Clutter Spotlight #3: Sticky Suitcase

March of Trash

We keep many of our things with the story that we will eventually use it so much that it will be broken or worn out and then we’ll have to throw it away. It’s a disappointment when it goes to pieces on its own — not from being used but just from the passage of time as materials deteriorate.

That’s the story of this suitcase. I am used to hearing of latches or hinges that fail, and I’ve seen vinyl luggage become brittle over time, but this piece got sticky, a mode of failure I hadn’t heard before. As Paul explains:

Clutter Spotlight #2: Expired Food

March of Trash

To start off March of Trash one clutter-buster went into the pantry and “threw out 4 pantry items that were years past their pull date.”

Clutter Spotlight #1: Controller Keyboard

March of Trash

Each clutter spotlight this month will show a different kind of clutter. The idea is to provide examples of the kind of thinking that goes with clutter-busting. For the first clutter spotlight, I’m spotlighting something from my own office. It’s a problem item I was looking at last weekend.

It’s a controller keyboard, a professional musical instrument. It’s MIDI- and USB-compatible. It’s just what I need. And it’s clutter — not because I don’t use it or don’t need it, but because it’s in the wrong place. I have it set up on a cart next to my computer. It’s there all the time. And that’s the problem.

Navigating the Spotlight Scorecard

March of Trash

The March of Trash Spotlight Scorecard, which you can download from the March of Trash challenge page, invites you to examine your possessions one by one, as if you had a spotlight that you could shine on one possession at a time. The scorecard is particularly relevant for the possessions that you haven’t been using. Anything you have that you don’t use is clutter, but different things can be clutter for different reasons. A video cassette recorder, to cite one example from my own house last year, can become clutter because it is obsolete technology, because it no longer works, or just because you’ve forgotten you had it. Maybe all these reasons apply. On the scorecard, you can check off the difference between one kind of clutter and another.

March of Trash 2017 and the Spotlight Scorecard

It’s March and time for the March of Trash challenge. We all live with clutter every day — well, nearly all of us do — and sooner or later, we have to stop what we’re doing to focus on getting rid of some of the clutter in order to save our space and our sanity.

There are many ways to look at the challenge of clutter-busting, and this year’s March of Trash focuses on the way you look at a specific item and decide whether it is worth keeping or better thrown away. To help with this, I’ve created an all-new March of Trash 2017 Spotlight Scorecard. Read all about the March of Trash challenge at the March of Trash challenge page and download the Spotlight Scorecard at the bottom of the page.

Use the Spotlight Scorecard to sort out what happens to something you have found among your stuff that you suspect you won’t be needing or using. I’ll explain the key details of the scorecard in tomorrow’s post.

Less of the Wrong Stuff

March of Trash is an exercise to reduce personal clutter during the month of March. The idea is to make yourself more powerful by having more of the right stuff and less of the wrong stuff around you.

The premise of March of Trash strikes more than a few people as far-fetched. How can having less stuff be any kind of advantage? When you look for them, though, you can find a millions ways that stuff can get in the way.

No-Spending Year

Imagine going for a year without spending money on anything you would consider optional. What would happen? Michelle McGagh writing at The Guardian tried this and reports that life got simpler — after she adapted — and that she paid down her mortgage loan by 10 percent.

My year of no spending is over – here's how I got through it

Self-Discipline Doesn’t Do the Work

Which should you do first: the things you know you have to do, or the one thing you feel like doing right now?

Before you answer, consider this: you’ll feel more disciplined if you address the things you know you have to do, but you’ll be more productive if you work on the thing that has captured your imagination at the moment.