Simple Tactic I Learnt

Last week was Chinese New Year in Singapore so I was quite busy packing up and stuff. On top of that, my family decided to throw out as much things as we can because we will be moving house in the next few months' time.

The thing about packing is, you scold yourself for being so wasteful and more often than not, the reasons not to throw away certain things is because of the price you paid for them or it's lifespan or usage hasn't been utilized completely.

I saw a TED talk about minimalists about two guys who live the minimalist lifestyle (check out their web), everything is about living a meaningful life. Being in Singapore and my general distaste for being pretentious as their entire website is almost in black and white, I do find the ideas they present to be useful most of the time. Their way of life is about important things only, de-clutter, being really rich.

The things they talk about can be embraced in other aspects of your life, such as work, relationships, etc. They provide actual activities to de-clutter or clear away the extra stuff which I think is good rather than being just idealistic and vague. It is not a "see the light" or "feel with your heart", rather it is more of a "try it!" and "see for yourself"

Within the TED talk, the speaker, Joshua, gave a simple method on transforming your life which I find to be extremely effective. *Disclaimer: the below described though is taught by them in the TED talk, but the actual described is how I did it, derived from their talk, How much I derive from their talk is up to you.

To clean out your room, you have to get rid of stuff, like I said earlier, you don't know which. Fret not, this method is to help you find out.

1) Apart from stuff you most certainly will use everyday, pack the rest into boxes, label it, and stack it up outside of your room.

2) Make sure the boxes are being labelled correctly and accurately.

3) Go on live your life as usual, when you find that you need something stowed in the boxes, you take them out, after using, put it back and stack that box under the other boxes. If you need that same item again, you ask yourself, is it important or are you too lazy to take it out and live your life without it.

4) In two weeks time, you should have certain things taken out completely and some still left in the box.

5) Put some of those expensive things or relatively unused items on sale on Carousell or wherever.

6) When it is 1 month since you first packed it into the boxes, those things not posted to sell online or unused can be thrown away completely.

7) When things posted online for a month or so and still no interest, you can throw it away or give to salvation army too.

Please do not recycle stuff into art project as it takes up space and wastes time.

Now CNY is over, you can just start this packing. The fact you need a massive spring cleaning is a sure enough sign that you have too many things.