Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [7]
Ah, what was that about your charity box? This brings us to our first symptom and solution.
Symptom #1: Clutter: A Houseguest Who Won’t Leave
Solution #1: Departing Now on All Tracks
Through the years I have found it wonderful to acquire, but it is also wonderful to divest. It's rather like exhaling.
—Helen Hayes, actress
We cannot take our next breath without the exhale.
—Ellen Scott Grable, Discardian and artist
Outbound trains
Stuff that doesn’t belong in our homes anymore—or that never belonged there in the first place—has a tendency to pile up, stick around, and settle in with the intention of staying for years. Evicting that junk as soon as you recognize it for what it is will create space for positive change. Deciding that you want only things you care about in your home is a no-brainer; achieving that improvement is trickier.
We all prefer to do what is easy, so make it easy to do what you most want to have done. Grease the slope toward where you want to be. When the goal is getting stuff that doesn’t make you happier out of your home, make outbound things obvious and easy to send on their way. Spatial convenience is your big ally here.
Have a trash can in every room. They are magic. Fill it up today with things that are of no further use to anyone and put it out where the wizards will transform it into an empty one. Abracadabra!
Have a recycling bin next to your desk and in the kitchen. Make it easy to purge yourself of dead paper.
Get a shredder if you don’t have access to one at the office or if you have a lot of things you need to shred at home.
Always have an easily accessible and open charity box out of the line of sight where you relax. Whenever you come across something that's not trash, but you also know that you'll never really use it again, walk right over and put it in the charity box. Next time you're heading out for errands, grab that stuff and drop it off at Goodwill or wherever. (If you don’t declare your charitable donations on your taxes, you don’t need a receipt, so it takes almost no time to make your home nicer and someone else's life better. If you do declare donations, get some extra forms or use an online version to fill it out in advance for a faster drop-off.)
Make a Give Back basket and put in it all the things that need to go back to the person from whom you borrowed them. You can also put outgoing gifts there. When someone visits or you're heading to their place, take a quick look in the basket for anything that needs to go to them.
Find, buy, or make an aesthetically satisfying tray to act as your inbox for bills and receipts. Don't muddy it with nonfinancial stuff; get a separate inbox for that. (Tip: The Bills box is a great place for your postage stamps and envelopes to live.)
You may find it handy to create a Put Away basket for each person in the house into which their stuff can be placed when left in a shared area like the dining table. When someone starts to ask, “Has anyone seen my …” this is the first place they should look.
If you use the library—and you should since it's free, after all—dedicate one spot for items ready to return to the library. A canvas bag on a shelf in the front hall is good and convenient for carrying any newly checked-out loot back home.
As Discardian Jason Eness put it, “What can't be sold can be given, what can't be given can be donated or recycled, and if it fails all that, I find a loving dumpster.”
Routines help reduce stress
While you’re thinking about a place for all these outbound items, take a moment to make your daily life easier. If you make a place for things for which you know you'll