A Good Time to Throw Things Away

You throw things away every day, but this month and perhaps this entire year are an especially good time to throw things away.

One reason is low fuel prices. Fuel prices are half of what they were recently and near their lowest levels in five years. They may not stay at these low levels for long, so it’s good to take advantage of the current low prices. Fuel is the main material cost of throwing things away — imagine how much fuel it takes to drive one of those big garbage trucks full of garbage. Throw things away now, and they can get hauled away at the current low fuel prices. It won’t cost any less to throw things away in the future, so if you have things to throw away, you may as well throw them away now.

The pressures of the current economic situation may provide other reasons to throw things away now. A slower economy makes more time available, especially if the company you work for has eliminated overtime for the rest of the year. Take a few of those extra hours to go through your possessions and pick out the good stuff. Turbulent economic times are also times when you want to be at your best, which includes being ready to respond when things happen. That makes it especially important to have the right set of possessions, and not to be bogged down in possessions that just take up space and get in your way.

In a scary economy, you don’t want to waste anything — and two of your most valuable and expensive resources are space and time. There has never been a better time to take control of your space and your time, and that’s a process that, for most of us, starts with throwing things away.