Life is weird sometimes. Sometimes you live through a pandemic and come out on the other end selling the house you bought just before the pandemic. We’ll list the house in 4-6 weeks. Everything is negotiable when you move. Moving is one way to discover everything you have. Moving is hard but on the other side is a fresh new start, a blank canvas. How much do I want to take into a new beginning?
I’d say only the things that I love and the things that I need. I don’t want to cart around and unpack boxes of junk I wished I’d never kept. So why not live that way every day? For the most part I strive to and thankfully I don’t have too much to sort through before we pack. I’ll confess that I’ve moved boxes from attic to attic to another attic through multiple moves without even knowing what’s in them. There were always boxes or bins that were leftover just before moving day that I’d never dealt with and it was easier to just bring them than sort through them.
Here’s a good rule of thumb because my boxes were often old documents and if by some off chance I needed something in that box for record purposes, there was no way I would ever know if it was in there. If you don’t know what’s in a box when the time comes that you need something that may or may not be in there, what’s the point of keeping it? I have to remind myself of this logic because keeping a junk box is wasteful. It wastes space.
Obviously there are old documents like birth certificates, diplomas, and SS cards that I need to be kept. In large, paper clutter either needs to be sorted or gone. I know that some documents are pre online statements, but in 2021 I just can’t imagine too much that isn’t available online within the last 10 years or so. Paper clutter adds up quickly and if it’s not properly tended to often then it becomes a hodge podge of waste that could possibly contain personal information.
I remember sorting through an entire box of paper clutter from our previous move and found my college transcript from 2006 when our college ID was our social security numbers. That wasn’t something I needed to throw away in the trash but I was also keeping an entire box of paper with only two sheets in it that I actually needed. If I needed a physical copy of my transcript, I would have had no idea where it was. Now it’s in a box with my portfolio and I know exactly where it is and have for years because I decided to stop moving boxes full of stuff I didn’t want to deal with.
Life Less Cluttered 