This is the third month I’ve played the Minimalist Game. http://www.theminimalists.com/game/
The first month I was fairly strict counting things and keeping the number of things tied to the day of the month. In March, I made the day of the month the minimum number of things, not stopping if I was on a roll. I’m carrying on in the same manner in April.
At the beginning of the third month it started to be more difficult, both emotionally and finding areas in the house that hadn’t at least had a cursory purge.
Emotions are tied to certain things for me; games, photos, books. The emotional attachment to games is a double edged sword. Happy memories of a LOT of game playing in my childhood and a sense of sadness and loss knowing it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be playing those games in the future. The day I tossed decades of film negatives I knew I’d tossed something
irreplaceable. And it just seems wrong to pitch books, both those I haven’t read and those that I have on my shelf because I adore.
Then there’s the easy spots, like the kitchen drawer that contains the two boxes of zip locks, wax paper and aluminum foil. One of the technics in the purging process is to empty the whole drawer or closet and only put back what you want, leaving the rest to go. This allows you to “see” things that you don’t necessarily see just because they are always there.
Ninety-five Twist Ties
When I go to the bulk food store, the items come back in bags with twist ties. In the drawer of zip lock bags, there was an entire zip lock bag of twist ties, new, never used (and not one bag that would need a twist tie). In addition, there were loose twist ties, ones that tied the bulk food bags. And as I emptied the drawer there were more twist ties, and more twist ties and more twist ties. Ninety-five twist ties all totaled.
And, scrunched in the back of the drawer was a coupon for ziplock bags that expired in 1995.