A Challenge for You

By Darcy Thiel

I’ve written about the months that I spent helping my dad downsize his house for a one-bedroom apartment. If it wasn’t such exhausting work, I would advertise my organizing business more. I mean, we had only had one extra box left. The day we moved him we also had all but one box unpacked. That stuff doesn’t happen by luck.

I try to always keep a Goodwill box going. Whenever I notice something we don’t need, I get rid of it. So when I make a concerted effort to do a house purge, I am always shocked at how much I have to get rid of again. It’s amazing how fast it builds up.

A friend asked me one day when I was driving home from Dad’s if it made me want to go home and throw all my stuff out. I said no because I was usually too exhausted to even move my arms. But it stuck in my head. Damn her. She has a way of doing that.

I gave myself a goal. I want to try to get rid of one thing in my house every day for a year. That would be a lot of items. I wondered if six months was more realistic, but so far I’ve been doing it. I’m not even sure what day I started.

I started talking to my neighbors about music. They recommended I download Itunes so I can upload my music CDs onto my computer. This is kind of cheating, but now I am ripping one cd every day. Then I check all the songs on the list and delete those that I don’t like at all. The ones that I think are ok but wouldn’t really choose to listen to, stay on the album. The ones I actually want to hear go on the playlist. It’s amazing (at least with the ones I’ve started with) how few of the songs on an album I actually want to hear. After that, get this… I am putting the actual cd in the giveaway box. I’m going to get rid of all of them.

That will probably take up several months so that is why I say it is kind of like cheating. But I plan to keep getting rid of things. Americans are massive consumers. I don’t want my kids to ever have to deal with all my stuff. I scan what I can and then get rid of it.

That is my challenge to you. You don’t have to ditch yourCDs, but pick some sort of time goal and get rid of one thing every day and see what happens. Almost everyone who downsizes feels relieved. There is so much freedom in having less to take care of. People who hold on to their things, tend to be the ones who are always trying to get more or worried about getting their share. There is no freedom with that.

Happy garbage day!