simplify: clutter.

A couple of moves ago I saw all of my belongings laid out together, and I was frustrated with how much there was.  I was in a rotten mood all throughout the moving process, it was really bad.  I had by no means reached hoarder status, but for me personally it was just too much.  I've since pared way down  and have been able to breathe a lot easier.

In preparing for this move I tried to eliminate even more.  I went through every corner of the house and decided what deserved to stay and what was better off going somewhere else.  There is a ton of advice out there regarding clearing up clutter and junk, and a lot of it is the same.  I will probably repeat some of those things here, but here are some tips that have worked for me and I regularly hearken back to:

1. When do I use/wear this item?  The advice out there generally tends to go something like, If you haven't worn/used the item in the last six months (or year), you don't need it.  I like this, and it usually works well for me.  But sometimes it's better for me to think of when I actually have used an item, and then gauge from that answer whether or not the item is worth keeping.  For example, the last time we used those salad tongs was... well, never.  (oops.)  And in the future when if we do serve a salad at dinner, we can get by just using other utensils or servings spoons that we have and do actually use.  So, goodbye salad tongs!  On the other hand, we haven't used our DVD player in a few months.  But we occasionally borrow DVDs from the library and have a few that we revisit periodically.  The player doesn't take up much space, so we keep it around.  I use this piece of advice on a case by case basis.

2. Stop asking "what if...?"  I think this is the biggest problem that we (and many others!) have when it comes to de-cluttering.  When we moved into our current home, it came with an above-range microwave and also a water dispensing fridge, leaving us with our tabletop microwave and our Brita pitcher wondering, what do we do with these?  My first reaction was, get rid of them!  But Jon hates the idea of selling or donating something that we might need to buy again in the future.  Which is understandable.  What if, in our next house, we need that Brita pitcher and microwave?  As it turns out, we didn't need either of those.  But we kept them anyway, and they took up space unnecessarily.  Again, on a case by case basis, look at the what-if items and weight the costs of keeping the item around or possibly re-buying it in the future.

3. One step at a time.  Just go room by room.  Or even drawer by drawer.  Tackle the house one corner at a time, whenever you have a spare fifteen or twenty minutes.  I've tried to declutter the whole house in a day, and it was a mistake.  I got hardly anything done.  Doing a little bit here are there might mean that you finish the house in its entirety in a week or two, but it will actually get done.

4. Be choosy about what you collect.  I've seen them, all of those rooms turned into mini museums for their book collections.  The hutches with all of the travel spoons and plates or turtle figurines.  I don't really think collections are for me.  I imagine they are fun to show to people, but for me personally I value a clear space more than bragging rights.  If you do collect something, consider where the joy in it comes from: the finding of the pieces, the owning and use of the pieces, or the showing off of the pieces.  Maybe re-evaluate if one of those doesn't sit well with you.

5. Digitize!  Early last year I scanned all of the peer reviews from the short stories I wrote in college (a truly humiliating experience... like reading back on your old diaries from high school).  It was literally hundreds of pages that filled many boxes.  I've long since gone digital for my music collection, and when Jon and I decide we'd like to buy a movie, we almost always buy through iTunes.  I'm not quite yet converted to the idea of buying books digitally (I may never be able to get on that boat), but if you are, do it!  I tend to be a neat-freak even when it comes to digital files and organize my digital files pretty regularly, but even if you're not you can save actual, tangible space.

So those are just a few things that have helped me keep the clutter away.  Living in a clean, free-of-too-much-stuff home is so important to me.  My anxiety levels shoot up and I feel like I can't breathe when I enter a home that is maximalist to the max, and it's the best feeling to come home to a place that makes me feel relaxed and at peace.  It's worth all of the work, and giving away things becomes a lot easier the more I do it.

Now what to do about preventing the toddler messes...??

simplify: internet.

I have had many thoughts of simplicity running through my mind lately.

I wrote of simplifying in the annual newsletter we send out with our Christmas cards every year and also in the message I was asked to write to the women of our congregation last month.  And I am still thinking about it!  I like to give a lot of time and thought to my resolutions each January, and as I continue to work on mine I am trying to incorporate simplification into most, if not all, of my goals.

Simplicity has long been a goal of mine, and I've managed to apply it to various aspects of my life with some pretty good results.  But no simplified area has yielded more obvious positive results than  that of Internet Usage.

The Internet is a glorious place, but it has its areas that can be disheartening, repetitive, unrelenting and maddening.  There are real-time news updates on the current events of the world, many of which seem to only be about families seeking refuge from war, or wars on people's peace and safety in the name of terror, anger and hostility.  There are exclusives on the latest inflammatory statement that such and such a presidential candidate said his own personal gain, and media outlets that cover every bit of it for their own personal gain.  There are upset citizens who take to the streets to have their voices heard and citizen journalists who take to the web and write an infinite number of thinkpieces with clickbait titles and simple-sugar content.  There is SO MUCH, and it is beyond overwhelming.

A couple of years ago, I made an attempt to cut it all out.  I stopped reading blogs, I stopped using Facebook, I had already stopped using Instagram for a while, instead of getting my news from ten different sources I cut it down to just two sources, and I even stopped posting regularly on my own blog for some time.

And now I feel like a reformed hoarder!  It's a little ridiculous how much of a difference cutting some Internet fat has made in my life, but it's true.  I'm not necessarily immune to all of the junk that's out there.  There are still so many difficult things happening in the world, that the Internet will still cover, and I can't avoid reality or that video of That One Baby Doing That Cute Thing.  But I've learned that I can live happily without taking in more information than is necessary.  I don't need to read another person's opinions on the true costs of the partisan divide.  I don't need to read a million different blogger's gift guides featuring the exact same products that somehow all cost a million dollars.  I don't need to deal with So-and-So's political ramblings on Facebook.  I am genuinely a happier person after all of this.


Here are some of my tips to simplifying Internet usage:

1. Consolidating By Cutting.  At a certain point, I realized that I was looking at the same content in multiple Internet locations.  Similar bloggers were posting about the exact same topics/articles/sponsors, or friends were posting the same picture on all social media accounts I followed them on.  In the case of the bloggers, I actually just stopped following all of them because I felt I needed to move on from them and focus my attention elsewhere.  But in the case of the friends and family posts, I chose one social media account over another.  At the time I was already on a break from Instagram, but I'd chosen to cut out Facebook because of other reasons as well.  Such as...
2. If It Makes You Feel Angrier, Get Rid Of It.  Probably the number one rule for myself when I'm on the Internet is don't read the comments.  It's just never a good idea, and I always exited a webpage feeling more annoyed and upset when I'd peeked down underneath the article.  I left Facebook for pretty much the same reason.  The memory of the awful and irritating rants I saw during the last general election was still fresh in my mind when I left Facebook without looking back.  It was honestly the best thing I've ever done.  (With the new election cycle already underway, this might be a great motivating factor in helping you cut the fat.)
3. Clean Out The Bookmarks Closet And The Email Inbox.  Every couple of months I go through my bookmarks and delete anything that no longer interests me or that I haven't revisited in a long time.  I always feel better when everything is sorted and deleted!  I am also pretty religious of keeping my email inbox clear.  It's kind of dumb how much it means to me to have the inbox at 0 and to have everything organized there, but every time I see that Jon has 1000+ unread emails in his inbox, I have mini panic attacks for him.
4. Ignorance is Bliss.  Sometimes, it's just better not to know what's going on.  I've found that there are things that are important to me that I keep up with, and the rest all falls by the wayside.  Do I know what happened in celebrity news last week?  No.  Never.
5. You Don't Need To Save Another Chicken Parmesan Recipe.  This might only apply to me, and I've mentioned my personal banning of most recipes from the web.  But if I have a recipe that I really love of one dish, I don't need to save or try another one.  This applies in other non-recipe scenarios as well.  I don't have a Pinterest account, but I imagine it would be pretty easy to collect images that are all very similar or show more or less the same thing.  Try consolidating or paring away some of those things.
6. It's Okay To Take A Break And Then Come Back.  I've taken a break from Instagram and this blog, and then I came back.  It's not bad to enjoy parts of the web or try something new.  Just make sure that if you decide to dedicate time to something, that it's for good reasons and you find it fulfilling.


So that's just one part of my life where I have simplified.  I still have a long ways to go in simplifying my life, but Time Spent On Internet is an area where I feel like I've achieved success!  Maybe when I finish simplifying in another area I will post about it.

(And you know, fill up the web with more stuff.  Like a hypocrite!)