Do Less (6 page)

Once your teen has had a taste of what it takes to keep your house running, talk to him or her about why you're getting rid of things and buying less. Now is the time to get into the nuts and bolts of how your family, and your teen specifically, will benefit from using minimalism to have a more organized home, more money, and more time. Talk to him or her about what you'll be doing with these savings: you'll have more time and more free cash for family vacations and to put toward college education, and with less stuff in the home there will be less to clean and maintain, so chores will be easier.

Here are more ideas for projects to get your teens to reduce what they own and spend:

1. Trust your teen to transition his wardrobe to the next season by himself. Give him the responsibility of deciding what clothes are in good enough condition to resell, what should be donated, and what, if anything, should be saved for a younger sibling.
   
2. Do a leave-for-college “test run.” Ask your teen to pack up her room as if she were moving to college. Remind her of the space she will likely be moving into: a shared dorm room with small closets, one bookshelf, and a single bed. This can be a great way to segue into keeping just her most beloved and well-used items and donating what she has outgrown or rarely uses.
   
3. Take a family trip to the garbage dump. Seeing how much waste households produce can be a strong motivator for more thoughtful consumerism and less waste.
   

Teaching your teen how to live with fewer things will not only enhance your family life and home; it will give you peace of mind when you send your child off into the world. Wouldn't it be great to know that your own children will never fill a basement with old college textbooks and boxes of outdated clothing? Consider the time and energy spent encouraging your teens to declutter as an investment in their future financial and emotional well-being.

Are you storing clothing, toys, and books for that yet-to-be-conceived next baby? Do you have your eleven-year-old's winter clothes from last year packed away with the idea that your six-year-old will eventually wear them? Storing clothes for “someday” often leaves you with big clutter problems today. The boxes and storage containers pile up as the years go by. Often, the clothes from one child never get worn by the next because they fit in the wrong season or the child has very different tastes than his or her older sibling.

Sure, you can save some cash by using hand-me-downs, but you can also lose money. Items that wait for years in storage can become moldy from damp conditions or get moth-eaten. If the fashions are of-the-minute, they may look outdated by the time they are ready for the next child. Sometimes you're so busy you forget what you have packed away, and that snowsuit you saved for two years ends up going to a neighbor because you bought a new one before checking what you had in storage.

Unless you can pass clothing directly from one child to the next to wear, only keep your best pieces. If you used the advice in this section to scale back your kid's clothing to a week's worth, you are probably close to having just what you can easily store for another child. Set a goal for hand-me-downs by limiting your storage to a number of outfits per size. For babies, it might mean anywhere from six to a dozen onesies or sleepers and for a seven-year-old it might mean four bottoms and eight tops. Kids' clothing is easy enough to come by secondhand if you need to fill out a younger child's wardrobe.

More radical and storage-scant parents should consider not storing any clothes at all. Yes, even if you have children a few years apart, think about the space, time, and stress you would save if instead of storing old clothes you sold them on consignment instead. A good children's consignment clothing store can act like a clothing library for families. Consign pieces as children grow out of them and then use store credit to purchase secondhand for the next child. Any wardrobe gaps can be filled by suggesting clothing as birthday or holiday gifts from grandparents and family. This is a bold move, but it can free a family from a lot of stress and clutter.

Tip: don't delve into those boxes of stored clothing until you have a few hours on hand and you've already made a plan and know when and where the unneeded clothing will be sent. Clothes often conjure a lot of memories, so be prepared to take a trip down memory lane as you decide what should stay and what should go.

Imagine sitting at a desk with nothing on it but your computer. No mug of pens, stack of bills, or errant paper clips hiding under your keyboard. You sit down to tackle a task—say, paying bills online or checking in on a work project—and your focus is sharp. Instead of being distracted by the things cluttering your work area, you are able to quickly and efficiently get your work done. Thirty minutes later, you're turning your computer off and using the rest of your weekend or evening for the fun and leisure you deserve.

Unfortunately, this scenario doesn't happen for most of us. The home office you created, the one that was going to help you get more done, usually turns into a den for anything you can't fit in the rest of your home. “Home office” usually means home gym/extra closet/guest room/storage room. The sanctuary you created to write your novel is the first thing to go when you have too much stuff.

If you've decluttered your home in the order listed in this book, you should now have a clear vision of what you want to keep in your home. With these new eyes, you'll be able to spot and remove the nonessentials from your home office. The seasonal clothing that you stored in the closet can be pared down and put where it belongs (in your bedroom). If the office truly is the best place for your treadmill, and you're actually using the treadmill frequently, keep it. The goal is to work with the space you have to facilitate the truly important things in your life.

Paper is a big clutter culprit in home offices. We'll work on reducing incoming paper and creating an effortless system to deal with all the bills and statements later, in the Life section. For now, as you discover what your home office really looks like without all that stuff, file all your paper clutter into a box. Right now focus on the things that are already covering your desk, chair, and in some cases, the floor. Once all your paper clutter is in one spot, sort it into four piles: shred, recycle, file, and action.

Anything with personal or sensitive information on it should be shredded. Don't have a paper shredder? Before you run out and buy one, try to source some alternative shredding methods:

• Some companies allow employees to shred personal documents at work.
  
• Check with your local office-supply or copy shop to see if they offer confidential shredding services.
  
• If you compost kitchen waste, you can “shred” paper by adding it into your compost system.
  

It's very important to dispose of sensitive documents properly to avoid things like identity theft, so find a method that works for you and that you can do regularly.

Next, take your “file” pile and cull the papers again. Put some fresh eyes on all that paper and think about your home filing system and how often you use it. It's smart to have a paper copy of your mortgage or life-insurance policy filed away, but you don't really need the receipt for a blender you bought three years ago. One main culprit of paper clutter is receipts and statements that you don't really need. If your utility companies provide account information online, you can shred statements or sign up for paperless billing or online-only statements.

This is your chance to reduce your home filing system to just the essentials: birth certificates, legal documents, and warranties for large appliances. Here's a list of things you might be holding onto in a file cabinet that you can get rid of:

• Appliance manuals.
  Most manuals are available online and you can search for videos detailing how to fix, reset, or operate the appliance. If you're not comfortable being without a paper manual, reduce the size of it by cutting out any sections that are in a foreign language.
  
• Receipts.
  If you're thinking about returning an item, keep the receipt in your wallet to remind yourself to return it within the store's return policy timeframe. Set a cut-off price for keeping receipts, such as anything over $50. If you paid for something with a credit card, often a credit card statement listing the purchase can act as a receipt. Again, instead of keeping every credit-card statement use online services to print a statement when you need it.
  
• Statements.
  Why are you keeping that phone bill from three years ago? Unless it is required for work, shred it. Saving every bank, utility, credit card, and phone statement for a household will exponentially increase the amount of filing space needed. In this age of electronic statements and storage, you don't need to keep as many paper files. Again, if you haven't already done so, sign up for paperless statements and familiarize yourself with each bank's and company's online customer service portal.
  

This is a great opportunity to clean up the desktop of your computer. If you download files and pictures and leave them directly on the desktop of your computer, you probably can barely find what you need on your desktop. Instead, make folders and store files in an organized way. You want your computer to look and feel as peaceful and centered as the room you are working in.

If your home office has turned into a storage or multipurpose room, recommit to making it a space for work. This means making space in your bedroom closet for the extra clothes you store in the office closet, taking that appliance you need to repair to the repair shop, and finding a new home for, or donating, anything else that isn't related to your home office. A home office space is meant just for that: working from home.

Now that you've unearthed your desk and dramatically reduced the amount of paper in your home office, it's time to create a peaceful workspace. Choose up to three of your favorite décor pieces for your desk and dust and display them. A framed photo, a paperweight, and a few pens are enough. If you have a pin board, remove anything that isn't recent or urgent.

Now that you've restored order to your home office, ask yourself, do I really need a dedicated room for a home office? With digital storage solutions, you can easily contain household documents in a small file cabinet. Online calendars, wireless Internet, wireless printing, and other office solutions mean you need less physical space and fewer things for home offices. If you've always wanted more space in your home, consider giving up the home office. Work can be done from the dining room table if you have a laptop, and a wireless printer can be stored almost anywhere in your house. That small paper file system could be stored in any communal room in the home. A dedicated home office isn't always a necessity with the ability to work on a laptop from almost anywhere.

You've peeled back the layers of your home and left yourself with a tidy space that reflects your life and loves. You've put the work in and can now enjoy the many rewards. Your home is now easy to clean and to keep tidy. You can finally find things when you need them and you can relax with all that clutter gone. Enjoy your newfound space and freedom.

To keep the clutter at bay long-term, you'll need to do two things:

1. Be discerning about what you bring into your home.
   
2. Regularly review what's in your home and if it is still serving a purpose.
   

Ideally, you should declutter your home with the seasons. As you put your summer clothing away, donate anything you didn't wear that year. Take a quick tour of the rest of your home for things that you're no longer using and that can be given to someone who will use and enjoy them. You've done the heavy lifting—but, like a dieter who is now in maintenance mode, you'll need to keep your new shape by regularly weighing in with your possessions.

It can be overwhelming to realize the amount of things in your home that you're not using—not only because they've been untouched for months and years, but because you spent your hard-earned dollars on them. And those dollars equal time. Every misguided purchase at the mall is equal to hours at your job. For some people the amount of clutter they clear from their homes can equal a good chunk of their annual salaries.

Don't mentally beat yourself up for mistakes you made in the past. The money is spent, and if you are able to recoup a fraction of it by reselling some items, you've done well. Keeping those things you never wear or use just wastes
more
of your time, and time is money.

The good news is that you don't have to waste your earnings anymore. From this day forward you can spend thoughtfully and resist the siren song of sales. From this day forward you can invest your money and space and time in the things you love and use. So leave the past and your misspent dollars behind and get ready to start a new chapter in your spending life. In the Money section of this book, you'll learn how to use minimalism in your financial life to save more and redefine your relationship with the almighty buck.

Lastly, congratulations. You've decluttered your home and created a beautiful space to live, work, and play in. Enjoy!

The sixty-hour workweek used to be reserved for lawyers and medical students. Today, with smartphone in hand, most people on a salaried wage work far more than the forty-hour-a-week company policy. Factor in a meager week or two of vacation time and most people really do live attached at the hip to the office. Balancing personal time with work life has never been harder.