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The late George Carlin said it best: our houses are nothing more than a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. It is hard to break the habit of accumulation, and harder still to get rid of what you have collected over the years. There are some basic tips and concepts:
- Follow the like in like out principle: If a new item comes into the house, like a sweater or souvenir coffee mug, make sure something similar goes out either to the recycling center, Goodwill, to a friend, or if necessary, to the dump.
- Go through your closet and get rid of everything you have not worn in two years.
Others practice a more radical simplicity: Dave Bruno is trying to whittle down the things he owns and needs to a list of 100 things, including his toothbrush and pencil, and to live with just those things for an entire year. Others have minimalism forced upon them; Brian Jones packed everything he owned into a truck for a move and when he woke up in the morning, everything was gone. He is turning this loss into an opportunity, and is documenting everything he buys. "This is about living in a consumer culture and being aware of the things I buy. Since there is so much that I will need to rebuy, I thought it would be interesting to keep track of everything I buy. When I start buying back the things that we seem to acquire -usually unnoticed-over time, I want to think about how it will be used, where it's made, how it's made, how long it will last me and what will happen to it when I no longer need/want it."
Don't Own when you can borrow or rent. There are all kinds of what are called Product Service Systems which replaces a product with a service; instead of paying for the product itself (and whatever maintenance and upkeep it requires), you pay to use the product for a bit, and then give it back. Think of it this way: a PSS is often an answer to the question, "Hey, do you really need to own one of those?" There are PSSs for everything from books (that's the idea, a library!) to bikes to tooks and in Japan, even cats. See What Makes a Good Product Service System? for a roundup.
Sometimes it is a problem just finding a way to get rid of the stuff; fortunately there are great online services like Freecycle, gigoit and craigslist that are effective, as well as more traditional techniques such as yard sales and donations to Goodwill.
More in Planet Green and TreeHugger:
Strategies for Surviving in Small Spaces
Read the next page "Sometimes you just need a place to put everything."
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