How to Exercise Your Simplicity Muscle
What, you didn’t know you had a simplicity muscle? It’s true! Don’t ask me to locate it, but it’s probably in the noggin. It’s the muscle that allows us to break down the most complicated projects into the simplest, manageable tasks. Professional organizers and minimalists have this muscle toned like a professional athlete’s leg muscles. Athletes may be naturally athletic, but most of their results come from exercising. You may not be naturally organized, but you can certainly exercise your simplicity muscle. Here’s how.
Dance with your barriers
Barriers get in our way, so we tend to get angry with them. Anger tightens our simplicity muscle and we can’t see solutions. Relax. Recognize the inevitability of your barriers, analyze the factors that create them and break them down. For example, is the recycling a barrier? Try a small transport bin between the sink and the garage.
Flirt with the least
Too much stuff strains our simplicity muscle and causes stress. The bedroom should be a place of rest. If there are too many clothes in it, try an experiment. Box up all your clothes except for the ones that fit great and make you feel great and move them out of your room, maybe to the basement. See if you can live with the bare minimum. You might be surprised with how little you need. If you are, consider selling or donating the excess (or some of it) that’s in the boxes.
Focus on the experiences
I find that people can fondly reminisce about a memory of a car they used to drive or a weird shirt they used to wear for a few minutes, but they can reminisce about a memory of a vacation for hours. Focus on the experiences it takes to simplify your actions not the stuff you want to buy. Buying a mail organizer, doesn’t actually organize you as much as breaking down the mail, when it comes in. Exercise your simplicity muscle by seeing what other things can be replaced with simple actions.
How do you exercise YOUR simplicity muscle?
Great analogy, Matt. So, I guess that makes you the personal trainer for simplicity exercises!
Actually a lot of our work feels like personal training, now that you mention it.
Experimenting with living with less is a great idea. I did this once when renovating a home… the whole family got one box under the bed for “stuff”. We were amazed at how little we missed the items in storage. Another way I’ve tried exercising my simplicity muscle is to stop bringing home trinkets from vacation. They just end up being clutter I feel guilty about pitching.
That’s a really good one, Seana. There’s that weird compulsion one has to bring back a trinket to prove one was there, but one has no idea what to do with it when home.