By Greg Primm
The First Story
It’s New Year’s Day and I’ve just spent the last 3 hours putting the Christmas decorations in the attic and cleaning out my office. By office I just mean the room we call the office — it’s really just a glorified storage room. It sounds better to say “put it in the office” rather than “throw it in with the other junk”. It’s amazing how much junk we accumulate in our house. So much of what we accumulate were unnecessary purchases. Things we thought we needed or only needed for a brief time were discarded. Not only did we spend hard earned money on something we didn’t need, but it created clutter in our home. After a couple of hours in the office, we came away with a bag full of trash and a pile of stuff to donate. It feels good to know that at least one room in our home is rid of unnecessary clutter.
The Second Story
A few days before Christmas, my oldest daughter Allison actually commented to me that she has too much stuff. Can you believe that? Her thought was that she needed to give away a lot of her things to charity. So, we spent a couple of hours going through her things. We came away with a trash bag full of toys, clothes, and other items that were donated to a local charity. I couldn’t be more proud of my eight year old.
The Third Story
The most popular item around our house on Christmas Day was not the Nintendo DS Allison received. It wasn’t even the Littlest Pet Shop toy my younger daughter Lauren received. Not even the candy in our stockings was better than – the Slinky. Everyone received one in their stocking. Remember the Slinky?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM_sMM_tvX8&hl=en&fs=1]
My grandmother always seemed to have one around when I was growing up. There’s something about a simple toy like this that brings out the creativity in kids and the young at heart. We spent time on Christmas Day creating steps for the Slinky to navigate and even when the kids weren’t around, the adults couldn’t help but pick one up and start playing with it.
What is he talking about?
What do these short anecdotes have in common? Simplicity. To me, simplifying is all about eliminating the unnecessary to focus on what’s really important. It’s not about selling everything you own and moving into a two-room shack with no electricity. It’s about realizing that a $1 toy can be more fun than a $100 toy. A quiet night reading a book can be more relaxing that a day spent checking items off a to-do list.
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. ~Henry David Thoreau
I’m thinking a lot about simplifying my life as we start 2009. What does this mean for me? How do I elminate the clutter to reveal the most important things in life? There are too many to list, but here are a few.
- Spend more one-on-one time with my kids. Surfing the web while watching college football in the same room as my daughters does not qualify as quality Father/Daughter time. Starting this month I’m scheduling regular “date” nights with my daughters. If it doesn’t get scheduled around my house it usually doesn’t happen.
- Spend more one-on-one time with my wife. See #1.
- Throw out the weekend to-do list. Too many of my Saturdays end up consumed with endless projects around the house. Its one of the ways I relax, but I need to make time each weekend to do something fun with the family.
- Turn the TV off and read. How many episodes of Survivorman can one man watch? As I’ve watched the negative impact of television shows on my kids, I realize that it has the same impact on me. It doesn’t help me relax, as much as I like to tell myself that. I’ve got a reading list of 10-12 books. As a guy who considers himself a lifelong learner, watching too much TV prevents me from meeting my goals.
- Stop multitasking. I’m not a good multitasker. I get too many plates spinning and nothing gets done effectively. I’ll start a project and get a phone call, check email, or think about something else I should be working on. It will be tough to implement, but I’m already starting to resist the urge to move from project to project throughout the day. The feeling of accomplishment of working on a task until it is complete is satisfying.
- Cut back my commitments. This is actually something my wife and I started a while ago. Among the activities we dropped was teaching a children’s class at our church each Sunday. We still volunteerfrom time to time. We didn’t stop volunteering — we lead a small group Bible study of adults, but neither of us particularly enjoyed teaching the children’s class. It had become a burden to us.
So, what about you? What areas of your life do you need to simplify? Let me know in the comments.
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