing diapers on a crying infant.
We've simplified by eliminating display shelves and bookcases from our living and family room. CDs and DVDs are placed in a CD sleeve wallet (no need for a standing media shelf). The plastic cases are stored in a box in our closet. Books go into a large book shelf that has doors (which eliminate the visual clutter).
Having a child meant letting go of most of our extraneous personal possessions in order to make storage room for the kid and the kid's old items (saved for the next child to come).
We went shopping the day after Thanksgiving for great deals on practical things we needed. We did virtually no gift shopping because we've agreed to give gifts only within our immediate household. The holidays gave us no stress.
Posted by: AJ | December 31, 2007 04:23 PM