Hasta La Ideas

Preparing for a move can be one of the most stressful experiences in life. This is especially true when you are selling and purchasing at the same time. Can a move to a smaller home make the experience less stressful? When preparing to move to a smaller home, Alison and Bill McCulloch of Bonnyrigg, Scotland, made a stress-free move by paring down their possessions to the extreme.

From the Daily Record article:

Deciding to sell the family home and downsize, the pair snapped up a two bedroom home in Bonnyrigg early last year.

But instead of waiting for their move in day to arrive, the canny couple set about making their first move in over 30 years as stress-free as possible.

They chucked out anything they didn’t need – including old furniture and toys.

And when the big day arrived, Alison and Bill moved in with just a bed, a washing machine and a microwave.

Although their circumstances are different than the one my wife and I faced a year ago, their preparation for the downsizing process was very similar. Getting rid of things you don’t need before you move is preferable to moving loads of things you won’t ever use. You likely will want to keep more than three belongings — like we did — but this story does sound very liberating.

Donating, selling, or recycling items that you do not need anymore can make the moving process much more manageable. We opted for a yard sale while relying on Craigslist to sell off larger pieces of furniture.

If you have recently downsized or plan on downsizing, please share your experience with us in the comments.

Lifehacker recently linked to an interesting article that ran on the BBC about friendship. “What’s the ideal number of friends” reported that most people have five very close friends, 10 more in a pretty close network, 35 more in a looser network, and then 100 on the outside that fall into the wee-bit-more-than-acquaintance category. This would mean each of us has about 150 friends in our social scene.

I found this interesting and plausible. My numbers are a little higher in the outer circles (I’m a social butterfly), but almost spot-on for the very close and pretty close network numbers.

However, mid-way through the article is a shocking but brief story about someone who regulates his friendships like inventory:

A newspaper columnist once told of her shock when, having struck up a rapport with a man over dinner, she was told at the end of the meal he had no vacancies for friends. He was operating a “one-in, one-out” policy. Six months later she received a card stating he was now available for friendship.

That’s an extreme example but many people view their friendships scientifically and regulate them accordingly.

When I first read these paragraphs, I was flabbergasted. What gall this man had! Then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was just saying what many people do subconsciously. When one friendship fizzles out, we fill it with a new friendship with someone else. We might not send cards announcing “you can now be my friend,” but we shift our priorities and move people around between the circles.

I think we all agree that a bad friend can cause clutter in our lives, but what about too many good friends? Can you have so many close friends that maintaining the friendships can interfere with other areas of your life?

What do you think of the one-in, one-out rule applied to friendship? Can your life be cluttered with too many close friends? I’m still mulling this around in my brain and I would love to read what you have to say.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was an arrogant and deceitful man who tricked the gods. Displeased at being duped, the gods sentenced him to spend eternity pushing an enormous boulder up a hill. He pushes it most of the way up the hill, then the boulder rolls back down to the bottom of the hill, and he has to do it all over again and again and again and again. Every minute of every day, Sisyphus pushes the boulder up the hill, only to watch it roll back down.

In the study of economics, the “law of diminishing returns” similarly explains that there is a point where increased production will actually create reduced benefits. Imagine that I give you a cookie. You eat the cookie, and it tastes amazing. You love that I gave you a cookie. So, I hand you another and another and another, and you eat them all. By the time I’m handing you a tenth cookie, you don’t want to eat cookies any more. You feel nauseated. The idea of eating another cookie disgusts you. There isn’t anything different about the tenth cookie from the first, except that you passed the point of marginal benefit. Eating cookies is now creating bad responses. You were much happier having eaten just one or two cookies than you were eating ten.

Sisyphus and the economic law of diminishing returns both speak to the question asked in the headline of this post. “Can a person clutter up his time by constantly uncluttering?”

Without a doubt, the answer to that question is “yes.”

When you choose to clear the clutter and organize your home and work lives, you should be doing it so that you can focus on what really matters. Organizing and decluttering are processes that help you to reach more important goals. They are the means, not the end. Whether your goals are to have more quality time with your children or provide better services to your clients or to have a stress-free vacation, being organized helps you do those things more easily and with less anxiety.

There is a point where you can derive the greatest amount of benefit from your decluttering and organizing endeavors. That point will be different for every person, so don’t judge yourself based on others or judge others based on your returns. Find that perfect point for you, where you get the greatest returns from your decluttering and organizing efforts, and embrace and sustain it. Don’t organize for the sake of organizing — organize for the purpose of living of a remarkable life.

Architect Gary Chang’s Hong Kong apartment is the gold standard in space-saving solutions. His 344 square-foot apartment has an open floor plan, but with a series of sliding wall units, can easily be configured into 24 different rooms.

From the New York Times article “24 Rooms Tucked Into One” discussing Chang’s space:

In Mr. Chang’s solution, a kind of human-size briefcase, everything can be folded away so that the space feels expansive, like a yoga studio.

The wall units, which are suspended from steel tracks bolted into the ceiling, seem to float an inch above the reflective black granite floor. As they are shifted around, the apartment becomes all manner of spaces — kitchen, library, laundry room, dressing room, a lounge with a hammock, an enclosed dining area and a wet bar.

To be able to fully appreciate the wonder that is Mr. Chang’s apartment, you should check out the accompanying photo gallery “Box of Tricks.”

I am truly in awe.

Thank you to reader Josephine for sending us the link for this article.

Today we welcome Danielle LaPorte, author of the blog White Hot Truth, as a guest on Unclutterer. She is a consultant who helps entrepreneurs rock their careers, is a former think tank exec, and author of the bestselling book, Style Statement: Live By Your Own Design.

Clutter is the result of choices. That may sound obvious, but until you start to actually examine your choices, a clutter-free life will elude you. Peace of mind is often buried in the choices you didn’t make. The “default” choices to let stuff into your life that doesn’t really match your true self.

Your bookshelf, your dinner plates, your nicky nacs. Shoes! (Shoes are a whole psychology unto themselves. I’m sure if Freud lived longer he would have studied the mental underpinnings of footwear choices.) Your sofa. Your in-box. Your pantry contents – all are the result of your choices. You’re the gatekeeper to your home. And nothing gets past you without your conscious or unconscious approval. So what makes it in…and why?

Do a quick visual scan in your head right now – room by room. How did what’s in there get there? Because it was on sale? Because it came with your ex-boyfriend but didn’t leave when he did? Because you positively love the design. Because it makes your heart sing?

I used to keep a ton of books in my living room because I thought it made me look smarter. Big ego choice. Now, I let books pass through my mind and my hands. And the books that I do keep, are well, the keepers – absolutely precious texts that I refer to for regular facts or inspiration.

Ego choices can be deadly. I know someone who chose a Mercedes she couldn’t afford because she wanted to drive up to her high school reunion in it. I had another client with a closet full of vampy, slutty clothes – when what she felt best in was a crisp white shirt and straight jeans. She kept choosing trashy clothes in rebellion against her mother, who for years, told her what was proper to wear.

TOP 4 BY-DEFAULT CLUTTER CHOICES

1. My [insert name of well-meaning relative] gave it to me and I just can’t throw it out.
   This is tricky. But it gets down to this: life’s short and it’s your place. Objects carry memories and attitudes with them. If you want your home to be your temple or your chill-zone, then making choices based on obligation are only going to weigh you down.
2. I really hate this [insert home item or piece of clothing] but I’m waiting to have the money to buy a new one.
   Something amazing happens when you get the stuff you don’t like out of your life – stuff that you do like has the room to show up. So chuck the old futon chair from university days, even if it means you sit on the floor for a while. You’ll be raising the vibe, shedding unwanted pounds and sending the universe a clear signal that you’re ready for quality…right now, not later.
3. I got it for free, so I may as well keep it.
   Gasp. This is the ultimate gotchya-sucker default choice. ‘Cause ain’t nothing for free, baby! (Well, true love is free, but that’s about it.) If it’s taking up physical or mental space – it’s costing you. Everything has an environmental cost to manufacture, ship and dispose of. And when I think of all the “free” crap that I lugged around from apartment to apartment in moving vans – I could have saved enough to buy stuff I really loved.
4. But what if I need it someday?
   Trust that if you ever need it, you’ll have what you need to get it. If you haven’t worn it for a year and half – give it away. If you’re waiting to lose the ten pounds, forget it. Just love yourself now. A happy life is an as-is life. And junk drawers are called junk drawers for a reason.

Simplicity demands ruthlessness. Consistent, conscious choices create momentum in your life, vitality, sweet satisfaction. You are what you eat. You are the friends you keep. And you are the stuff you choose. So choose from the heart every time – it always knows what’s best for you – and your living room.