The Great Purge of 2018

According to Bea Johnson, (author of Zero Waste Home) one of the steps towards Zero Waste is to take an assessment of what you have.  Since I’m already OCD and hate messes, clutter, and all things excess, I delighted in this step. I do a spring and fall cleaning every year that results in donations and a plethora of trash.  I took an inventory of our home like never before. We lovingly referred to this as "The Great Purge of 2018." We donated, sold, recycled, or gave away hundreds of things. We had fewer belongings than the average family, to begin with but we still had so much stuff. Cleaning out the kitchen drawers, I laid out all of the utensils and contents. We had 13 spatulas, 3 ladles, 2 egg slicers, 25 towels, 3 pizza cutters, 2 ice cream scoops, 4 wine openers, 2 knife blocks full of knives, and even more. Kitchen cupboards offered countless plastic cups, tall glasses, short glasses, wine glasses, mugs, thermoses, insulated coffee cups, shot glasses, plastic plates, cute plastic fire truck and dump truck plates with matching silverware for my son, small plates, large plates, serving plates, serving platters, small plastic bowls, medium plastic bowls, regular bowls, serving bowls, mixing bowls, etc. It used to make me angry trying to dig around for my favorite spatula or mixing spoon in the drawer that had so many. Emptying the dishwasher was a lesson in anger management for people unloading because you had to wrestle the cups, plates, and everything else back into the cupboard. I took a long hard look at our excess and packed it up to donate. We repeated this process in every room of our home and in the garage. It feels like a waste of money at first but if you learn a lesson about not buying so much, then really it is a priceless lesson we all truly need. The house has so much less in it and we have never been happier. Cleaning is easier, putting things away is easier, finding things is easier, everything is easier.  We have learned not to buy things we don’t truly need. We were never big shoppers but we no longer go to a store “just to look.” Society tells us that we need bigger, better, newer, and just more of everything. Why must we do everything in such excess? We are fortunate to be learning that less really is more. If you take a moment to look around at all that you have, you might decide that less could be more for you and your family too.