The "See You Later" Porch

This is the second post in a series of posts about my journey to minimalism. You can read the first post here: Stumbling Towards Minimalism

I was starting to figure what I wanted and why. Less stuff. Less to clean. But I had no idea where to even start. My house was like one of those square slide puzzles. I can't move this square until I move that square, and I can't move that square until I move that other square, and I know I want this square over there, but I'm not sure how to get through those other two squares. I was never any good at those puzzles as a kid, but I do know one thing for sure: You can't move any squares unless there is an open space for sliding through.

So, that's what I decided my first project should be: Creating an open space. I decided that my side porch was a good location to clear out. It had been full of stuff since the day we moved in, five years earlier. On many occasions, it had been so full of stuff that you couldn't even walk into it, let alone through it. It tended to house two kinds of things: Actual trash (I would literally just toss my recyclables out the kitchen door onto the side porch, and box them up for the recycle truck later) and stuff that belonged other places, but I had been too lazy to put away.

So, I got to work clearing out the side porch. It actually didn't take that long, in the end. 90% of the stuff there went to the curb. Lots of actual trash and recyclables. Baby stuff that my now-five-year-old no longer needed. (I put the baby things to the curb a few days before trash day with a "free" sign, and a decent number of them went to better homes than the landfill.) Broken things I knew I was never actually going to fix.

I put away the things that belonged other places in the house. When I was left with a small collection of things I thought I might want to keep, I moved them into the kitchen temporarily so I could do a good scrub-down of the porch. I always forget to take "before" photos, but here's an "after" photo. If you want to imagine a "before" photo, just fill the "after" photo all the way up to the bottom of the windows with junk.

Then I ran out of steam.

Have you ever heard the term "decision fatigue"? Basically, every decision you make, no matter how small, takes decision-making energy. Decision-making energy is a limited resource. It's renewable, but it takes time, rest, and a milkshake to refill your stores of decision-making energy.
Source: NY Times

Okay, so maybe it doesn't have to be a milkshake. A healthy dinner will do. But you do need to give your brain a break from decision-making. And minimalizing* requires a lot of decision-making.

*A lot of people say "minimizing" but I'm not making anything smaller; I am making it more minimalist. So I'm calling it "minimalizing".

Even dealing with the actual trash, which really just required putting known trash into bags and known recyclables into bins, took decision-making energy. And I had run out.

Minimalizing Lesson Two: You are not going to finish today.

In his book, Goodbye, Things, Fumio Sasaki suggests that, for things that you aren't quite ready to say "goodbye" to yet, you can say "see you later" instead. Especially at the end of a long day, when my decision-making energy stores are depleted, the "see you later" concept has been extremely helpful for me. If you can't decide whether you want to keep or discard something right now, you can delay making that decision by boxing it up and setting it aside for now. You can come back to the SYL items later, when you have had the chance to think a bit more about it, and to experience life with them out of the way. If you change your mind, they are still there, waiting for you to reclaim them. More often than not, though, taking a break from an item helps you realize that you don't really need it after all.

I dubbed my empty side porch the "See You Later" Porch. And I started putting stuff back on the porch. It wasn't easy. I finally had this nice, clear, empty space. I just wanted to move an armchair onto the porch and live there instead of in my cluttered house. But I knew this was only one, small step in what would be a very long process. And I needed that empty slot to start sliding the pieces of my house where I wanted them.

Some things that I moved to the SYL Porch:

1. Three pairs of ice skates that I had bought for myself and the girls the previous winter when we traveled to Ottawa, Canada for Winterlude. It had been cheaper to buy secondhand skates than to rent them every time we wanted to go skating on our trip. I thought we might use them again. There is an ice rink only a few towns over, and skating is fun, and good exercise. Plus, we might go to Canada again next year!
Their fate: After they had spent a few months on the SYL porch, I got rid of the skates. I thought we might use them again. But we didn't. And, if we ever do go to Winterlude again, the girls' skates aren't going to fit anymore anyhow. I guess I could have kept mine, but I decided that there were ultimately too many "ifs" involved. If we go again. If I can find them when it's time to go. If I have room in the car to pack them.

2. The sleds. We don't get a ton of snow in Southeastern Pennsylvania. But when it does snow, going sledding is practically a mandatory childhood activity. Plus, the local sledding hill was literally in our backyard. And when it does snow, the stores all sell out of their small stock of sleds so quickly that you miss out if you don't already own one.
Their fate: I kept the sleds. One of the questions I like to ask myself, when deciding whether to keep something or not, is "What would I do if I didn't have it?" If it's something that I don't use very often that is easily/cheaply replaceable, I can safely get rid of it. Sleds are relatively cheap, but since not having one on hand when it snows usually means missing out on one of the two good sledding days of the winter, I decided it was worth keeping them.

On the surface, the skates and the sleds had a lot in common. My ultimate decision to keep one and not the other was extremely subjective, and I wasn't ready to make those decisions yet when I put them on the SYL Porch. You may have decided differently, and that's okay. That's why I shared these two examples. I don't regret getting rid of the skates. If we go to Winterlude again, I might even buy secondhand skates for us all again, because it was cheaper, although I would probably donate or re-sell them at the end of our trip this time. I might still change my mind and get rid of the sleds. Deciding to keep something is never permanent. Deciding to get rid of something replaceable isn't actually permanent, either.

Minimalizing Lesson Three: You're allowed to change your mind.