OtherInbox. Baby Safe Cleaners - Non Toxic Household Cleaners – Natural Cleaners – DappleBaby.com. Archive » Let go of your clutter crutches. Regular readers of the website may have noticed that I use the words “terrific” and “wonderful” in almost every Workspace of the Week description. I didn’t realize I did this until a co-worker pointed it out to me, and now I cringe at the sight of those words in my writing. They’re stale and lack the punch of much more descriptive choices. Terrific! Wonderful! Ugh. The more I think about these vocabulary crutches, the more I realize I have similar crutches in other areas of my life. Some of these crutches are good — like when I need a friend to listen, I turn to the same trusted people again and again — but others aren’t so positive.
For example, when I am really busy at work, the first thing I cut out of my day are magazine and newspaper reading. Each day for the next seven days, I’m going to try to eliminate one clutter crutch from my life. What clutter crutches do you have in your life? DIY: Create a Chemical-Free Dryer Satchel. Simplify Your Life with a Stuff Replacement Fund ∞ Get Rich Slowly. One thing that prevents me from getting rid of more clutter in my life is the worry that someday, for some reason, I’ll want it again. Maybe I don’t use the rice cooker now, but what if I need it in the future? It’s thinking like this that keeps me from achieving the simple life I long for. After writing about the idea of having recently, I decided to re-read Your Money or Your Life, one of the best books about personal finance, frugality, and conquering consumerism.
In it, authors Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin share an answer to this problem: [One] individual realized that he had many possessions that he wasn’t using and no longer wanted, but had been hanging on to because he “just might need them someday.” This is a fantastic idea. Last September, Kris and I purged hundreds of books from our shelves. Last year, the money went to retiring my debt, but if I were to do something similar today, I could use the cash to start a new subaccount at ING Direct, a sort of Stuff Replacement Fund.