A couple of years ago, I decided to trim my Facebook feed so that it gave me content that informed and challenged me. I didn’t want it to be some kind of echo chamber that fed me information that amplified my already held beliefs, nor did I want it to be a downer that made me feel like the world was going to hell in a hand basket. I want to know what’s honestly going on in the world, I want balanced analyses and I want to consider interesting ideas and events.
Enter Becoming Minimalist. I love this page. Not because I endeavor to be some kind of militant minimalist. Nope. But because it makes consider my consumption and really take a critical look at what’s around me.
Chris Story is famous for saying, ‘live like you’re selling.’ That one always makes me chuckle when I hear it. I was an RCMP kid, we moved house A LOT. I know what living like you’re selling is like and I ain’t got time for that! So I take that to mean that you should really take care of your surroundings. Do that preventative maintenance, get rid of all the clutter, brokenness, and mess that surrounds you and take a little bit of time to keep it tidy.
That’s been a huge thrust of my Love it or List it campaign. Tackle that clutter and mess and keep it tidy. So I hired a cleaner to come in once every couple of weeks to keep it clean while I keep on busting that clutter.
Clutter is a big thing for us. For my husband especially. He’s busy and doesn’t have a lot of time to manage stuff. He’s also one for sentimental clutter. He’s got so much memorabilia from his childhood at the house. And what does it do? It sits in a box in the garage.
After reading an oh so relevant post on Becoming Minimalist about sentimental clutter, I felt inspired to tackle the old stuff weighing us down (my own old stuff included, I’m guilty, too).
My husband has cooler clutter than me. For example, he has a big box of vintage fishing lures in the garage. They used to collect dust on the wall of his old bedroom in Florida. Now they live in a box in our garage. So what’s a quasi-minimalist, clutter-busting person to do about it? USE IT! Inspired by a piece of art I saw while visiting my mom, and with the help of a good builder friend, I set to work and built a wall clock using the lures.
I’m almost done – I think I need to order fatter clock hands. But I like it. And now, instead of those fishing lures hiding in a box in my garage, they will be repurposed and seen every day.
Love it: 2
List it: 0