Things We Can’t Live Without

...let's go down to the east river
and throw something in
something we can't live without
and then let's start again...
-Ani Difranco (Names, Dates, and Times)

It’s moving time again. This time, it’s all the way to the Pacific Northwest. Without a lot of effort, I have accumulated an enormous trove of earthly goods. In fact, despite my best efforts to simplify, and move towards a simple life this trove has kept growing. I prune, it grows. And of course, the growth is my doing, and controlling it is within my power. Now, rubber meet road, road meet rubber.

I’ve mentioned Zen Habits in the past, but this particular post has been one for lots of conversation between me and one who knows me best. While the 100 thing challenge is a mighty goal that looms lazily on the horizon, I’ve followed the advice on a recently read, and now forgotten blog which had advised to inventory your life’s objects.

It sounds compulsive. Scratch that. It’s very compulsive, but it offers a definitive line between what I am willing to intentionally keep and what I am willing to send into another direction. I was sick today, but a day at home is a good time to catalog and inventory the objects for whom I pay the rent.

I love Google products and started my task in a google spreadsheet. Here are my headings:

Item Use Reason to Keep Need to find a new home Advice from the pros

My creativity is messy! So I like to start with something of a clean palate. I pulled a lot of the stuff out of my room, then started filling in the boxes.

As Zen Habits often stresses, simplify responsibly. One of the reasons that this is such a project is with a green conscience things can’t just be pitched, they need to be re-appropriated. I’ve been using a system of paper bags that have 3×5 note cards taped to them. On each note card is the name of a person or family that is important to me. As a possession comes up that would seem to be helpful or useful to them, I put it in their bag. Later, I do what I call Santa Clausing around town, when I deliver the goods. I try to make this an intentional practice. I don’t want my simplification to be someone else’s over-complication.

In a conversation with a close friend who has also been downsizing, we talk about purging like Karma (She’s a Buddhist). To get rid of everything without consideration is not really dealing with your Karma, but rather doing a Karma dump. That’s the equivalent of a binge diet. You didn’t really deal with the problem, just went for the results. Well here’s the same problem again! Ta-da! The more intentional purge will hopefully result, in a more intentional and sustainable simplicity.

Now to bring it back to that fantastic quote. In this letting out of things, many of which I have placed deeply in my heart, or have held on tightly to, there is a pain in releasing them. (Cacti are too easy of an example). But the hope is that in releasing things that have a sacred place, that the opening that is created is also sacred.

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