Spring Cleaning – A Great Time to Dig Out

“Time and again, in my house, when we’re cleaning up after dinner, there will be, say, a small clump of uneaten string beans, and I’ll have it poised over the garbage. My wife will lunge for it like a person rescuing a baby from a wood chipper, saying: ‘Those will be good for leftovers!’ She’ll carefully seal the string beans in a plastic container and put them in the refrigerator, as if she truly believes that sometime in the near future an actual human in our household will say, ‘Dang! I could really chow down on some old string beans!’ Now fast-forward about a month, when my wife, passing the refrigerator, detects an odor molecule. So she takes out the plastic container and discovers that …EWWW…the string beans have been replaced by alien space worms with inch-long blue fur, which of course she hurls into the garbage, which as you may recall is exactly where I tried to throw them a month earlier.”

-Dave Barry

This is the time of year when I do my semi-annual swapping of winter and summer clothing between the bedroom closet and our guest room closet. Each time I go through this ritual, I always donate to charity some of my clothing that has not been worn for a while. I ask myself these questions as I move the clothes from one room to the other:

1. Do I like it?
2. Does it fit?
3. Do I have occasions to wear this?
4. If it cannot be worn by itself, does it go with anything else I currently own?
5. If it needs to be mended or cleaned, am I likely to wear it once I have mended or cleaned it?
6. If the answer to all of the above is NO…Does it have deep sentimental value for me or is there any other compelling reason why I choose to keep it?

In my July 2005 newsletter, 96 Minutes a Day That Will Change Your Life, I introduced the 80/20 rule – also known as the Pareto Principle. This rule holds true for clothes in your closet as much as it does for papers in your file drawers. The 80/20 rule maintains that 80 percent of the clothes in your closets and drawers are worn 20 percent of the time, and that 20 percent are worn 80 percent of the time.

How often have you moved into a larger house that had lots of extra space, only to find that within a few short years the house was too small to hold all your “stuff” and you felt a need to move to a larger space again?

For most of us, it’s not a matter of too little space, but rather too much stuff!

As you ponder how the Pareto Principle might apply to your life, consider a couple of factoids from Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age:

• The self-storage industry generates $17 billion per year in the U.S. This is larger than the motion picture industry’s earnings.
• The US spends more money on trash bags than the entire GNP of more than 40 countries.

A number of popular books have been written about the simplicity movement. There are two primary ingredients to living a more simple life:

1. Be selective about what you buy.  Before purchasing something, ask yourself a couple questions:

• Is this one of those “impulse” things where I am buying it because it is a good deal or because I like it, but I really don’t need it?  Or is this something that will truly enhance my life to have it?
• If I do not buy it today, can I come back and buy it a month from now if I still want it then?

2. Let go of the things you have that do not enhance your life.  I know several people who have sold or given away many of their worldly possessions and have moved into a much smaller place, in an effort to simplify their lives.  Doing so has several benefits:

• It saves money:  less expenditures, less square footage to rent or own, less “stuff” to insure
• It saves energy:  less square footage to heat or air condition, less “stuff” to maintain
• It saves time:  easier to clean a home or office that is not cluttered with things, easier to find things when they are not buried in clutter
• It reduces stress and overwhelm.  Sometimes less is more!

Many of us know someone who has been saddled with managing the estate of a loved one who left behind hoards of belongings for surviving family members to deal with.  I wouldn’t wish that job on anyone!  Not only must the survivors work through the grief of their loss, but they also must expend huge amounts of time, money, and energy while deciding what to do with everything that was left behind. 

As they say, you can’t take it with you!  So how does one go about letting go of stuff?  Whether it is paper, books, equipment, household or office furnishings, clothing, etc., here are some questions to ask yourself as you make decisions about what to keep and what to let go of:

1. Will keeping this enhance my life on a regular basis?
2. What’s the worst thing that could happen if I gave or threw this away?
3. Does tossing or keeping this have tax or legal implications?
4. If I’m going to get rid of it someday, why not today?
5. If I got rid of this today and discovered that I needed it later, could I fairly easily replace it?
6. By the time I might need it, will it be obsolete?
7. Could this enhance someone else’s life?
8. If this place burned down, would I actively work to replace this item?

If you cannot identify how keeping something would enhance your life, but you just cannot bear the thought of parting with it, put it in storage and make a date with yourself to revisit it a year from now.  Then you can ask, “Have I missed it over the past year?  If I never saw this again, would I miss having it?” 

I just completed my “spring closet switch.”  This time around,  I decided to be extra ruthless in getting rid of things I had not worn in years.  I came to realize that since I now work primarily from a home office, I rarely wear my business suits anymore. And I have selected the perfect local non-profit organization to donate my clothes to.  Dress for Success provides business attire to disadvantaged women entering the workforce.  Each Dress for Success client receives one suit when she has an interview and a second suit when she gets the job.  It felt so good to let go of these clothes – which I paid good money for and were in excellent condition – because they no longer enhanced my life to keep them.  For me, it was easier to let go of something with the knowledge that it will enhance someone else’s life more than my own.

Next project is my file cabinet. It’s time to toss all the obsolete stuff that has been collecting in there over the past year.  I can already imagine how good it will feel to have extra space in the file drawers so I can easily access the hanging files rather than having to shoe-horn one more piece of paper into my full filing cabinet.

Tame YOUR Paper Tiger!

Did you know that the #1 reason why people pile instead of file paper is a fear of never finding it again?  The #2 reason is a fear of remembering to follow up with something requiring action.  If this sounds like you, I invite you to attend my free monthly teleclasses.

• My Find Anything in 5 Seconds or Less teleclass provides you with an opportunity to download a free trial of The Paper Tiger so you can see first-hand how this remarkable software helps you to organize the things you store in your physical environment for quick and easy retrieval.  I’ve been using the Paper Tiger since 1998 for my own filing system. 
• My Buried in Paper teleclass teaches you how to create and use an effective tickler file system to remind you of important follow-up at the right time. 

For those who already own the Paper Tiger, the manufacturer has recently announced their plans to release version 4.0 this summer.  Click here to read about the enhancements included with version 4.0.  Please click here to place your order before July 31, 2006 and take advantage of the pre-release “early bird” special pricing.  (The upgrade will ship as soon as it releases around August 1.)