One Thing a Day

My friend Bess has a rule about getting rid of things: if you throw out just one thing every day, no matter how small, eventually you will have shed the junk out of your life. It can be as small as a pencil stub or a paper clip, but if you get into the habit of finding that one thing to throw out every day, it will stick with you forever. I have tried to live by that for the past few years. Some years, I do really well. Other years, it has been hard and I have given up altogether. Sometimes I need to combine it with a purposeful reorganization of a room, or a drawer.

One of my tricks is to keep a small laundry basket in my room. When I find something I don’t want to hold onto, I put it in the basket. When the basket is full, I bag up everything and take it to the charity shop. There is a bookshelf in my son’s bedroom where books I am finished go until the annual used book sales in my neighbourhood. I don’t count things like paper (unless it is a major file clean-up), or ordinary things like recycling that would have been thrown out anyway. But that’s my rule: you do what works best for you. Periodically, I remember the best of Marie Kondo’s advice. I get rid of the easy things, thank the things that are harder for their service to me and pass them on (if appropriate) and don’t try to get rid of things I am not ready to let go of yet. I have a few of those tougher jobs to tackle, but they will take an afternoon, rather than a few minutes after work.

For today, I am settling for some candies that had been tucked into an unexpected place, a key chain, and a beaded napkin ring I made to learn how to do beading. Thank you for your service little dust collectors. Also, you were delicious, candies.