Less Is More

Think about everything you're responsible for keeping track of. People who hoard end up surrounded by things. Call them collectors if you prefer a gentler label, same situation. At the far end, billionaires own homes, and not only homes but mansions and penthouses scattered across big cities and far-off places. Sure, you can pay staff to look after all of it. But then someone has to watch the staff and know where everything stands.

Paper piles up until it swallows you, and so do digital files you're supposed to back up and organize. Among baby boomers, downsizing has become one of those words everyone repeats. Genealogy draws a lot of people in as a hobby, though at some point you have to wonder how many ancestors and descendants one person can actually hold in mind.

Here is the odd part: the more you own, the harder it gets to stay on top of it. Could you walk over right now and lay a hand on any single possession you have? Maybe you've forgotten where it ended up. Maybe you've forgotten you ever had it at all.

There's real convenience in keeping certain things where you can see them. An object left in view nudges your memory about something you meant to do, and it's hard to misplace what's sitting right in front of you. Better still when the thing you've left out is something you simply like looking at.

Letting go of what you've stopped using can be worthwhile once it sinks in that you've already gotten your pleasure or your use from it, and that someone else might do more with it than you will. I've long imagined a kind of lending house, maybe for collectibles, where a person could borrow something that caught their interest, keep it around or on display for a while, then bring it back when their attention moved on to something else. There was a city I lived in with an art museum that let you check out actual works of art and swap them for different ones later. I loved that.

Recycling makes sense, and so does finding a new purpose for old things. Styles turn over so fast here that objects get thrown away long before they're worn out or used up.

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