For a few weeks now, I have been participating in a Simplicity Circle (Cecile Andrews, who appears to have come up with the initial concept, offers an explanation of what Simplicy Circles are, at New American Dream).
In essence, a Simplicity Circle involves a small group of people gathering on a regular basis to discuss “simplicity” and to help one another live more simply. This is, somewhat ironically, more complicated than it sounds—the concept of simplicity is a bit of a spurious one, in this context; mindfulness is, in some ways, a better term in my opinion.
The topics we’ve discussed so far range from environmentalism (i.e., how to live a life with a small ecological footprint) to clutter (both literal and figurative).
I thought that, in an effort to make my simplicty more complicated (kidding) and to come up with fresh content for this blog (not kidding), I would write a bit about my efforts in simple living.
Part of what we do in our Simplicity Circle is to make a goal for the period between meetings. This may or may not be related to the topic of the meeting. I actually have two goals, that are a part of the same larger goal—to declutter my apartment.
- Declutter one “section” of my apartment. Last week, it was my sweaters (I’m donating all of the ones that I don’t wear to the Cancer Society). This week, it will be something else (though I haven’t decided what, just yet).
- Live by the “one in, two out” rule. I am trying to carry this rule out for the next two weeks, to see if I can maintain it. Hopefully, I will be able to live by this rule for as long as it is useful to me. If/when I reach a point where my life is uncluttered and simple enough that I start throwing things out simply to follow the rule, I will stop. After all, this rule is meant to make my life better, not worse.
I’ll write future posts on my progress, as well as anything that comes to mind on the topic of “simple living” as long as I am either a part of a Simplicty Circle or trying to live a simpler life.
I have created a category for this topic called “simple living.” On the off chance that you are interested in subscribing to this topic alone, you can find the feed for it here: http://adamsnider.com/blog/category/personal/simple-living/feed/.
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You know, if I was feeling like a jerk, I could make a joke about donating your old sweaters to the Cancer society. Something like “because having cancer isn’t bad enough, now they have to wear your ugly sweaters”. But I won’t, because it is off-topic, and I’m not a jerk.
On Topic (sorta): If I abandoned my personal strictures about *stuff* I could totally be one of those people who either die buried under their piles of old newspapers, or — if my friends are really nice — end up being humiliated on hoarders.
My main way of preventing this is to create a fixed number of places things can go and set a personal rule that I can only keep stuff in those places, once they are full I either can’t buy any more (clothes, books, etc) or I have to throw something away. It seems to work fairly well.
This is how I got rid of most of my books: I threw out all but one of my bookshelves and decreed that I can only keep a book if it fits on the bookshelf. I have less than 25% of the books I used to and it remains stable. Same deal with my clothes, I got a closet organizer and if it doesn’t fit in that I either have to toss something old or not buy it.
In this way I make it so I only buy new stuff it is so superior to my old stuff that I want to ditch the old stuff, which, after time, becomes less and less likely and so I don’t buy as much as I used to.
I think that’s a pretty good system. Once I get to the point where I feel like the “one in, two out” rule has become unnecessary and/or too restrictive, I think I’ll impose a “one in, one out” rule on myself. This way, I won’t be actually shrinking the amount of “stuff” I have, but I won’t be growing it, either.
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