Fear of regret is a barrier to entry when trying to live a mindful and intentional life. During downsizing and organizing projects, hypothetical what-if scenarios create an obstacle between practical reflection and movement forward.

After almost five years writing this blog, my seemingly most popular post … included my suggestion to not own couches and nightstands. Most people haven’t questioned these items and were baffled by the idea of rejecting them from their homes.

Have you heard of planned obsolescence? It’s when a product is planned or designed with an artificially useful life. In this way, it becomes obsolete either from a purely superficial standpoint or from a functional one.

It feels exhilarating to organize your closet and donate six bags of clothing, shoes, and accessories. After that big moment, your day-to-day will be improved: you’ll find items more easily with less stuff to rummage through, deciding what to wear will take less time, you’ll feel more peaceful each moment you peer into your closet, and you’ll get that tax deduction.

The last time I wrote about my brother, I reflected upon a handmade gift he gave me decades ago, and many of his most special qualities. Though close, we certainly have different lifestyles and different relationships to purchasing and keeping stuff.

Possible post-breakup thoughts: Where did I go wrong? I know it’s the right thing to do, but I miss them! or I can’t believe we stayed together this long! After a bit of time passes, you may think: Was it really that bad?

My mindset changed the moment I realized that everything is a tool. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about silence. Both being at home alone in silence and just “being” with others, to allow a sort of deepening in to the present moment, undistracted by someone else’s ideas and words.

Family is so … familiar, and our creature comforts extend to the family traditions that we hold dear to our hearts. By the very nature of them being traditions, they may seem exempt from analysis. I would posit, instead, that there is no intrinsic value in and necessity to retain traditions despite cherishing many myself.

Not all reasons are created equal. 

I am a very particular person. I don’t like different foods to touch on my plate, and I know exactly which brand of chocolate is best. I tuck in the corners of my bed sheets every day. I have routines and systems for most things, all based on clear and detailed preferences.

Have you heard the news? Life is not about finding balance. It’s about finding steadiness in the throes of imbalance, always keeping close eye on your center.

I love to host. I love to brew tea to pour in small tea cups, coupled with sweet treats. I like to cook meals and create a gathering place, with a peaceful ambiance. I never call it a night if the chatting is rich, or a good cry needs to be consoled.

I’ve been lifting weights recently. It’s reminded me of the saying: No pain, no gain. Have you ever lifted heavy weights during a workout, barbell in hand, beginning to curl and burn through the resistance?

There are many creations of modern society that I find curious, sometimes frustrating, usually wasteful, and occasionally mind boggling. These objects promote excess, disorganization, and, laziness.

You’ve heard the saying, “Let’s make memories!” Whenever those words arise, I cringe a bit. I don’t want to make the past, even if it’s something sweet to reflect upon. I want to make now’s.

Ecology may have been the most mindset-changing classes I took in college. An offshoot of biology, ecology teaches us how organisms interact with each other and their physical environment. Basically, how life works outside of our bodies. One of the most inspiring ecological concepts, I found, is succession.

There is no such thing as later. It’s just an idea, flagrant hypothesis, and deceitful invitation. It’s an excuse and the sultry allure of fantasy. The future does not exist. 

Time and management are two words that, when put together, cause cringing. Time is a river, management sounds like a dam. Time is freedom and opportunity, management is Dilbert vocabulary.

I've been nudging my parents to let go of unnecessary objects my whole adult life. They usually don’t listen to me, but sometimes they do, like when I redid my Dad’s home office or lent a hand as they downsized from my childhood home to a condo in a retirement community. In this community, my Mom now serves as the Board President of their 200-unit building.

One reason we don’t pare down our stuff or address organizational obstacles is the belief that there’s a tangible “later” when these problems will be solved. Or we believe our problems are manageable, and assume they won’t become worse. We need clever encouragement to do the work.

For two and half weeks at the edge of Todos Santos, Mexico, I was immersed in yoga teacher training. In tents we slept listening to the ocean. All day we practiced postures and learned how to teach yoga. It was heavenly. 

No matter how good I felt, our teacher would instruct us to “make it feel good,” when settling into poses.

I walked into the bedroom of a friend, and as she was showing me her recent efforts to downsize, I noticed the New Year’s card I made her, sitting solitary on a shelf.

Have you ever removed something big from your life?

A relationship, alcohol, a job? A palpable emptiness sits in it’s place. It’s not there, and yet it is more there than ever because the emptiness acts as a neon light.

It has always been my dream to be a speaker and a writer. It’s one of the reasons I started my business and live a frugal lifestyle. Material “stuff” in exchange for a dream- it’s a great deal. When I was accepted into the inaugural TEDxBartonSpringsWomen event, I had a moment of uncontainable excitement …

We think about ourselves a lot. Makes sense because, well, that’s who we are. We are immersed in our thoughts, our relationships, and our day-to-day activities. It’s all about us. And this is true of our possessions.

While I don’t recommend downsizing a subsection of items without consideration of the bigger picture, there is a value in completing small organizing projects.

You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after,” John Boyd once said. He was right.

They say patience is a virtue. Perhaps it’s a skill to be mastered or an unexpected playground, often avoided. Either way, patience through the lens of delayed gratification is a seldom explored avenue to experience life’s pleasures. Instead, instant gratification is the currency du jour. 

I often reflect on the act of kindness when working with clients. When I step into someone’s home, their sacred space, my first task is to ensure they feel kindness emanating from me.  

Do you still have stuff at your parent’s house? Maybe it’s time to rethink that strategy.

Gross things invade our stuff when we’re not looking. From creepy crawlies, to dust and mold, our possessions are not as protected as we imagine. The seldom touched tend to suffer the most. Areas that easily succumb to flooding are a close second.

The tricky thing about wallpaper is that regardless of it’s color and pattern, we see it but, over time, cease to notice it. The same way you can hear something but not truly listen to it. Wallpaper can blanket the walls but disappears the second we blink our eyes.

In Part 1, I recounted why I purchased a bike and the fear I overcame in the process. The how was tricky too. I wanted to buy a used bike, both for the cost savings and because, typically, reuse is better than purchasing new from a sustainability standpoint.

When I was a kid, my brother and sister and I rode around our street and parts of the neighborhood on our bikes. It was childhood fun, until it wasn’t. When riding down a large hill next to the nearby lake, I fell and crashed and my bike was destroyed. A wheel over here, a handle bar over there. I wasn’t injured; only a few scrapes.

The proliferation of listicles and tips and hacks make me question the prominence of the easy way out. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t like to waste time on areas of life that aren’t important. For some problems, a small bump in strategy is all that’s needed.

What I’ve wanted most in life is freedom. Freedom is so important to me because it is me. Freedom is the ability to be who I am, do what I want, and experience life through my values. I know that no matter what happens, the one thing I will always have is me.

Your home and all the items in it may represent the person you used to be, you think you should be, you wish to be, you want others to see, or all of the above. We allow this misidentification through our stuff or allow our stuff to meld with our identity.

The name of my company, Less Equals More, was the three-worded vehicle most apt to describe how less material items and unnecessary activities can help us get to whatever “more” we are looking to achieve: more time, more freedom, more meaning.

Why do you make each decision you make, from the tiny ones to the big ones? Do you find yourself on decision-making autopilot where the why behind your choices is cloudy? Do you make choices because you’ve always made them or because everyone else does, and you didn’t realize there was another way?

Your office, parent’s or friend’s home, your car(s), storage unit, a second home- these are the hiding places. You have many mechanisms of possession distribution which makes it easier to not quite identify all the stuff you have to your name.

Comfort is the soft and cuddly throw blanket. It’s the hat you wear everyday or your favorite hoodie. It’s warm soup your mother used to make. It’s the routine you don’t desire to disturb.

The minimalist approach creates a thoughtful balance around what is worth care and concern. My method is meaningful minimalism: finding what provides you with meaning and forgetting about the rest, choosing just the stuff that supports your goals and priorities, and letting the space that remains highlight the few things of meaning.

I hate to be a downer. After all, I engage in a downsized, simplified, and organized life because of its positive and joyful benefits. Most strategies I employ to reduce my impact on the environment are things I like to do and have other benefits (like being healthier for me too).

A warning bell goes off in my mind when surveying a new client’s space: Oh no! So many surfaces! 

It’s funny how little we exert control over what comes into our homes. From accepting all gifts (whether desired or not), hand-me-downs out of guilt, freebies that flood in, and unwanted mail, much of what we have wasn’t invited. It’s like our homes need their own bouncers just to manage the influx of stuff.

Personal evolution happens at a much faster pace than ecological evolution, as the not-so-fossil remains of our past hobbies, relationships, and career changes serve as evidence. The overabundance of stuff in our homes is a symptom of not addressing or recognizing the changes in our lives.

As someone who tends not to buy things, advertising and marketing are far from my mind’s eye most of time. But occasionally I’ll come across a clever marketing ethos that is just so good I can’t help but integrate it into my lifestyle.

Couples, whether new or long-time committed, have a bevy of things to disagree on, fight about, or be annoyed by. How much stuff they have, what the stuff is, and how it’s organized (or not), is a common topic of such discomforts.

The worst way to solve a problem is to not define it correctly, as we discussed in my previous post. The best way to rectify the problem with problems and solutions is to recall something you used in grade school called the scientific method.

You know that you have an organization problem in your home or office. But what you might not know is that you also have another problem: you haven’t articulated your true problem or, in your haste, you misdiagnose it.

Organizing and simplifying are not synonymous. They are certainly related and sometimes exist simultaneously. But there are notable differences between having an organized home and living a simple life.

I receive a handful of similar questions and assumptions when I disclose my profession to people I meet. Number one is whether I’ve worked with hoarders (the answer: I have not and I would not, except perhaps under the direction of a therapist specializing in this work). Number two is the assumption that the Container Store is my favorite place.

A client once said this to me. I repeated it back to her as I jotted it down, thinking it’d make a good blog topic, “Putting things in a file cabinet drawer is like death.” 

I was talking to a man in his late thirties. He lived alone in a two bedroom condo full of stuff. When he found out my profession, he began to discuss his situation.

In the context of organizing and downsizing, the word label may provoke images of label makers or a method to categorize groups of items. But label has another meaning when we are trying to, yet resist, simplifying our lives. 

My first post, written just over two years ago, was about moving. I had just sold my house, left my job of a dozen years, and launched Less Equals More. It was a time of transitions; too many to count.

During our first session, a client explained what brought her to need my services. For a time, she felt she needed everything in arms reach but recently realized that she was stock piling stuff that she didn’t need to store in her home.

Do you feel caught between two messages? One from advertising and our culture to get the new cool things, provoking a belief that you want these things because they will make your life better.

There are many blocks that may prevent you from beginning or continuing a downsizing project. Embarrassment is one.

In honor of my brother’s birthday this month, I reflected on the list of attributes I value in him and in our relationship. He is sincere and caring. He brings me to almost tearful, deep laughter. He always gives me a big hug (which involves him bending a bit given the ten inch difference).

Sometimes I worry that I’m sending the wrong message, and that people find these ideas about minimalism and organizing lacking room for fun, creativity, and life just happening. Or, perhaps, that these ideas are too strict and, therefore, restraining. 

To downsize any area of your home, from hall closet to attic, thinking like a project manager will be an advantage. While project management may sound like the only thing more painful than organizing your home, these two pieces combined can really make your life simpler and streamlined … I promise!

Downsizing and organizing projects, no matter how seemingly small, are a series of cascading decisions. Most are mundane, many are tiring or tricky, and some are emotionally weighted.

Regardless of project scope, the size of a client’s home, or their sustainability awareness, no one wants anything to go into the landfill.

“But what if I need this someday?”

I hear this question constantly. Any little thing in our home, even if dust covered, recently found, or presumed to be junk, suddenly becomes so important we can’t bear to part with it. 

I gave an introduction to zero waste in a post last year and would like to explore further how one can implement zero waste principles. To this end, I interviewed Erin, a former client, on the zero waste path.

Last year, I wrote about seeing plastic waste wash up on a beautiful island. The immediate visual impact of those two unlikely images coalescing was harsh, and the repercussions can be daunting and haunting.

We’ve all been in social situations where we’re suddenly struck by a moment of awkwardness, or strange silence. It feels like something has gone wrong or we’ve mistakenly turned into a dead end. Then, we look for an action as a solution, forgetting that doing nothing is also an action.

In my previous post, I brought together two ideas: luxury and minimalism. If you’re with me on this path, you’ve started to see junk as junk and stuff as an obstruction to a more luxurious lifestyle.

I’ve always been enamored with hotels. Even the mid-range ones seem special too me. I feel like a kid when I first enter one, even on a business trip. Taking a quick run and bounce on the bed, I immediately feel refreshed. There is something about a sparse space of which I am clearly fond. 

If you really think about it, you’d be happy with a lot less. The problem is, you don’t stop to pay attention.

One tool to exercise against the accumulation and retention of material items is the guidance of Buddhism. While a religion to some, it is also an insightful list of lessons for the human mind’s unhelpful tendencies.

There is a plethora of beautiful things in this world. You don’t need to own them, but admiring is (typically) free. 

There are multiple layers to the fight against “stuff.” We must look closely at all of them: unneeded memorabilia, too many clothes, the way we overcomplicate our lives, large houses that cement excess, and everyday throwaway items.

My job is to get rid off things. Some things to the recycling bin, some in the donations box, some to friends or family. It’s a thousand little good-byes. They are quite easy for me. It’s other peoples’ stuff.

When you help people downsize and organize, "before and after" photos seem to be the language. But I am resistant. Anyone can make a space look clean and clear. This can be done after a legitimate overhaul or by moving things out of the way for a photo shoot.

The theme of freedom is strongly present in my life, often as a driving force in my decision making. With July 4th, freedom and independence come in the form of patriotism. I'd like to reflect on the way the two are intertwined.

A few weeks ago, I loaded my necessities into a Mammut 30 liter backpack.

In my last post, My March Madness, Part 1, I recounted how I approached my most recent paring down of stuff, post-post move. It was a reminder that with changing day-to-day needs, our material goods should be re-evaluated.

Through my On Memories post, I tried to convey the nature of memories intertwining with the tangible; the way the past can feel like brick and cement. This type of letting go is something we all face, whether we are moving or simply paring down.

I recently completed the book, The Power of Habit, masterfully conceived by Charles Duhigg. It clearly outlines how habits rule our lives, and how to change them. I often consider how the transition to a minimalist lifestyle is simply a transition of habits; replacing one trigger with a new routine to achieve a similar resulting sensation.

One of the most compelling lessons I learned from ecology is that, with the exception of humans, nature does not waste.

My true love of minimalism fully unfolded in 2002 when I took a semester off from college to travel. There was a romantic fantasy around the idea of galavanting across Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe. I wanted to "be" a backpacker; my life thoughtfully and efficiently packaged and hung on my shoulders.

I spent 30 years washing my hair with shampoo and conditioner. First with products that contained chemicals, and then the organic variety. All came in plastic bottles. All seemed as necessary as wearing clothes and brushing my teeth.

i have a terrible sense of direction. its so bad that you'd wonder how i even manage day to day activities. its borderline embarrassing to ask friends how to get to locations I've been to so many times before, or have to admit I got lost on the way to a destination.

Starting a business is not unlike starting a downsizing project. You are staring down a pile of tasks or a pile of stuff. Either way, you need to pick a starting place. 

I'm about to move. Out of my home of six years. A place where any dent, or smudge or misalignment is some sort of memory.