The 2 stages of simplifying
June 11, 2010
-And how uncluttering physical stuff leads to psychological uncluttering
This post is inspired by a comment by Brett @ www.step1minimalist.com to “Moving beyond the low-hanging fruit of the simplicity movement” by Sam Spurlin
“The stage of stuff”
When one first gets into the whole simplicity/minimalism thing there’s a big focus on “stuff”. Getting rid of stuff, organizing stuff, getting stuff done, doing without stuff and limiting one self to very little stuff, like 50 of 100 items.
And that’s great but it’s only half of what this is about. You can unclutter and throw away all you wan’t, but it is not the end goal, its only the first step. It really is liberating to get rid of things that is not used anymore and try to par down to what we see a our personal necessities.
However, as I see it, the ‘journey’ doesn’t end here. Having gotten rid of all that physical stuff, has now made our daily lives a lot easier. You pretty much know where everything is, like which of your shirts are clean at the moment and whats available in the fridge and so on. Maybe you´ve even gotten a good simple ‘to-do’ list going.
“The stage of brain-clutter”
This is where I see the second stage of minimalism kick in. The fact that you´ve made your physical life easier, has reduced your stress-level and there is more you “don’t really need to think about”, like cleaning and organizing (Maybe you’ve even given up on a few dead-end projects or hobbies). This leaves you with more time on your hands. Time to think. Time to evaluate what’s important for you. Personally, I feel forced to think about and deal with my feelings about family, friends and relationships, who I wan’t to be, where I’m going in life. I say forced in the most positive meaning of the word, because I see this as one of the keys elements of simplicity. By removing all non-essentials from your life, you have to put some thought into what’s actually important. And by by removing obvious physical clutter from your life, you get time to do just that.
