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Minimizing – Getting rid of things you don’t need

When it comes to changing your lifestyle and living more simply, one of the most important things is letting go of some (or most) of the “things” that you have accumulated and stuffed into your house/garage/attic/basement/rented storage facility. This can be very difficult for some, but once you get started it actually feels pretty good; it’s very freeing! The fewer “things” or possessions you have, the less you have to worry about. I like to pretend that this was soooo easy for me to do, but in fact I did have a hard time letting go of some things that had sentimental value.

If you think that we probably didn’t have too much stuff to get rid of and that you probably have more stuff than we did – think again! Combined, we had two houses, we have 6 kids, and several decades worth of things that we had accumulated. I have pictures to prove it….

Where did all this stuff come from???

Despite all of this stuff we (mostly Greg) accumulated, I am intensely organized and followed these steps in tackling the sorting out of it all. These tips below will hopefully help you to let go of some of those possessions.

SORT

Divide your items into categories:

Items to Keep (What do you really need?):

• Clothing
• Dishes
• Sheets
• Towels
• Small tools
• Hobby items (guitar? books? art supplies?)
• Computer
• Small appliances like a coffee maker or Keurig, blender, etc.
• Small work out equipment (like TRX Trainer)

Items to Get Rid Of

Divide these items into categories of things that you can sell, things that you can donate, and then photos/documents that you can scan and save to a hard drive.

SELL

Where to sell large items?

• Ebay
• Craigslist
• NextDoor
• Facebook Marketplace
• Varagesale
• Letgo

DONATE

Where to donate items?

• Books can be donated to schools or libraries
• Clothing and shoes can be donated to Goodwill, Salvation Army, local homeless veterans groups, Purple Heart Foundation, St. Vincent De Paul, American Red Cross
• Extra sheets/blankets/towels can be donated to animal shelters
• Art supplies can be donated to schools
• Baby clothing and supplies can be donated to women’s shelters or to local churches
• Furniture can be donated to Habitat for Humanity
• Coats can be donated to One Warm Coat or another local program

GIFT

What to do with memorabilia?

This is the hardest part. I was surprised at the amount of my kids’ school projects and homemade cards that I had kept over the years. I passed some of these items along to my kids, but then sorted through them and kept just the most precious items. I have ONE plastic bin of these, and I have ONE bin saved for each of my kids – I will pass those along to them when they get a bit older. One thing I have learned is that even though some of these things were important to me, when I’m gone my kids most likely will throw them out. You can offer those things to family members NOW, rather than save them for later. If nobody wants them, then you know that once you’re gone, they will be thrown out. I have also scanned some of these school papers or cards/notes that I couldn’t part with. Which brings me to the next subject:

SCAN

What to do with photos?

We purchased a scanner with a hopper that would scan up to 36 photos at a time at high speed. It was $500, but it saved a ton of time and did a really nice job of creating a quality scan. You also have the option to auto-correct your photos, and keep the original scan plus the corrected copy. The scanner we used also scans documents and saves them as pdf files. I used it to scan recipes and magazine articles. We thought we could offset some of the cost by offering this service to other people and charging a nominal fee. There are several printers out there – we used the Epson FastFoto FF-680W because it had all the features we wanted. Best Buy had a sale and we got it for a cheaper price than was advertised on the Epson website.

Recommended Reading

If you or your significant other are having trouble letting go of your possessions, I highly recommend reading “Everything that Remains –
A Memoir by The Minimalists”. However, try getting a digital copy or audio book !