Tuesday Thoughts | 24 May 2022 | Does Your Trash Can Bring You Joy?

I’m a recovering messy person, for a long time I was quite fond of the quote attributed to Einstein “if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Truth be told, I’m still a messy person deep down, I just have better habits and systems to keep the clutter at bay.

As readers of my old blog – The Lighter Life – will know, in 2017 I got rid of about 70% or my possessions, and as many others such as the Minimalists had discovered before me, many things in my life simply became easier. Food doesn’t spoil in the back of the fridge – because I can see the back of the fridge, I don’t buy the same essentials over and over again – because they’re not buried amongst a pile of non-essentials, I can always find my keys, my purse, or that amazon package I need to return.

Over the years, I’ve become less rigid about how I define my Minimalism. I don’t have a capsule wardrobe – but I do have three black shirts, three blue shirts, and three grey shirts, so I can always find something to match (or at least not clash with) a brightly coloured pair of pants, skirt, or statement blazer. I don’t have some hard and fast rule about how-much-is-too-much – but, I do ruthlessly declutter my spaces several times a year.

EXAMPLE: when I went looking for the Einstein quote in the first paragraph of today’s Tuesday Thoughts, I first looked to a book I had been keeping for just such an occasion, bite-size enistein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century, and I couldn’t find what I was looking for, so instead I looked it up online. Since I demonstrated that this item doesn’t even serve the purpose I hoped it would, I decluttered it. This started a domino effect, as I decluttered a few other books from my desk-side shelf, making room in the holder where I keep the books I use most often, so now I have room to keep a few other items close at hand where it’s easy to grab them [refreshed easy grab pictured here].

When I discovered the incredible power of a good decluttering session, I started to try (sometimes very unsuccessfully) to get other people on board. I started with my parents.

Mom is at times a willing co-conspirator, at least until the wedding china (which I have never personally eaten off of) gets called into question – it now resides on the top corner kitchen shelf which is unsuitable for storing anything you’d actually use regularly.

My Father was an entirely different story, the staff at the waste transfer station have long since stopped asking me for ID if I show up when there is no one else there to question why I’ve been waved through, for those keeping score Dad’s been gone a little over three years, and I’m just now getting rid of the last of his stuff [a small section of what my parent's basement looked like after my dad died].

I keep thinking to myself, how much worse would this all have been if I hadn’t nudged my Dad to get started, if I didn’t already have the skills to know what can go without regret? And, I know this isn’t a problem that is unique to me, or to my family, just this weekend the Globe and Mail published an article on the piles of stuff many of us are set to inherit from our Boomer Parents.

The starting is always the hardest and scariest part. What if I need this? What if I regret getting rid of this? Should I sell it, is it valuable? When I first decluttered 70% of my possessions, I was overwhelmed, now – as I was once promised by the Minimal Mom in one of her YouTube videos – I have the space to choose between donation and selling, because I don’t NEED it gone RIGHT NOW. I’m currently building a nice cash (actual physical money) reserve from the sale of my Dad’s Golf and Wine Equipment, the valuable stuff left behind after months of throwing out the other junk that FILLED my parents basement.

I know that Minimalism can be a scary thing for a lot of people, I like to think of myself as a practical minimalist – I keep what I need, what I love, and what I will use for a few select hobbies and past times. And (here is where this becomes a “work” topic), I carry these same principals into my office, and other workplaces, I know that the fewer “things” we have, the easier it is to work efficiently, to find the things we need, and to keep our desks clean.

I have two calls to action today, because decluttering takes practice. My Call to Action is: this, get started, ask yourself if your stuff would be a burden for someone else if you died tomorrow, ask yourself if your office, and your filing system would be a burden for someone if they had to take over your job tomorrow.

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Need Help? In the midst of the 2020 stay at home orders I acquired the Certified Organizational Specialist designation, I’m willing to provide some thoughts and some encouragement, I don’t currently offer paid support in this area and have no plans to do so in the near future.

New and Noteworthy is a collection of things readers of this Newsletter might find interesting or important;

Other Stuff I Did This Week (shameless self promotion): Yesterday's LinkedIn Post on learning to outsource, automate and delegate (which was by-the-by my "theme" for 2020)

What to Read: Inside the Rapidly Organized 'Hill Day' for a Legislative Amendment on Non-Qualified Donees from Future of Good | The Biggest "Money Sinkhole" in Nonprofits Nobody Wants to Admit from Sheree Allision h/t Julia O'Grady | Professionalism Is a Racist Construct from Dame Magazine

What to Watch: This Video Might Terrify You from Stuart Knight

What to Do: Canadian Meetings + Events Expo | CSAE Town Hall

Cool Jobs (Paid and Volunteer): Senior Advisor - Strategic Policy @ Ontario Energy Board | Board Members @ Canadian Forum for Impact Investment and Development

Take Note: the EVENT was featured in the MPI Blog

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