Now that we are getting rid of all of this junk I don’t want to collect it again. I don’t want to waste the money and I want to hold on to the freedom. We need to change our philosophy and stop operating on autopilot. We need a pattern interrupt.
Here are some ideas:
- Regularly get rid of things, maybe get rid of one thing a day
- Follow one-in-one-out, to bring something in the house we need to get rid of something
- Buy multi-taskers, things that can serve many purposes instead of uni-taskers (thanks Alton Brown for the idea)
- Don’t buy things believing I will change my behavior, for example, I will not buy a treadmill believing I am going to start running when I don’t even run outside.
- Realize that I am trading work for stuff
- Don’t buy things for status
- Don’t buy things because I am bored or for temporary entertainment
One more idea: Limit the space available to store stuff-smaller house and fewer closets to hide our stuff.
I believe that if we have space we tend to fill it. For instance, we used to be fine with a pantry of two shelves but now we have a pantry filled with stuff and we still go looking for food. How do we keep from filling the spaces we clear out? One trick I use is to put empty boxes in the space. Maybe I can get real crazy and fill the closets with water bottles and save electricity by increasing our home’s thermal mass.
How do I get my family on board?
How do we stick with it?