Helping one of our consumers clean out her closet yesterday, after it having been deemed a safety risk, it struck me that less truly is more. Now, I have my own hoarding tendencies so it was especially poignant for me to witness this and help out through the process, just seeing all the reasons a person can come up with to justify hanging onto things they didn't even know they had. The dust was incredible and my sinuses suffered for the rest of the day; had I known it would have been such an undertaking, I would have brought my bandana to cover myself up.
For some people, the junk is all they have; it's in their minds, their hearts, strewn all over their floor and spilling out of closets. Terminal clutter. I personally know how easy it is to just let things accumulate because you think you may find some use for it later but you don't; if you had a use for it, you would have used it right away. I also know how difficult yet liberating it can be to finally get into that mindset to clear that shit out, once and for all. Everything must go. Either have someone help you out or be vigilant and just start tossing, because you'll continue to find every excuse to hang onto what you don't need.
Maybe it's just loneliness, or filling some void inside yourself. Maybe it's just laziness; you say, "Oh, I'll clean it tomorrow", while the dirt keeps piling up. It's unhealthy in every way, shape and form.
The amazing part, to me, was realizing in that moment how little we actually need on a day to day basis. Sure, it's nice to have a wardrobe and it's certainly wise to have a well-stocked refrigerator but we generally always just have way more shit than we need. 700 TV channels, too many socks, thousands of CDs... all these things are nice but we can only do one thing at a time!
Our society seems to have taken the stance in opposition to the Depression-era days, when people really didn't have anything. Was life better then because they had less? I can't say but can only speculate that, no, it was not because there was no choice in the matter: things really were that bad that there wasn't much and what was cost too much to afford. So now, we have GMO's to ensure huge-yielding crops and excess in every other way imaginable, as some sort of security blanket; the hard truth is that when the time comes to go with less, more people will be map-adjusted to knowing how to deal with that.
I'm not saying to get rid of all your material possessions, because I know I'm as materialistic as they come and I love my books and music and would be lost without my laptop. However, there are conscious choices we can make every day to take the path of less is more. After all, the saying goes, "Waste not, want not".
Some suggestions: Eat less food but of a higher quality, and drink more water with your meals. Unless you're a professional athlete or bodybuilder, you won't miss the excess calories. If one is good, two is not always better. Re-use, Up-cycle, all that stuff people blab on about every day; it's for a reason. Buy smaller houses. Build smaller houses (obviously I have no family of my own, so if you do then you do what you need to, just keep in mind that some rooms exist only to catch clutter, it seems. Do you really need a bathroom for each person? The water usage and waste increases exponentially the more heads you bring in to the equation). Build bigger gardens, keep smaller yards. Plant more trees (it's all less mowing you have to do anyway, so who really loses there?)
Just a few things we can all do to pitch in and do our share. Think about it.
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