Do Less (2 page)

We make hundreds of small and big decisions every day. What to eat, what to wear, when to leave, and what brand of toothpaste to buy are all relatively small choices, but each one depletes your ability to make subsequent decisions. Every single choice, big or small, saps some of your energy for the next choice—which is why by late afternoon or early evening, you are ready to throw in the towel on any grand plan you had when the day started. You're ready to spend more money than you intended buying things you're not sure you need and to eat two slices of cake when you promised yourself you would have none.

Decision-making depletes your willpower. In the book
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength,
authors Roy Baumeister and John Tierney describe researchers who tested the willpower of two different sets of college students by placing the students' hands in ice-cold water. One set of students kept their hands in the water for an average of twenty-eight seconds and the other set of students kept their hands in for an average of sixty-seven seconds. The students who held their hands in the freezing water longer had just spent time contemplating, not deciding on, sets of products, whereas the low-willpower group of students had just spent time choosing between products, deciding which ones they wanted more. The experiment confirms the willpower-depleting nature of making decisions.

This loss of willpower from making many decisions is called “decision fatigue” and it's one of the best reasons to streamline your life and home with minimalism. The minimalist life turns those small decisions into routines or eliminates them completely. The Do Less attitude allows you to save that precious willpower for doing the wonderful big and small things you want more of in your life. There are lots of easy, small ways to reduce decision fatigue, such as:

• Bring coffee from home every morning and use the energy usually reserved for resisting the croissants displayed at the café register for that challenging work project.
  
• Wear the same series of outfits Monday through Friday and never deliberate over what to wear to work again. Use that decision-making energy to get yourself out the door to an evening yoga class or to that book reading you've been meaning to attend.
  
• Research three options and then buy one. We often overwhelm ourselves with decision fatigue when we have to buy something. Instead of looking at every item on the shelf, examine three options and then choose one from that much smaller list. This works for buying anything from a pair of jeans to dishwasher detergent.
  

The scary and awesome side of decision fatigue is that it affects both decisions that are worth one dollar and those that are worth thousands of dollars. When you reduce the choices in your life with minimalism, you free up willpower for the things that have a big impact on your life.

The Home section of this book is a practical guide for decluttering your physical space. You can expect a revealing and sometimes emotional journey as you follow the steps to rid clutter from each room of your home. First, you'll ask yourself, how did I get this much stuff? All of us are shocked when we truly realize how much we have. Second, why am I not using some of this stuff? One of the tenets of a minimalist life is to only have things that you use regularly. This doesn't mean you have to get rid of luxuries—instead, it means you'll now be sipping a spritzer from your wedding crystal on a boring Wednesday night and wearing your prized cashmere sweater weekly.

Beautiful things should be used and seen. If something is far too precious to be used for its intended purpose, what is the point of owning it? What is the point of storing it and caring for it if it's not useful? Embrace everyday luxury, and if an item breaks or is ruined, celebrate that you got more out of it than you would have if you kept it in a closet for years.

Have you ever looked through your closet or cabinets and wondered, why did I ever buy that? Often, clutter is the result of good intentions gone wrong. Perhaps you're a jeans and T-shirt person but decided, at the influence of a friend with drastically different taste than your own, to buy a few pieces of clothing in a style you aren't really comfortable wearing. The clothes end up languishing in your closet after you've worn them once. Or you buy some home gym equipment that's on sale, thinking that you'll start working out at home. The gym equipment gets little use because you actually like working out with a buddy or playing team sports. That set of barbells was for someone else's life, not yours. That's how you end up with closets, drawers, and garages filled with good—but misguided—intentions.

It's easy to stumble into clutter if you forget your own unique likes and loves. Instead of embracing and celebrating what you truly like, you get distracted by what you think you
should
like. Magazines, Pinterest, and our peers all inundate us with styles and DIY projects and the latest crafting craze. As you sift through all the pictures and blog posts and knitting patterns, you start to think that you're supposed to do and buy all this stuff. You accidentally brainwash yourself into hobbies you don't really like and clothes that don't suit your lifestyle or your body.

It's so easy to forget who you truly are when you are constantly watching and reading the highlights and glories of everyone else.

• Facebook status updates from a destination you don't even want to go to make you pine for more travel, even though you're a happy homebody.
  
• A friend with makeup skills and a love of lipstick makes you feel inferior with your natural touch-of-mascara look.
  
• Attending a precisely executed gourmet dinner party makes you run out and buy a cheeseboard and matching cheese knives, even though you mostly have people over for casual barbecues and the most exotic cheese in your house is marbled cheddar.
  

You forget who you are. You forget what's important to you, what makes you smile, what your talents and gifts are.

If you want to Do Less, you need to remove the ideas and dreams you took on because you thought they were the right things to
do
, instead of the right things for
you
. There really is enough time and space and energy in your day to do what you want to do. The trick is not to fill your time with things you
think
you should be doing. If something doesn't feed your soul or your family, it shouldn't get your money and it definitely shouldn't get your time. Minimalism will help you recapture yourself.

You probably keep things for “someday” when you think you'll have time or the need to use them: the boxes of home décor in the attic, the skis that haven't been touched in six years, the silicone baking cups still in their package. You buy things hoping that they'll be a catalyst for change, dreaming that a shoe rack will keep your hallway clear or a pie tin will inspire you to bake more pies … but in the end, many of the things you buy to simplify your life end up cluttering it. Your good intentions linger in cupboards and attics and never get used. The good news? Someone else can use all those things sitting around unused in your home.

As you change how you think about what you own and how much you really need, you can let go of unused things and let someone else use them. If you already have enough to keep your home running, to wear to work, to cook a meal with, to entertain yourself with, why do you need all those things that you aren't using? Lots of people out there will burn those candles, read those books, and wear those silk dresses. In fact, your clutter can:

• Be sold in thrift stores, where the proceeds help local charities.
  
• Help a family that has lost everything to rebuild.
  
• Earn cash at a garage sale or on eBay to help boost household income.
  

Your clutter can be used for good, and that's so much better than letting it gather dust.

One of the main reasons we keep things we don't use or need is we think someday we'll need them. Someday you'll mountain bike again. Someday you'll actually get that vintage dress repaired and tailored and wear it to a winter cocktail party. Someday you'll wear those clothes that don't fit right now and someday you'll read that book and someday you'll finish that quilt you started in high school.

If you add up all the things in your home that you think you will use for a someday activity, you'll see that it would be impossible to use them all. You'll also see that if you packed your life with all these someday activities, you'd have no time or space for the things you love right now. Your home should contain only the things that you use today and now.

If you give something away that you need again “someday,” you can buy it or borrow it. It's that simple. We'll talk more about strategies for sentimental clutter and ideas for simplifying each area of your home in the Home section.

In the book
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles,
screenwriter and fiction author Steven Pressfield names the inertia or futility we often feel when pursuing a goal. Pressfield calls our procrastination techniques “resistance” and describes all the ways we sabotage our own success. The author also talks about the two lives we live—the one we dream about, called the unlived life, and our actual lives. He says that living your unlived life comes from beating resistance.

The minimalist approach is another way to beat resistance and live your unlived life. As you peel back the layers of your stuff and your commitment to busy-ness, you'll find the space to live your unlived life. The distractions of stuff and clutter fall away and you're left with the essentials. From there, you find the time to climb those mountains you once thought unscalable. It doesn't matter if the “mountain” is simply getting to bed earlier or organizing your paperwork so tax time is a breeze. No goal is too small or too big. Whether you want to start your own business or simply want to stop tripping over all the shoes left near your front door, removing the resistance of clutter will allow you to realize those goals.

This book offers hundreds of ideas for creating a decluttered, organized, and happy life with minimalism. Some of the ideas are radical and big, but most are small and simple. The best way to use this book is to implement the ideas that speak to your life and your goals.

• If you want to save money, look at the ideas for reducing your cost of living in the Money section. Once you've implemented them, move on to decluttering your home and selling things you aren't using.
  
• If you're stressed out with social obligations and feel short on time, use the ideas in the Life section to get more hours back in your day.
  
• If you feel overwhelmed every time you try to organize your home office, work through the Home section to pare down your things.
  

One of the best features of the minimalist approach is that you'll see benefits whether you use bits and pieces of it or make it the foundation of your entire life. Let's dive in—get ready to stress less and live more.

You start with the best of intentions, thinking,
This kitchen appliance/vase/shoe rack will bring beauty to my home and make my life easier
. Yet, somehow the piece never solves your problem. It doesn't give you more time or space, and you end up dusting it for a decade while paying interest on it until you finally realize it just created more clutter.

Can you sit in your living room and read a book without seeing something that needs to be put away or cleaned or finished? Do you fall asleep looking at piles of laundry to sort and wash? Is your desk covered with bills to file or shred? Can you easily and quickly clean your home, or do you constantly have to stop to pick things up or move them before you can vacuum and wipe down counters?

It is no wonder we're stressed out when our homes are filled with unfinished craft projects, clutter we don't have space to store, and wardrobes that burst out of closets. Your home should be a haven. It should be a place to relax, rest, entertain, and work. It should be an expression of what you value—be that space to roll out a yoga mat, an inviting dining table for entertaining friends, or the perfect spot to display fresh-cut flowers.

How do you create this space, this home with room to breathe and play and sleep soundly, when you are overwhelmed with all the things that are stuffed inside it? In this chapter, you'll learn simple and quick ways to eliminate what's unnecessary from each room of your home and leave just what is purposeful and beautiful. You will learn how to make quick decisions on what stays and what goes so you can start living in a peaceful uncluttered home right now.

Before we tackle the seven spatulas jammed into your kitchen utensil drawer, let's talk about legacy. What would happen if you passed away and someone else, possibly a spouse or close relative, had to go through your home and empty it of your possessions? Would it be an easy task? Would you have thoughtfully kept things of value that could be passed on or sold or given away? Would your mementos and photos be carefully culled into a timeline of life events that your family could easily look through, enjoy, and quickly decide what parts of which they would like to keep for themselves? Or would the work of emptying your home be a great burden on someone you love?

These can be sobering and unpleasant thoughts, but if your first reaction is potential embarrassment, followed closely by motivation, then it's time to sort the ten boxes of high school memorabilia you've moved four times in seven years without opening once.

To quickly and easily declutter your home, think of it as an art gallery. It's time to curate your possessions into a simple expression of your purpose and your joys. There is no room for the unnecessary—those things you might need “someday,” or things you keep solely because they were gifts. Let those go. Life is far too short to live with things you neither love nor need. Let's start with one of the most common problem areas—the kitchen.