Living the Simple Life

by Elaine St James

  As my friend Donna wrote from Chicago, that’s a start, but there is much more you can do. She says, “I cut my mail down from literally two cubic feet a week to just a neat handful a day by applying the techniques in the booklet Stop Junk Mail Forever by Marc Eisenson (available from Good Advice Press, Elizaville, NY, 12523 (914) 758-1400 for $4.50). The notification of mail preferenced service alone won’t do it. I found out my professional journals, professional organizations, auto insurance, charge cards, credit bureaus, and so on, were all selling my name. Also, standardizing my name and address on our self-inking stamper helped so I wouldn’t get on different lists due to variant spellings, for example, without middle initial, spelling out North instead of abbreviating. I’ve got a little stamp made up in a red ink: DO NOT LEASE SELL TRADE MY NAME ADDRESS. My mail carrier is very appreciative too.”

  I took Donna’s advice and ordered this booklet. In my opinion, it’s worth its weight in gold. In addition to information on how to contact the Mail Preference Service, it lists roughly eighteen steps you can take to literally stop junk mail forever, and to stop unwanted phone calls, too.

  It took me less than an hour to call (when 800 numbers were available) or to send a postcard to the junk mail handling organizations listed in this booklet, requesting that our names be removed from all the major lists. It has made an incredible difference in the amount of mail I have to deal with each day. And it has also greatly reduced the number of temptations we’re exposed to in the form of glossy four-color catalogs filled with stuff no one really needs.

  If you’re burdened by junk mail or telephone solicitations, order this book.

  46. Don’t Even Think about Saving That Piece of Aluminum Foil

  We’ve all heard the stories about the little old lady who passed on, leaving her heirs a ball of string the size of a Buick or a mountain-high stack of newspapers she’d never had time to read. Or the drawers full of stubby and broken pencils and now stretchless rubber bands that no one would ever use, even if they were the last rubber bands on the planet.

  Maybe you have an accumulation of these, or similarly useless items, sequestered away somewhere. If you do, you may be ahead of the game: With an ample supply of such superfluous material, you’ll never have to save another piece of string or a thumbtack with a bend on the pointy end.

  I never had a problem with coupons whose expiration date had passed or last year’s denomination of stamps—at least not a serious problem. But for years my downfall was used 8 1/2 x 11-inch envelopes.

  Being married to a writer/editor who is constantly receiving manuscripts in large manila envelopes, I had a prodigious and never-ending supply of used envelopes. As a new manuscript came in, I could never throw out that envelope. I clung to it tenaciously on the theory that I might need it someday. One or two, possibly. But hundreds?

  When I started clearing out the clutter, I took a huge gulp and eliminated all but a dozen used manilas. I’ve trained myself, with some effort, so that I put them in the recycling bin instead of bringing them into my office. Whenever the mail carrier delivers another one, I repeat to myself, slowly and with great feeling, don’t even think about saving this envelope.

  I’ve been able to let go of most of the inessentials. By using this mantra I now have merely a dozen used manila envelopes I’ll never use, rather than hundreds of them. Well, nobody’s perfect.

  You might find it helpful to come up with a similar mantra for the times you’re tempted to squirrel away any of the items you tend to stockpile. Things like used plastic wrap, newspaper clippings you’ll never look at again, magazines with an article you’d like to read if you could only remember what relevance it had to your life, extensions of pipe that won’t work for any plumbing repair job you’ll ever attempt in this lifetime, milk cartons you’ll never use to make candles, bits of fabric you’ll never turn into quilts, twisties past their prime, the small pad of address labels sent by a worthy charity printed with your former address, the small boxes of business cards from a company you haven’t worked for in five years, a 1992 telephone directory, ballpoint pens that no longer have ink, sprung paper clips, keys whose provenance is unknown, bald emery boards, broken sunglasses, ID tags for the previous dog, bus tokens for the Topeka Transit System when you live in Duluth and have no plans to return to Kansas, and the plastic doohickey that used to fit something though you haven’t a clue what. You won’t remember what it used to fit until you throw it out. If you ever could retrieve it, you’d find that it didn’t fit what you thought it did anyway.

  Next time you find yourself standing in front of the drawer into which you’re planning to tuck away a bit of thrice-used foil too small to keep, let yourself go, and throw it out.

  47. Use Your Public Library

  I’ve used the library extensively for years, but it wasn’t until I started getting letters from readers, especially from mothers with young children, that I began to recognize the extent to which it could minimize the clutter.

  Public libraries are for most people an easy and readily available solution for cutting back on the amount of stuff that comes into our homes, not only in terms of the books we read, but also in terms of magazines, newspapers, newsletters, audiotapes, videotapes, CDs, reference sources, and information services of almost limitless variety.

  In addition to providing an ever-ready source of the latest books and reading material at minimal or no cost, public libraries also, through the ever-impending due date, supply the impetus to read these materials in a timely fashion. While we may not read every single book or magazine we bring home from the library, at least they won’t be cluttering up our nightstands and bookshelves on a permanent basis; at some point we have to take them back to the library.

  Libraries also supply a practical way to offload the stacks of your own books and audio- and videotapes that are cluttering up your environment. Not only will donating books to the library free up space in your home and office, but it provides such a simple and satisfying way to share your resources with others.

  At the very least, when you donate books to the library—if your library keeps them—you always know where they are should you want to read them again. You can thereby have your books and not have them at the same time. It’s hard to get simpler than that.

  48. Get Some Help

  I hear from people all the time who, once they saw how much it would simplify their lives to get rid of the clutter, jumped right in and started throwing stuff out. But many are not inclined to move so quickly and could use some hand-holding through this process. If you need some help, get it.

  Ask a family member, one of your simplicity buddies, or a friend who knows you well to help you. You want someone who has the strength of character to overlook your whines and halfhearted entreaties when you want to hold on to thirty years of National Geographic magazines and throws them out anyway, but who has the heart to let you keep your high school yearbooks.

  Pick your starting point—the attic, the closets, or wherever. If you really want to be brave, take a deep breath, and have them go through the attic without you: Let them make the decisions about what to get rid of. You don’t have a clue what’s in those boxes anyway. So how can you possibly miss them?

  Or establish some parameters ahead of time. They can throw out anything that was made prior to 1990. They can get rid of any clothes, but they can’t touch the books.

  I did this with a friend who couldn’t bear to get rid of a lot of the clothes in her closet, even though she knew there were many things she’d never wear again. I went through the closet with her standing by, but we decided that I would make the initial decision regarding what stayed and what went out. (It’s so much easier to toss it on the out pile when it’s not yours.) When we were finished, she could go back through the stack and retrieve three items.

  Then we made arrangements for a local thrift store to haul the rest away quickly, before she could change her mind. It was such a relief for her not to have to make the decisions
about what had to go.

  Not only does this relieve you of the responsibility of deciding what to get rid of, but you can always blame them if you decide later that there was something you would have kept!

  If you don’t trust your friends or family in this sometimes delicate task, another alternative is to hire a personal organizer to help you. If you can’t locate one in the yellow pages, contact the National Association of Professional Organizers at 1033 La Posada Drive, Suite 220, Austin, Texas 78752 to see if they can refer you to a professional organizer in your area.

  SIX

  Changing Our Consumer Habits

  49. The Thirty-Day List

  Now that we’ve addressed ways to get rid of some of your stuff, let’s talk about what you can do to keep the clutter from piling up again.

  Have you ever found yourself wandering through a department store and coming across something you felt you just had to have? It’s entirely possible that until you saw it on display, you didn’t even know it existed. But now that you’ve seen it, you want it. And you want it now.

  Often, whether you need it or not, whether you can afford it or not, whether you truly want it or not, you buy it, and bring it home. Maybe you use it once or twice, or even half a dozen times.

  Eventually you come across this thing lying around the house somewhere and you wonder why on earth you ever bought it to begin with. Invariably, it ends up on that back shelf.

  This scenario is played out over and over again in the lives of millions of people every day. Why? Because advertisers spend billions of dollars each year training us to react this way. It’s a safe bet for their money—experience has shown we can be convinced to buy anything.

  After Gibbs and I got rid of a lot of clutter and moved to our smaller place, we noticed, as I mentioned earlier, that we were going out and buying stuff to fill it up again. We realized we were going to have to change our buying patterns.

  We decided to set up a thirty-day list. If we came across a significant item we thought we wanted, we’d put it on this list before we’d rush out to buy it. If at the end of thirty days we could remember what it was for, we might consider acquiring it. Or, we had the option at that point to extend the date for another thirty days. More often than not, at the end of the first thirty days, we couldn’t remember why we wanted this thing in the first place.

  You might consider using a similar system to keep youself and other family members from rushing to buy the next thing you see advertised that you think you want. It does require a modicum of discipline, but not only will it save you a considerable bundle of money, it will greatly reduce the amount of stuff which comes into your home that you then eventually have to get rid of.

  50. Watch for the Early Warning Signs

  Another thing we found helpful in the process of changing our buying habits was to become aware of the early warning signs of a potential buying transaction. There were at least two major signals we could learn to recognize and do something about.

  First there are the physiological signs. You may find yourself innocently browsing when you quite unexpectedly come across something you think you’d like to buy. You’ll begin to feel a slight palpitation of the heart. Soon your pulse starts to quicken. You feel a rush of adrenaline. Part of you wants to hold back. Another part of you is reaching for your credit card. You may experience shortness of breath. You might even salivate. In extreme cases you start to drool, though not so much that anyone would notice.

  Then come the psychological rationalizations. You hear yourself listing all the reasons you should have this thing. You need it. It’ll make your life better. You deserve it. You’ve earned it, for godsake. It’s on sale! It’s been ages since you splurged a little. We only live once. It’s only a hundred bucks. Your whole psyche is itching for this thing.

  The itch is a critical juncture. Once you start to scratch it, it’s all over.

  This is where you train yourself to pull out your thirty-day list—the list on which you write down every significant item you feel you have to have but that you refuse to buy immediately. Keep it wrapped around your credit card, or in your check register.

  When you reach for your thirty-day list, you can trick your mind into thinking you’re reaching for your money, which gives you a slight relief from the itch and reduces the urge.

  In that brief moment, the part of your brain that the advertiser has a hold of relaxes a little, and you come back to reality for a moment. The reality is that you don’t really want this thing, you have no conceivable use for it, but an extremely clever advertising and marketing campaign has gotten you to think you do.

  Immediately write down on your thirty-day list the date and the name of the item. Put the list back in your pocket. Turn around and leave the premises posthaste.

  You’ll be amazed at how just being aware of the warning signs will simplify your life.

  51. Come Up with a Creative Solution Rather than a Buying Solution

  One of the first pieces of gear we unloaded was our exercycle.

  We had purchased it a number of years before, secondhand though barely used: a big, beautiful, shiny, monolithic testament to consumer gullibility. I rode it perhaps half a dozen times; then it sat in the corner of our bedroom collecting dust, making me feel guilty every time I walked by it.

  We’ve congratulated ourselves many times over these past few years for having had the good sense to get rid of it when we were clearing out the clutter.

  Recently, after five exercise-equipment-free years of walking along the beach every morning, we started thinking that we might be able to meet our exercise needs more effectively with a different shiny, monolithic testament to consumer gullibility: a treadmill.

  Our puppies provided our excuse. Over the past year our walks had gradually regressed into doggie strolls with frequent pauses while the dogs do what dogs really prefer to do on walks: sniff. Gradually, we lost the aerobic and calorie-burning benefits of our daily walks.

  We still enjoyed these strolls with the dogs and the opportunity they gave us to be outdoors together, watching sunrises or sunsets and delighting in the beauty of nature.

  But they weren’t exercise.

  So we started thinking about an alternative approach. We came across a series of ads for a treadmill that seemed to address our very problem. The seduction had begun. So, even though we should know better, we succumbed once again to the lure of the advertising dollar.

  Well, we almost succumbed. Thanks to our thirty-day list and the fact that we’d become aware of the changes in our vital signs, we stopped ourselves in the nick of time. We’d come so close to spending money for a six-foot-long, three-foot-wide piece of plug-in equipment that provided absolutely no benefit that a slight change in our schedule wouldn’t provide much more simply and at no expense.

  Our solution, after resisting the urge to acquire the treadmill, was simple and obvious: We stroll once around the half-mile length of the park with the dogs for our warm-up and their sniffs, and then we take them back to the car. We increase our speed to a brisk pace and walk twice more around the park for our aerobic exercise. It’s so simple.

  But I’m embarrassed to confess how close we came to capitulating to a complicated and ultimately ineffective buying solution.

  I mention it because I suspect there are many people, perhaps even you, who are sometimes as susceptible as we are to an effective ad campaign.

  I want to point out that our solution might not necessarily be your solution. When I asked the clerk in the aerobic equipment store what the benefit of this machine was over simply getting out and walking faster, he replied: “It’s the time and inclement weather displacement factor.”

  Meaning, if you have to spend half an hour driving to the park to walk, or if you live in Minneapolis and can’t walk outdoors six months out of the year because of the weather, a treadmill might provide a simple way to get your exercise.

  But since our park is only a few minutes away and we live in a
climate where it rains roughly three days a year, these reasons are not relevant for us. And an expensive treadmill is not the answer for us.

  Take the time to come up with other solutions to your next perceived buying need, or at the very least, wait for a few days to let the immediate gratification impulse lose its hold on you. It’s so easy to end up, as many of us have, with an expensive piece of machinery that does nothing more than sit idly collecting dust, while cluttering up our lives.

  52. Recognize the Point of Diminishing Returns

  When we were deciding what to get rid of, our stereo and record collection were high on the list.

  Even though at that point we had invested a fair amount of money in our stereo system, and even though we’d enjoyed having it, we realized that since we’d acquired our VCR we seldom listened to the stereo anymore. The reality is that we can’t watch videos and listen to records or tapes at the same time. And we’d reached a point in our lives where, if we’re not watching old movies, we prefer a quiet evening of reading.

  Most households now have one or more television sets, one or more radios, half a dozen tape players, a video camera, a VCR, a stereo system, a CD player, several Walkmans, and a dozen computer games that fill up the space and the time that used to be taken up by a single household radio. Isn’t it ironic that we’re acquiring more and more goods, but have less and less time to spend with them?

  But even if we had the leisure time that our parents or our grandparents had, there is a point of diminishing returns. You might want to keep this in mind the next time you’re considering the acquisition of one more item that will take up time and space in your life. At the very least, consider passing on to someone else the items you’ll no longer have time for.