How To Separate Clutter From Stuff You Need

Gretchen Rubin wrote the very successful Happiness Project, "a memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages." As a guest poster on Zen Habits, she lists Nine Quick Tips to Identify Clutter. It is hard to be a minimalist when the stuff just keeps piling up, stuff that takes up space that needs heating and cooling. Some of her suggestions are quite sensible, and some raise questions.

Would I replace it if it were broken or lost? If not, I must not really need it.

Not necessarily so. Our dishwasher is broken and beyond repair, and my wife misses it, but we are not spending that kind of money these days. One could say that proves the point, that we don't really need it, but I can think of a number of things that I would not replace if broken or lost, but that I would miss.

Is it nicely put away in an out-of-the-way place? One of my Secrets of Adulthood is: Just because things are nicely organized doesn't mean they're not clutter. No matter how tidily a thing is stored, if I never use it, why keep it?

This is a very good point; just because a place looks neat as a pin and completely minimalist, doesn't necessarily mean that it is uncluttered, it just has great storage. But the goal is to reduce what we have and live with less, not just be neater.

Does it seem potentially useful—but never actually gets used? Something like an oversized water-bottle, a corkscrew with an exotic mechanism, or a tiny vase. Or duplicates. How many spare glass jars did I need to keep on hand?

Don't get me started on this one, the stuff that is too valuable to throw away, not valuable or interesting enough to sell, the cupboard full of plastic containers missing lids, the things I used to collect but that no longer interest me.

There are six more at Zen Habits, but these last two are the ones that are making me look at my stuff differently. Anyone want some old cameras?