Minimalist Living: Decluttering for Joy, Health, and Creativity Read Online Free
Author: Genevieve Parker Hill
travel; and his passion, entrepreneurship.
In a 2013 study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen connected acquisitional attitudes with negative emotions and action s. His results suggested that “irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement.” [6]
Stuff = Stress
Let’s think about the typical process we go through when we acquire something – when we begin our relationship to a belonging. We’ll call this example thing a gadget. Think of this process of acquiring something as applying not just to new gadgets, but also to things we let into our schedules - new commitments and new projects.
First, we buy or are given the gadget. It’s such a wonderful new addition to our lives. We’ve always wanted one, and now we have the newest, coolest, most high-quality gadget on the market. It’s going to make our lives easier and more fun. We will be happy, attractive, successful, healthy, and rich because we own this gadget.
We take our gadget home, and now we need to take it out of its packaging. The first ping of stress happens, because it’s packaged in hard plastic, and we have to wrestle with it and pinch our fingers getting it open.
Then we throw the packaging away, and feel some more stress about the environment and that giant floating trash island the size of Texas that is out in the Pacific somewhere.
We use and enjoy our gadget for a time, but then it breaks. So then we hire a professional or take it to a shop for repair. It turns out our gadget just needed cleaning and maintenance. This maintenance time takes away from our loved ones and our larger life goals, adding stress as we ask ourselves where does the time go?
Life is busy and it’s not always easy to remember to clean our gadget when so many other things call for our attention: our jobs, relationships, and other activities. With everything going on, the gadget just sits there, gathering dust. One day we are decluttering the living room, and we see the dusty old gadget. It’s taking up much-needed space, and we need to find a different place to store it. Somewhere out of the way.
Briefly a thought occurs to us: Will I use this again? Maybe I should give it away. Well, I’ll probably use it sometime in the future. Just not right now. Anyway, I’m cleaning up. I don’t have time to deal with dusting this off and finding a new home for it. Maybe I’ll use it later.
With that, we put it on a high shelf in a closet or in a box in the attic, straining our neck and back in the process.
Then, much later, we think that it would be nice to use the gadget. We look for it, but we can’t find it amongst the overwhelming amount of stuff in the closet or attic. After getting dirty and dusty, we promise ourselves we will clean out our home, but for some reason, we put it off.
This stressful process is how our homes become stuffed full of things we don’t need. And our homes are certainly packed full in the U.S., an idea brought home in the book Material World: Global Family Portrait , by Peter Menzel, Charles C. Mann, and Paul Kennedy. The book contains photographs of statistically average families from around the world, shown with all their belongings in front of their homes. Check out the book and compare the piles of belongings from homes in the U.S compared with the rest of the world. According to Annie Leonard of the Story of Stuff Project , in the U.S. we are using more than our share of resources to make our products and support our lifestyle. Although the U.S. comprises only 5% of the world’s population, we are using 30% of the world’s resources and making 30% of the world’s waste. Globally, in the past thirty years, one third of the planet’s natural resource space has been consumed. There are many, many environmental reasons to decrease the amount of material goods
In a 2013 study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen connected acquisitional attitudes with negative emotions and action s. His results suggested that “irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement.” [6]
Stuff = Stress
Let’s think about the typical process we go through when we acquire something – when we begin our relationship to a belonging. We’ll call this example thing a gadget. Think of this process of acquiring something as applying not just to new gadgets, but also to things we let into our schedules - new commitments and new projects.
First, we buy or are given the gadget. It’s such a wonderful new addition to our lives. We’ve always wanted one, and now we have the newest, coolest, most high-quality gadget on the market. It’s going to make our lives easier and more fun. We will be happy, attractive, successful, healthy, and rich because we own this gadget.
We take our gadget home, and now we need to take it out of its packaging. The first ping of stress happens, because it’s packaged in hard plastic, and we have to wrestle with it and pinch our fingers getting it open.
Then we throw the packaging away, and feel some more stress about the environment and that giant floating trash island the size of Texas that is out in the Pacific somewhere.
We use and enjoy our gadget for a time, but then it breaks. So then we hire a professional or take it to a shop for repair. It turns out our gadget just needed cleaning and maintenance. This maintenance time takes away from our loved ones and our larger life goals, adding stress as we ask ourselves where does the time go?
Life is busy and it’s not always easy to remember to clean our gadget when so many other things call for our attention: our jobs, relationships, and other activities. With everything going on, the gadget just sits there, gathering dust. One day we are decluttering the living room, and we see the dusty old gadget. It’s taking up much-needed space, and we need to find a different place to store it. Somewhere out of the way.
Briefly a thought occurs to us: Will I use this again? Maybe I should give it away. Well, I’ll probably use it sometime in the future. Just not right now. Anyway, I’m cleaning up. I don’t have time to deal with dusting this off and finding a new home for it. Maybe I’ll use it later.
With that, we put it on a high shelf in a closet or in a box in the attic, straining our neck and back in the process.
Then, much later, we think that it would be nice to use the gadget. We look for it, but we can’t find it amongst the overwhelming amount of stuff in the closet or attic. After getting dirty and dusty, we promise ourselves we will clean out our home, but for some reason, we put it off.
This stressful process is how our homes become stuffed full of things we don’t need. And our homes are certainly packed full in the U.S., an idea brought home in the book Material World: Global Family Portrait , by Peter Menzel, Charles C. Mann, and Paul Kennedy. The book contains photographs of statistically average families from around the world, shown with all their belongings in front of their homes. Check out the book and compare the piles of belongings from homes in the U.S compared with the rest of the world. According to Annie Leonard of the Story of Stuff Project , in the U.S. we are using more than our share of resources to make our products and support our lifestyle. Although the U.S. comprises only 5% of the world’s population, we are using 30% of the world’s resources and making 30% of the world’s waste. Globally, in the past thirty years, one third of the planet’s natural resource space has been consumed. There are many, many environmental reasons to decrease the amount of material goods
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