Aha! I’ve just discovered the “more” tag. I think this is the solution to my problem of what to do with my two blogs, this one and the LJ. As you may know, up till now I’ve been posting personal entries on the LiveJournal and “professional” entries on this one. The thinking was, not everyone who’s here to hear about my art-making is interested in my views on politics, the ins and outs of my health, or pictures of my cats. But I’m getting tired of maintaining two blogs. So I’m going to try something new. I will start to include my personal entries here instead of on the LJ, but I’ll hide the main text behind a “more” tag so people who want to skip over them may do so. Let me know what you think.
Later today I’ll return to Thursday Writing with some thoughts on blogging. But in the meantime, today’s personal post is on decluttering.
Earlier this week Mommy sent me an article that mentioned a couple who made it their goal to live with only 100 possessions. This would seem to bring their stuff-owning down to 19th-century pioneer levels, which is both insane and interesting to think about. I wondered if it was even possible, so I made a list. I did not include the house or any food, but other than that, I put down everything I consider a necessity.
- Car
- Toothbrush for Lisa
- Toothbrush for Erik
- Toothpaste
- Floss
- Drinking glass
- Mug with a handle (to double as ladle or as soup bowl)
- Bowl for Lisa
- Bowl for Erik
- Plate for Lisa
- Plate for Erik
- Napkin for Lisa
- Napkin for Erik
- Paring knife
- Butter knife
- Fork for Lisa
- Fork for Erik
- Spoon for Lisa
- Spoon for Erik
- Chopsticks for Lisa
- Chopsticks for Erik
- Kitchen knife
- Cutting board (Erik: “You can cut on a plate.” Me: “You can’t cut everything on a plate.”)
- Spatula (Erik: “You can use a spoon.” Me: “Yes. But I want my spatula.”)
- Mixing bowl
- Cooking pot
- Colander (this is starting to remind me of a Richard Scarry picture dictionary I loved as a kid)
- Baking sheet or casserole
- Fridge (I include this but not other kitchen appliances, because some houses/apartments don’t come with a fridge)
- Kitchen towel
- All-purpose liquid detergent for hands and dishes
- Dish sponge or brush
- Reusable shopping bag
- Plastic wrap or foil
- Bath towel
- All-purpose liquid soap for faces, bodies, and hair
- Sunblock
- Body lotion
- Jacket (for me, since Erik rarely wears one)
- Scarf (ditto above)
- Sun hat
- Pants for Lisa
- Pants for Erik
- Shirt for Lisa
- Shirt for Erik
- Shoes for Lisa
- Shoes for Erik
- Bra
- Sports bra
- Raincoat for Lisa
- Raincoat for Erik
- Hair tie
- Yoga pants (because they’re not durable, but I can’t exercise in stiff pants like jeans)
- Undies for Lisa
- Undies for Erik
- Extra undies 1
- Extra undies 2
- Purse/bag/backpack
- Water bottle
- Journal/sketchbook
- Pen
- Pencil w/eraser
- Piano or keyboard for Erik (his equivalent to my sketchbook)
- Compartmented cat dish (food & water wells)
- Carrier for Tisha
- Carrier for Lyapa
- Litterbox
- Cat litter
- Laptop
- Printer
- Chair
- Table/desk
- Bed/mattress
- Fitted sheet
- Comforter
- Duvet cover
- Extra blanket
- Pillow for Lisa
- Pillow for Erik
- Pillowcase 1
- Pillowcase 2
- Food container (like a Tupperware)
- Tissues
- Toilet paper
- Cell phone for Lisa
- Cell phone for Erik
- Comb
- Nightgown for Lisa
- Sleeping shorts for Erik
- Lamp/light
- Scissors
- Tape
- Stapler
- Neosporin or similar
- Bandages
- Tylenol or similar
- Emergency kit (just lumping all this into one item!)
- Hammer
- Screwdriver
- Wrench
It’s a strange exercise. I’ve included what I consider the bare necessities, though if Erik had made the list he’d probably have left out a lot of this stuff. What my list does exclude are art and decorations, plants, all books, CDs and DVDs, all craft or art supplies, and food. Even aside from these, we’d have to adjust our lifestyle dramatically to live according to this list. We couldn’t have dinner parties, for example, unless people brought their own plates; we couldn’t attend any functions that required dressing up. And we’d have to be doing laundry daily or near-daily. But living with this list would also render most of our furniture unnecessary, and our house would be ridiculously, ridiculously too huge.
I realized after I made this list that the NYT article actually doesn’t say “100 possessions,” but “100 personal items,” which it implies refers only to clothing and toiletries. Ohhhhhh. I mentioned to Erik that we might try paring down our possessions to something like 100 books, 100 craft/art supplies, 100 fabrics/trims, 100 articles to be worn (clothing, accessories, jewelry), 100 items of food, 100 kitchen implements, and finally 100 everything else. It’d still probably be a useful exercise, but not nearly as dramatic as the list I made above, which really forced me to imagine my material life at its most minimal.
Just out of curiosity, I checked my bookshelves and CD tower after making this list, and estimated we have about 250 CDs/DVDs and 400 books. So if we ever wanted to really streamline, we could do something like this: take out books in sets of 4, select only 1 to keep. Probably I’d only get down to 300 or 250 books, but that’d still be an enormous change. A couple of weekends ago we helped some friends move and they had 53 boxes of books, which provided a very physical demonstration of what it means to own so many volumes! And I haven’t looked over my closet or jewelry box at all; I don’t have any idea how much of my wardrobe I’d have to pare down to get to 100.
Lots of food for thought.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
But the point of the article was also how you spend your money vs personal happiness. So I don’t think that it’s necessarily about the number 100 but more about why some people with fewer personal belongings are happier than some wealthy unhappy people. but back to your entry, yes, I agree. the 100 possessions thing is quite interesting and definitely counting your personal possessions is a way to start looking at how much extra stuff you own/buy that don’t really contribute to your happiness level.
True true true. I forgot to say in the post that I kind of skimmed the rest of the article after the “100 things” couple because I felt like I already knew about the spending stuff. ;b The reason I fixed on the 100 number is that I think we already spend money on experiences and not on things (yoga classes, writing workshops, road trips, etc), but we still keep way more belongings around than we need.
I know the feeling! I’ve wanted to declutter my life for awhile. I stopped buying anything but shampoo and conditioner for my hair. I gave up all makeup, face soaps, face lotions and other assorted crap that I dont need or (shock) dont even want! I dont even blowdry my hair everyday anymore. Just decluttering my “beauty” rituals has taken so much stress out of my life! I admire your quest to have only a set amount of books. Whenever I think of getting rid of my books, I feel a pang in my chest 😦 *sigh* it’s probably a sign that it needs to be done 😦
Hee. I used to be a total makeup maven in high school, and these days I don’t even bother with lip balm most of the time (and if I drink tons of water, I actually don’t need it unless I’m out in the wind or cold).
Lately I’ve made a firm rule for myself for books. I don’t get to check out anything from the library unless it’s part of a series I’ve already begun. Otherwise, I have to choose my reading from the ample collection of unread books on my shelves. And I don’t get to acquire new books unless they are already on my to-read list. It’s amazing how much this has already helped me to clear my shelves! (But to backpedal a little… let me know if you ever do purge your bookshelves… 😉 )
in the last few years i feel i’ve gotten really good at buying and keeping only things that bring me happiness in some way. i’ve definitely become opposed to owning lots of random objects that are rarely used and/or clutter up the place. of course there are still many “areas” that need to be “weeded” (clothing is always an ongoing process), but i think i’m definitely improving. and i’m happy that sean is mostly on board for “weeding” things out :). perhaps years and years of my mom saying “that’s JUNK! you don’t need it” are taking their toll…
Heh, my mom is the opposite, and so is Erik’s. They are of the “you never know when you might need it” school — which means last time I was at my parents’ house I tried to throw out some really cheap old toys and my mom had a conniption.
PS: i was poking around and it seems you click “satsumaart” (the name you post under in the comments) it takes you to this blog: http://satsumabug.wordpress.com/ …which seems to be different from the LJ AND the satsumaart wordpress account? is that purposeful? it seems like including it would make just one more online destination to get confused over.
Oh, crud! Thank you SO much for letting me know about that. I reserved satsumabug.wordpress in case I ever wanted it, but I have no idea how it got to be the link for the comment-posting avatar. I just changed that. It seems it won’t change the old comments, but all new ones (including this one) should point to satsumaart. Yikes… thanks again for saving me!
I have read about this exercise before, and think it is a fun thing to play with. When I was young I was fascinated by stories about people that crossed the country in wagon trains. Imagine the weeding they had to do, and they didn’t even have much to begin with. Recently I inaugerated an exercise where we (husband and myself) could each pick one thing from each room of our house to take with us on the “wagon train” – not including clothing or kitchen stuff. And it actually was very easy – there is very little that we can’t live without!
Sherry, I’m always scandalized at how much I can live without, too! Whenever I go on vacation I always think how nice it feels to be encumbered with less stuff, and I’m surprised how little I miss my regular daily “necessities.” I think that’s why this 100-items exercise was so interesting for me; it really made me think what I could do without.
As for wagon-train stories, my first-grade teacher (bless her forever!) introduced me to Laura Ingalls Wilder. I reread the “Little House” books probably once a year at least. I think I still get a lot of my perspective on the world from having grown up with these pioneer stories. 🙂
Lisa, I remember hearing about this philosophy a year or two ago. It’s an interesting concept, but like so many other people have commented – the most important part is happiness. I think happiness absolutely can come from less. But how much less? That’s something I always wonder, and I think I could still get rid of a whole lot more and still find that happiness. You?
Katie
Hi Katie! That’s what this exercise made me realize — that I could give up almost everything I own and I’d still be happy. In fact, visualizing getting rid of much of this stuff actually made me feel happier, which makes me think that there’s negative emotion associated with many of my belongings. For instance: I’ve loved my cookie press each time I’ve used it, but I haven’t touched it since moving into this house a year and a half ago. AND… every time I look at a cookie-press recipe it revives a feeling of guilt that I’m not making use of the press. After noticing this, I decided I should just get rid of it! And so on and so forth, for most of the things I own!
i totally am a believer in less is more. as you know we are in the process of selling our house. prior to putting our house on the market we had to purge and declutter and basically make it as “spare” as possible so any potential buyers could come in and imagine what the space looks like with their belongings in it. we basically just chucked a whole lot of everything into boxes and put it into storage temporarily. all that is left in our house is the essentials to live on – our beds, a desk, our laptops, a printer, printer paper, some of my sewing stuff, my ipod :), and everything in our kitchen. we even put our dresser into storage. all the clothes i have right now fit into one small little fabric cube. i reserved all the other fabric cubes for mike & isabel’s clothes. keep in mind we live in a 1920’s bungalow and the whole house only has one closet that is 6’x2.5′. all that to say… i LOVE it. it makes cleaning so much easier. i feel like i have room to breathe & walk without tripping over things. i don’t miss anything that we have put into storage (except my art stuff. i should have at least kept my watercolor set out. i miss that.). makes me wonder why i keep all this stuff around…. i think i will be taking some things straight from the storage unit to the donation station!
ps. i love your list of 100 possessions. it makes me smile 🙂
Hee. Me too. It evokes a very peculiar lifestyle… in fact, it evokes Erik’s college apartment. HAH. That’s why he knows you can cook without a cutting board… or a spatula… or more than a couple of dishes. 😉
Yes! How is the house-selling going? I know what you mean about discovering that everything feels better without all that stuff! Shra recently moved to a new apartment and I SO loved the way the bedrooms felt without anything in them. I actually starting reminiscing about back when we just moved into our house… which bodes ill for my possessions. 😉
I think a lot of my “I should hang onto this” feelings come from past experiences when having lots of stuff was somehow comforting (like in early college, when it meant I was a grown-up with my own stuff) or useful (being a grad student, when I never knew what book might come in handy for a paper). Now that those days are behind me, I have to constantly remind myself that the public library exists, that I don’t wear certain kinds of clothes anymore, that I don’t need baking tins in a million different shapes! It’s okay to send these things out into the world!
the house selling is going, i guess! we’ve had waves of people come to look at it… i love my house, so it’s a bit nerve racking when people come see it. will they like it?? it’s so silly. they are trying to figure out whether it could be THEIR home, and i’m worrying about whether they will like MY home. two very different things…
yes! send your things out into the world! maybe it will bless someone :).
I can imagine that feeling! It’s always so weird to let go of ownership after having made something, even if it’s making a home! 🙂
[…] some visual artifacts from roughly the same period of my life: handmade paper dolls! In my ongoing efforts to declutter, I’m taking photos of the paper dolls I made when I was a kid, so I can recycle […]