Always Simplifying

2020-01-24

Over the past few years, I have been thinking a lot about simplifying my lifestyle. After discussing simplifying our life with my wife by downsizing our possessions over the past year, she was finally on board with the plan to reduce our typical American hoard. By hoard, I am not referring to the type you see on those reality TV shows, but we had boxes of dishes, shelves of books, and other odds and ends we have not touched stored in our basement, garage, and closets. We had kids’ toys that they no longer play with that we had put off going through and pieces of furniture we do not have a use for. I am unsure whether our oldest, turning 18 in October, finally awakened us, but we have been actively working on decluttering. Freeing yourself of clutter you no longer need is exhilarating and encourages you to look for other clutter in your life.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I do not hold onto a lot of old technology, I used to keep everything, but at some point, I saw the piles of laptops, computer cases, and boxes of cables and asked myself, why are you keeping all this? I recall moving into our home in 2006, my wife and I were both in our 30s when we met, so both of us already had accumulated a lot of stuff, and that move was a lot of work. We did not use movers; we moved everything ourselves with some help from some friends. We will be moving again when the kids have all moved on to college, and neither one of us love the area we currently live in, nor do we love the house. We chose our current home because we needed the bedrooms, the price was right, and the school district was good. The bedrooms and the school district will be no use to us in another six years. Neither one of us want to move boxes of books and rooms of furniture next time. So we are giving away what we can and disposing of that which we cannot find a taker.

The simplifying was not just relegated to physical stuff; I wanted to simplify my entire life and worry about minor things. I have simplified this website by going static, worrying less, and maintaining. Text works, no database, no underlying programming language to deprecate and break some feature. I have downsized the footprint of the applications that used to exist on my phone. I got rid of all those games I never played and random applications that some article or person told me I needed to try that were probably spying on my personal information anyway. I reduced my phone to the essentials that I needed.

I have always been a neat freak about the emails coming into my mailbox; if I can eliminate the email by getting myself off an email list by unsubscribing, I do that. If I cannot rid myself of an unwanted regular email, I flag the email as spam, and it goes off to the junk folder. I delete any old accounts on websites or services I no longer use; going through the emails you receive is a great way to identify these accounts that you should clean up. Forums and many other websites send you birthday emails. Sometimes that is the only time you may hear from these websites. It is a great way to identify these old accounts that might expose your email and other personal details, like your birthday, to scammers.

I consume most of my news via RSS feeds. It would be best to use feeds to keep up with websites you like to read because RSS simplifies keeping up with what you care about. I do not sweat it if I fall behind reading all the articles coming through via RSS feeds; that is the key; reading news or sites you enjoy should not be a chore. I often go a few days without browsing through my RSS reader headlines. If I do not have time to go through the headlines looking for something interesting, you know what I do? I mark them read, and I move on with my day.

Social media has been a thorn in my side since its inception. I was an early adopter of Facebook; then I deleted my account, then I was shamed by distant family about not knowing what my kids were doing. Right or wrong, I signed back up, but I limit my use to sharing the kid’s activities and accomplishments with family. I have thought a lot about Facebook over the years, and I have gotten the most negligible value from it than any other social platform. I am actively planning a disappearance from Facebook someday, perhaps just as I am about to sell my current home.

I also cut back drastically on Twitter, which I enjoyed at one time. Not so much anymore; it can easily be a worthless time waster. I find more value from Twitter than Facebook provides; I get news, customer service interaction, and a laugh or two. I still feel that daily life is greatly simplified by signing off social media. Find a real conversation; it is much more rewarding.

Reading books is an area where I think quality over quantity is a far better plan. Instead of having a good conversation, exercising, or spending time with my family, I would hide away reading a book to pump up some metrics. I set a goal a few years ago to read 52 books in a year. I was two months into this challenge and regularly turned down lunch invites with co-workers and friends so I could read. I finally asked myself what I was doing; real socialization is so important to a healthy life. Was I getting any value from this goal that exceeded a possible lifelong friendship? People tend to use the number of books they read to value-signal their intelligence; reading isn't a competition. Reading is firstly a hobby, and secondly, an opportunity to build upon the ideas of those who came before you.

I once vacationed with a person who joined us with a stack of books. At some point in the week, they never left their bedroom because they had fallen behind on their book quota for the week. We were at a beautiful beach house with a pool and lots of great activities to take part in, including perhaps reading on the beach. Be careful with reading goals; they can complicate your life and cause you to miss out on the important stuff.