Oct 11, 2009

Paring Down the Stuff: Week 3 Progress


Here's an update on the third week of my first personal challenge, which is to get rid of (through donation or other means) ten items a week and then reflect on the process and its implications for both voluntary simplicity and social justice.

I'm not feeling that inspired by my challenge this week. Maybe it's just that my energy seems to be elsewhere right now. But since I told myself I would commit to a month on the challenge, and because I still have a lot of treasures to give away, here we go. My ten items this week are as follows:

1-2. Two t-shirts
3-5. Three pairs of socks
6. 1 paperback novel I just finished reading

That's it... I got to six items and just couldn't come up with anything else to give away. So I gave the challenge a rest and started thinking. Then I wrote...

So, I was feeling pretty lame about my progress this week. And then I happened upon this article by Penelope Trunk entitled Five steps to taming materialism, from an accidental expert. She got me thinking about how much most of us have and how little most of us need. I think that most of my barriers to my challenge this week were mental, not physical. I somehow convinced myself that the reason I couldn't come up with ten things to give away was because I had already given away over 50% of my possessions in the past year or so. I convinced myself that I just didn't have that much else to give away. Really, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Wayne Dyer talks about giving away the things that you most love, instead of your "junk," as a way to detach from the material. So, I found four books that I really love and I added them to my donation pile. Then, I went back to my bookshelf and found three books that I really didn't like and swapped them out for the ones I loved. I KNOW that's not what Wayne Dyer was advocating, but it got me to my ten items and made me realize that most challenges in life are as much about perspective as anything else.

It became much easier to give away items when I really started taking stock of what I treasure and why. The Holocaust memoir Night was in my stack of favorites, but I just couldn't bear to part with it. It became very easy, then, to donate another book taking up space on my shelf that didn't carry with it the same sentimental value. I have taught Night to high school sophomores for a number of years and through the process have been continually inspired by the compassion and intelligence of fifteen-year-olds to talk about and wrestle with some of the deepest questions about the human condition. That is all really the topic of a future post, but it did prompt me to get to my ten items this week.

1-2. Two t-shirts
3-5. Three pairs of socks
6. 1 paperback novel I just finished reading
7-10. Four other books that, when all was said and done, didn't mean anything to me by comparison.

What have you given away recently and what have you learned in the process?

[Image available at boston.com]


4 comments:

  1. As I have been moving more of our possessions from the garage to the house after moving into the new house, I have found that I need to pare down. It has been a difficult task since I am finding that most of my attachments are due to sentimental reasons. And crazy enough, I spent about an hour going through just shirts. It took me that long to decide to part with 7 t-shirts and 5 other shirts. Should it really be that hard of a decison when I have lived without them for four months while they were in the garage? I have a long way to go!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anony-

    When in doubt through it out!

    A good way to go about that is by "red tagging the items". Basically you put the items that you do not wear on a daily/weekly/Monthly (you decide what your metrics will be) basis in quarantine. The first step is to get them out of your space and in a separate space. If you really have question about weather or not to keep them just set them aside and after a week or so ask yourself if that item is really adding value to your life and if you really want to hold on to it. At that time then you either keep it or discard it.

    I use the very same principle in my warehouse and I have been applying it to my life. The results are amazing. There is nothing that is more valuable then the clear mind that I experience with less stuff cluttering up my life.

    Good Luck

    ReplyDelete
  3. @ Anonymous - It is a learning process, for sure! Keep up the hard work, though.

    @ Chester - Thanks for the great tips. I am going to try "red tagging" some things today and then see how I feel about those items this weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ Marina- THe important thing about red tagging is not just to tag, but actually remove. The concept is to be able to fully visialize and use the space with out the items in queston.

    Then, what I do at work, if I decide I am going to keep the items is generaly store them someplace else (they got reg taged int he first place becuase they are not high use items- so they should be tucked away/ stored as such)
    Good luck and let me know how it goes

    ReplyDelete