Today is your lucky day. I’m going to share with you 3 easy steps that will help you effectively manage your journey on minimising your possessions. We must remember that doing this is a big deal. It will be difficult… it will take a lot of your time and can become very emotional for you and even bring you to ask deeper questions. This task requires a strategy.
Whether you’re implementing a marketing strategy for your business, managing your financial goals or tackling the possessions in your home, these 3 key steps will stop you from making foolish decisions that could have been avoided and will make you one happy camper.
Step 1 – Create an inventory
This is a crucial step when trying to implement big changes in your life. If you don’t know what you have, how can you effectively decide what plan of action to take? It would be almost impossible to do so. The first step then is to write down all of your possessions; make lists for what you have in each room if that helps break it down easier for you. This will take a long time to do and it will seem tedious but you’ll be thankful for it in the end!
Step 2 – Segmentation
Once you’ve created a list of what you have (in each separate room) you can segment these possessions further into 3 types: something along the lines of “What I need/want”, “What I don’t need or want” and “Maybe”… call them what you want but make sure you avoid putting everything in the maybe category. If you can’t decide then by all means do so but think long and hard about how often you use the item as well as the potential risk of getting rid of it. With my own experience I’ve generally found that the Pareto Principle (Only 20% of our possessions are used 80% of the time) to be quite useful so keep that in mind. This may not be the case for you though… always remember that this is all down to what works for you! Don’t go overboard because others have got rid of a bunch of stuff you use.
Step 3 – Implementation
This is undoubtedly the hardest step but the most important thing to remember is to take it at a pace that best suits you. Getting rid of your possessions too fast can be a shock to the system so start out slow and once you’ve comfortable and think your “don’t want” segment was correct then you can pick up the pace a bit! You can get rid of them in any way you like. I’ve found that creating an Amazon seller account to be quite profitable as well as made full use of the surrounding charity shops. If you have a lot of items then maybe car boot or garage sales would be more suited to you!
What to do with the “Maybe” list I hear you say? Well what I found was a very useful technique was to box up everything that I wasn’t sure about. I put the box away (attic or garage will do nicely) and after 6 months I came back to the box and found that I didn’t use the majority of the items in there. If you’re still worried about whether or not you’ll need the items then you can leave them in that box for a little longer or if you’re brave enough you can get rid of them all together. A useful tip that I received from Niall Doherty was that if it cost less than £20 then getting rid of it makes sense because the risk of needing to buy it again is very minimal. However, if the cost of the item is significantly larger then I suggest you hold onto that item because the financial risk becomes greater.
Hope these tips prove useful to you as they have done for me! Feel free to share your experiences or other suggestions to help those who are ready to make the journey of freeing themselves from their stuff.
