One Snarky Chica with Issues

I have big dreams of one day, in the not too distant future, of being able to quit the day job and travel around the world while supporting myself (and my significant other) by making money online and from freelance writing. I do many things to get to the finish line of this particular goal. I would say that I do something every day to get me there. It could be buying a domain and throwing together a site that I think will be a good cash flow site or it could be getting rid of stuff.

See, part of this quitting the day job and traveling means that there would not be a constant home. What I would love to do is to say go spend two months in country #1, then spend some time in country #2 and so on. And when in the States we would just crash with people. Ah, the dream. Well, when (not if) the dream happens there will not be a lot of room for “stuff.” So, I have begun trying to be a minimalist now – at least as much of one as I can be. It is an ongoing process for me. When I came to decision that I needed to start living as a minimalist now as opposed to waiting I was not sure where to start exactly. If you are thinking about doing the same thing then you might not know where to start either.

The first thing I decided to tackle in my quest to be a minimalist was to reclaim my closet that had been overtaken due to a previous addiction to buying new clothes too often. (and never getting rid of them) No one person needs eight pairs of jeans. Especially when five days a week are spent at work and jeans are not acceptable business attire. And I will not even tell you how many pairs of shoes I had when I started out. Wow. And the worst part is that I had multiple pairs that were similar in style and identical in color! Why? I guess now we see where some of that debt came from, eh?

As you can see, being a minimalist is good for your finances. It’s like a diet, only for your money and spending.

Anyways, it was easy for me to see that I had way more clothes and shoes than I needed. And one look through the stuff and it was also apparent that I wore the same things over and over, leaving most of the stuff just collecting dust in the closet.

Here’s what I did and what you will want to do if you are just embarking on being a minimalist.

First, set aside some time to go through your closet and dressers. I did this one Sunday afternoon.

Then, go through everything and pull out anything that you have not worn in a while, do not plan on wearing, is out of style, does not fit, is too worn out or is a duplicate or similar item to some other things. Make two piles with these things – a pile for the similar/duplicate items and a pile for the other items (this will be the ‘get rid of’ pile.

If you come across something that you are not sure about, put it to the side in your closet. I’ll give you an action plan for that in a moment.

After you have gone through everything you will have two piles outside of the closet, the keeper stuff in the closet and the ‘unsure’ stuff still in the closet. Once you have done this you should have more things in the get rid of pile than still left in the closet. If not, you might want to try this little exercise again. Remember – you are trying to be a minimalist.

Before you do anything else, bag up the ‘get rid of’ stuff. You need to do this before you change your mind and start pulling stuff back out if it!

Then, look through the similar/duplicate pile. Try to whittle down your wardrobe so that you do not have similar/duplicate items. You can always wash whatever it is if you want to wear it soon after you have worn it the first time around.

Take the discard items from the similar/duplicate pile and bag them up. Trust me, if you wait you will end up pulling stuff out of the discard pile. Then, put the keeper items from the similar/duplicate pile back into your closet.

Now, go back to your ‘unsure’ items. What I would do with these, it something like put them on special hangers or in a special section of the closet. (I put mine in the direct center of my closet hanging rack) And what you have not used in 30 – 90 days should be gotten rid of. If you didn’t use it during that time period then there is a pretty decent chance that you won’t use it later either. Now, if you have something in this pile that is seasonal and it is not the correct season then you might want to hold onto it.

If all goes as planned, you should have a trimmed down closet now. Usually I repeat this process every three months to see if there are any additional items that I can discard. And you know what, there usually is!

It is also a good idea to implement this rule: You can’t buy any new items unless you get rid of an equal number of items.

This will keep you from accumulating more stuff and as an added bonus it will keep you from spending frivolously.

If you have completed this step, you are well on your way to being a minimalist! Check back here next week for part two of becoming a minimalist.