The Purge – Playing a Minimalism Game

There are two kinds of people in this world – keepers and tossers.

I am a keeper.  In my world, material things spark memories and feelings. As a very emotional personality, I like to feel those things.

Mu husband is a tosser.  In his world, material things just create clutter and clutter is messy… or something along those lines.

When we merged our lives, we managed to find a happy compromise somewhere closer to the tosser end of the spectrum, but I’m okay with that.  I have learned that you don’t have to hold onto to things in order to keep the memories. During the three year span of our marriage, I’ve felt like we’ve become fairly minimalistic and I’ve definitely become more of a tosser in general.

And then we moved.  If you ever need to be reminded of how much stuff you REALLY have – move.

It doesn’t help that our new home is dramatically different than our old home and things just don’t FIT the same here.  I mean, the coffee cup cupboard just doesn’t hold our 13 mismatched coffee cups the way the old one did.  But then again, unless we are opening a bed and breakfast, do we really NEED 13 mismatched coffee cups? Probably not.

After about a week of  frustration, trying to make our 13 cups fit in a 12 cup cabinet, I stumbled across the Minimalism Game. The idea behind the Minimalism Game is to spend one month getting rid of things.  So on day one, you get rid of one thing.  On day two, you get rid of two things, day three – three things and so on.  You do this for an entire month, and at the end of the month you have rid yourself of 465 things (496 if there are 31 days).

BINGO! I mean, day one’s victim had already been decided (that extra coffee cup) and I wasn’t even trying.  How hard could it really be?

Because I had a few days before a new month began (and I actually started purging things), I did a little planning.  The first week or ten days I felt confident I could wing it. However, purging double digits DAILY was going to be a little tougher.  I devised the following strategy:

1. Every item counts.  If there were 18 capsules left in an expired pill bottle – that counted as 18 items. This came in incredibly useful towards the middle of the month.

Day 12: Baby spoons, 12 of them.  I kept only the ones we use.
Day 12: Baby spoons, 12 of them. I kept only the ones we use.

2. Save larger projects for later in the month.  For example, cleaning out my closet was sure to provide a large number of items to purge – as would my son’s closet, the toy chest, the guest room closet, etc. Saving those for the end of the month also allowed time to mentally prepare myself for such undertakings.

Day 22: Fabric samples leftover from decorating our OLD house.
Day 22: Fabric samples leftover from decorating our OLD house.

3.  Things didn’t actually have to be out of the house to count.  I created three categories – toss, give and sell.  The day’s designated purge items had to be in one of these piles to count. The toss items were tossed on the spot. I did my very best to find homes for the give items ASAP. I have a firm “if it was given to me, it gets given away” policy, which made designating items for this pile a lot easier.  What I couldn’t find a home for was dropped at Goodwill in one big trip at the end of the month.  As for the sell items – I plan to sell at the Spring JBF sale, so items had to be tagged and ready to go before they could count in my purge total.  If it wasn’t an item that could be sold at JBF, it had to be listed on Craigslist to count.

Even with a strategy, making it to the end of the month was challenging.  I quickly learned to tackle one area at a time.  You would be amazed at all the places things go to die if you really look. My bathroom is a prime example – Mary Kay bottles I’ve had since high school that were all but empty? Tell my why I had moved those 10 times.

Day 14: a collection of outdated and all but empty bottles from the bathroom.  Also, the empty CHI box I've held onto for the last five year "in case I needed it."
Day 14: A collection of outdated and all but empty bottles from the bathroom. Also, the empty CHI box I’ve held onto for the last five year “in case I needed it.”

Bottom line is this worked for me. It was almost as if someone gave me permission to not own ALL the stuff.  Best part is it was actually kinda fun – I understand why they call it a game.  So why not give it a try? A new month is right around the corner!

Are you a keeper or a tosser? How do you stay organized and eliminate excess? 

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Lindsey
Born and raised throughout the Midwest, Lindsey has officially called Oklahoma home for nearly ten years. Wife to Michael and mother to Ivan, she left the corporate world to be home with her family full time in 2012. When not chasing her ridiculously active 18-month old, Lindsey enjoys being involved in community organizations and planning outings for a local moms group. She also enjoys running, reading, road trips and all things mid-century.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Lindsey,
    This is genius. I am a keeper, not hoarder status … but a keeper at most. I am all about sentiment. I always think I will make a project out the memories and then it just gets stored in a file folder and those file folders have added up. This post was super helpful and inspiring. Thank you. I may start this during Christmas break.

    • Thanks Patty! I know all about those folders you speak of…my grandfather used to call my grandmother a “pilot,” because she would “pile it over here” and “pile it over there!” Keeping things is in my blood, so it was tough, but soooo worth it in the end. Good luck!!!

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