Minimalism 2017 Update – Am I still sane?
It is has been a couple of weeks since I decided to start my minimalism 2017 challenge. So where am I at in the purge? Have I managed to leave myself with a desolate office? Have I emptied everything from my desk?
The short answer is no. To stay on track to eliminate 2017 items from my life in one year, I need to get rid of a little more than 5.5 items per day. That was no small task. However, I am roughly on track. As of 16 Jan 2017, I had gotten rid of 89 items. Those items include some old computer parts, quite a few art supplies that I did not expect to use in the next five years, a number of old DVDs I won’t likely watch again, a handful of nick-nacks, a large stack of business cards scanned into the computer, a bunch of old school notes (I didn’t remember taking sociology), and a few miscellaneous items.
The big question is: how do I feel about getting rid of those things?
Answer: I feel really good about it.
I was fairly excited to undertake this project because I knew it would be a challenge, but once I got started chucking things, I really started to have fun and found myself looking for more to get rid of. As a result, I had two big purge days and a handful of more modest days. Additionally, it gave me an excuse to dig through things I had not looked at in years. In doing that, it sparked all kinds of memories and brought smiles to my face. But I did not let that prevent me from getting rid of the physical items.
The best part of this is that it gave me an excuse to dig through things I had not looked at in years. I opened some boxes that contained a bunch of old agates and gemstones that I got on a trip to Upper Michigan back in the 1980’s. Those I did keep, taking an old glass jar with a large cork stopper and turned all of it into a display item now sitting on my shelf. In that case, minimalism wasn’t about discarding everything, but taking an unused jar and a box hidden on a shelf and making something useful out of both of them. I turned useless into something of value.
Other items I that pulled out to go through, like the college notes, brought back a lot of fond memories of my various chem and calc courses. I even found all my physics notes, labs, and tests. For those items, and the business cards, I converted the paper into a digital form using the awesome ScanSnap IX500 (which you can read more about in Paperless: Minimalism from 2015). The scanner spit out PDFs and in less than an hour, I filed hundreds of pages into the recycle bin.
For the art supplies, those I’ll donate to a school. I would love to make use of the oil paints myself, but I just don’t have the time to practice and learn that craft—at least not in the next 5 years. Which means, I’ll let someone else make use of them and if I get time in the future to take up that medium, I’ll go out and get new supplies. The DVDs I’ll sell (and probably get enough to buy a soda). I’ll donate a number of the other items; a handful of things have gone in the trash.
In all, I am having very positive results. I’m getting a chance to walk down memory lane, and for the things I really want to keep, I am making room to actually display them instead of hide them away in boxes.
