Clearing out and reducing the superfluous, already existing - this is the beginning of a "normal" transition to a life that avoids rubbish. The unused one, which has been there for a long time, has to be minimized - but how?
Many guidebooks dealing with zero waste and just as many websites and blogs dealing with the same subject point out that - in order to get an introduction to the whole thing at all and mentally prepare oneself for what will follow (namely the gradual renunciation of everything that is not absolutely necessary - how exactly this is defined will still have to be discussed) - one must or should separate oneself from everything old and superfluous. Of course, nobody will be forced.
Less is the new more: Reduce!
The best-known guideline in the area of zero waste and minimalism is 5-R formula:
- Refuse: Reject superfluous.
- Reduce: Reduce too much ownership.
- Reuse: To use the existing again and again, giving meaning to it.
- Recycle: To bring the existing to new destinations over and over again.
- Red: If everything else does not help (and it is practically possible) - let the object rot.
The five steps follow each other in order so that at the very beginning of a planned change to a life that minimizes waste, there should be a rejection of superfluous things - i.e. first the further overcrowding of the apartment and the accumulation of even more property should be counteracted.
This step is usually built unconsciously into your everyday life: You suddenly pass by the huge shopping mile without batting an eyelid and no longer have a problem shopping without packaging (quite the opposite: you love shopping and celebrate it all at once like a ritual long believed lost). On the other hand, some aspects of the Refuse step are not quite as easy to implement as we might like and require an active and thoroughly conscious discussion with ourselves and our fellow human beings. For example, when it comes to the question of how such social institutions as gifts are actually handled.
With all the more consciousness, however, it becomes necessary in the next step - because here and now it's all about what's done: cleaning out.
To reduce, too painful separation from old age, to minimize superfluous things, to pinch one's eyes and hold on. Or - also widespread: to free oneself from old burdens, to finally be able to do everything, to feel myself like a new person.
With whatever attitude you look forward to the so important - perhaps most important - step of the 5Rs: In any case, this is a completely new experience - if you approach things correctly and consistently.
Everyone has his or her very own method, which is best suited for him or her and with which everyone feels individually comfortable. Some love the Hau-Ruck procedure and would prefer to have a whole moving van parked in front of the house to fill they are sorted out belongings, while they - like a zero-waste hurricane that has been let loose - rush through just that and (let) transport in everything that is not nailed down. The others, on the other hand, are more of the hesitant kind and don't really know where to start and how and at all - no, that's not there, there's memory XY on it and that's not there either, at least not yet...
The same applies therefore as with the creation of a Capsule Wardrobe: peace is called for. And relaxation. What's the perfect way for your neighbor to get rid of superfluous things (and maybe even for an estimated 96% of the rest of the population, at least if you're going to scroll down the Facebook timeline or browse all the minimalism forums according to your subjective impression) doesn't necessarily work for you. And that's wonderful and perfectly in order.
If you need more time than others if you're perhaps even much faster and more rigorous than others if you leave much more or much less than others if you put a completely different emphasis on the things that can go away and those that can stay: everything's okay. Your apartment, your life, your thing. It's that simple.
In the following, I would just like to introduce you to my very personal way of separating myself from superfluous things that have worked for me and still work (because similar to the already mentioned Capsule Wardrobe, I am still a long way from reaching my goal here). This way can only be one of many and should only give you an approximate idea, a small orientation, how you can approach your manure removal project.
Combine: Giant action plus a circular method
One thing must be said in advance: Before that - wisely, in order to avoid this confusion and disorientation on my part and to listen only to myself - I didn't roll myself over five meters of literature to be cleaned out. I didn't want to do that for God's sake - as motivating as that can be, it can also have exactly the opposite effect: One loses oneself and doesn't know exactly how and where to start, and suddenly everything seems so terribly complicated. I wanted to prevent that.
What I had: my intuition, combined with a little tip I had read in Shia's book. I'll go into more detail about these tips - first of all, it's about the basic idea: intuition.
Step 1: Giant action - radical clean-out
And this intuition advised me something that your intuition will probably advise you to do as well if you have decided to consistently outdo it from now on and perhaps also live oriented towards zero waste and minimalism. This intuition of mine shouted with every fiber: "Now we're going to the full! Whatever we did.
In a huge garbage disposal operation in which we took each room individually (both my intuition and me as well as Mr. Green stuff we dragged behind us), we sorted out heaps of junk on a weekend. But: Junk sounds a little condescending and pejorative and doesn't do justice to the actual value that many of these objects objectively still had.
For we have - groping our way from room to room - sorted out many items of clothing, books, knickknacks, baking tins, kitchen utensils, crockery and decorative cosmetics, jewellery, games, learning materials and so on, which now had no value for us in the sense that we could no longer use them - in the literal sense of the word. We no longer use them, they stood or just stood (more or less decoratively) in a random or selected corner and did nothing else. Except that at some point they would be put back into some moving boxes and transported to some new place, that would change in the foreseeable future (and never at all). So we could give them away right away. To people who might need them.
So we donated the sorted out things - to the Red Cross, the Caritas clothing store or the public local bookshelf. I had seriously thought about using my many books for some kind of monetary profit, but in view of the shamefully low prices (all of which were in the cent range) I decided that I would not accept it in principle, to make the effort for inscrutable mass recycling systems like momos or rebuy for me, if I can donate them (and at least as quickly) to the public bookshelf, where I can watch live after a few minutes who approaches my old treasures radiating joy or seriously examining them. (By the way, here is a list of public bookcases in Germany to look at - maybe there is one near you?)
Apart from that, it also makes people simply happy to donate and to do something good for other people for once without expecting anything in return. Even - and especially - when these people don't even know where the beautiful things actually come from. They are just there and you can take them if you want. I don't know how you feel, but I find this kind of trust really heartwarming.
Prerequisite: Switch assignment
In order for this radical clearing out to become possible, a fundamental work in advance was necessary: mental preparation or mental readiness for clearing out, throwing away and separating objects that were actually so beloved. The switch in the head had to be flipped.
And here, too, mechanisms similar to those used to create the Capsule Wardrobe are in place, which is basically nothing more than basic trashing out and you only have to figure out one thing: You're not the things you own. You don't have to define yourself by external things - and certainly not by the amount of those things. Of course, it's nice to have pretty clothes and I love to dress simple but acceptable myself. Of course books are beautiful and of course, you can and should keep some if you feel like it. But you don't need a library at home, even if the thought is so cozy.
Because the basic problem is that if it gets too much, our possessions burden us. At some point, it pulls us down instead of giving us wings and no longer carries the promise of ease that was suggested to us when we bought it.
Instead, another brick is added to the shackle with which we seek to swim across our sea of life and threatens to pull ourselves down. And if not, then at least to make it significantly more difficult for us to continue swimming.
To free ourselves from this connection, to release ourselves from the clinging to this shackle, is, therefore, the first important step on the way to successful minimalization and, accordingly, to successful clearing out - whether this concerns the giant project at the beginning of the subsequent circulating through the apartment.
Step 2: Multiple circling through the apartment
After the two days of cleaning out the mess, we (or I) set about finding out the things that inevitably had to go through our rags during this cleaning mania, and in a way pulling the net that had been thrown out more and more tightly, by repeatedly randomly mauling through our apartment and implementing a very valuable tip from Shia:
That's exactly what I'm doing now. And it works wonderfully. I don't know how many boxes of superfluous stuff I got rid of this way after the big muck-out - just that it's getting more and more.
Every day after getting up, I pick out 10 parts of the apartment that we no longer need and put them in a moving box in the basement. Over the week I collect so many things that on one or two more days I can pack my bags full and bring the sorted out things to Caritas (where my method has now been recognized and I am greeted accordingly).
When selecting the 10 things I do every day, I let my feelings guide me - sometimes I go into this room, sometimes into that room and look at everything from as objective and less emotional a perspective as possible. I ask myself the following questions:
- How long has the object been there unused?
- What is the probability that we will need it again?
- Do we have the object in multiple versions?
- Do we love the object?
- Would someone else be more happy about it than we are?
At the latest, if the last question - and it can only be the last question - can be answered with "Yes", the object will be put into the box.
And it is an unspoken rule that everything that has once landed there will never find its way back to the apartment. Once or twice a week the box is emptied and refilled in the way described.
I must admit: In the course of time, it becomes more and more difficult to find 10 pieces that can go into the box right away, as the household becomes smaller and smaller (and not even so slowly!) and gradually shrinks to the really important and functional things. But if you are honest with yourself, you will always find something.
Important remarks
You shouldn't necessarily plan the circle-mucking-out (and maybe already the big-mucking-out-action) as a pair-action. Sometimes it might be a nice experience together - but you'll be sure to be in each other's hair, which pair of shoes can be taken away and which part of one or the other is now more attached to than the other. And it ends - with you not getting ahead and maybe even quarreling. Unless, of course, you have experience with such things and you are corresponding