Discover practical steps to declutter your life, minimize distractions, and focus on what truly matters.
In our efforts to live the ‘good life’, we can easily find ourselves overwhelmed by seemingly endless choices, decisions and activities. Here are a few ways to help slow down, and give ourselves time to remember who we are and what’s really important in our lives.
Start by stopping
Each new day is a blank canvas which we fill with a checklist of tasks. But every minute need not be structured and scheduled. Try stopping from time to time, and make conscious contact with your inner self. Let go of the need for maximum daily achievement and become comfortable doing nothing, if only for a short while.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci
Take the time to lay down on a blanket outside and watch the clouds. Bring some crumbs for the birds and watch them enjoy. Or check out the stars for a few minutes before going to sleep. An occasional dose of non-doing lets you slow down to appreciate the pleasures of the moment, however simple, and gain a fresh perspective on how your time is spent each day.
Try a new kind of meditation
While meditation is over 2,500 years old, there are different practices that appeal to different people. If you’ve ever tried (and abandoned) meditating because you couldn’t ‘clear your mind,’ consider a form of meditation focused on acceptance and observation. Mindfulness meditation involves observing thoughts as they come and go, without judgement.
A brief daily meditation, even for just 15 minutes, is your chance to turn off the rest of the world and listen to yourself. Our fast-paced modern lifestyle delivers a steady barrage of information, obligation and responsibility. Meditation clears the mind and relaxes the body.
Meditation doesn’t require incense, mandalas, mantras, or the perfect lotus position. In the same way, meditation doesn’t require you to join a new religion. It only requires you to be comfortable, quiet and willing to listen. A few tips:
- Consistency: Try to meditate every day, even if only for a few minutes. The benefits are cumulative.
- Location: Choose a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed. Turn off the phone. If possible, meditate in the same spot every day.
- Breathe: Focus on your breathing to help calm your mind and relax your body
- Observe your thoughts: Listen to your heart, feel the energy in your body, let an empty breeze flow through your mind. When thoughts come, notice them, but don’t label them with judgements.
- Lower your expectations: The benefits of meditation are substantial, but subtle. Don’t look for immediate results – they’ll find you.
- Make it last: As you leave your meditation, try to extend the relaxed, focused feeling into your day. Every few hours, if you think of it, take a slow deep breath and envision your meditation. Meditation can help you feel more relaxed and focused throughout the day.
Reduce clutter and consumption
“Don’t confuse your net worth with your self-worth.” – Anonymous
The best things in life aren’t things. Clutter fills more than our shelves and closets: it permeates our lives. We work hard to be able to afford things, many of which require care, cleaning, storing, insuring, protecting … and the media and the merchants are constantly offering us the next “must have”.
The cost of consumer goods goes beyond the price tag. Environmental costs come from resource extraction, manufacture, shipping and waste management. Consumer demand drives industrial pollution.
Tips to help:
Teach your children
Let your children know about the direct link between consumer goods and environmental costs, then let them make their own decisions. Show them that when you make a purchase, it’s for the inherent value of the item and not for social status. Remember the hidden costs of the things you consume. Sooner or later you or your children will pay those costs.
Enjoy non-material pleasures
Whether alone or enjoyed with others, nonmaterial pursuits offer lasting and immeasurable benefits. Music, sports, hobbies, crafts, and games contribute to personal development with little cost to you or the environment.
Give sustainably
Birthday and holiday gifts don’t have to be the latest consumer goods. See Tips for Sustainable Giving for non-commercial gift ideas.
Share, swap, trade
Start a tool share with neighbors for tools which may not be used too often: lawn mower, power saw, compressor, ladder, paint sprayer, etc., meaning fewer things to buy and store for everyone. Swap or trade for goods and services if possible, to save on the manufacture of new goods and packaging, and of course the taxes.
Reduce visual clutter
Try putting things you can live without in boxes and put the boxes in the attic or basement for six months. Then re-open the boxes and keep what you missed…..give the rest away as gifts, or hold a garage sale. Then try this formula: for every new thing that comes in, one old thing goes out.
Eliminate junk: Mail, telemarketers, catalogs
Junk mail
Write to Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, 6 East 43rd St., NY, NY. 10017. They will stop your name from being sold to most large mailing list companies. Or put “Return to Sender” and put back in the mailbox. You can also contact the Stop Junk Mail Association at (800) 827-5549.
“My life is a quest for simplicity. Not austerity, not an ascetic minimalism, for I love comfort and life and color. What I seek is to remove from my life those things which are only illusions playing at being necessities, the things for which I have paid more in time and work and worry than they are truly worth. I want to hone the things in my life as an artist hones a statue, removing the excess and the dross until the inner creation is revealed – no more, no less.”
– Ary Bruno, Site Visitor
“I’m always decluttering, but still feel stressed until I realized it’s not only physical clutter that bothers me, it’s mental clutter as well. The small projects, sewing a button, watering a plant, oiling a squeaky hinge can be a fleeting “clutter moment.” Many times, I need to remind myself to “just do it.” It may only take 30 seconds to complete the task: procrastinating is the stressor. Do you know it only takes four minutes to unload the dishwasher?”
– Donna T.
Telemarketers
In the US, the FTC has launched a website so consumers can register online. This is a free service. By adding your number to the list, intrusive calls from telemarketers should be reduced.
Sign up online at donotcall.gov or call 1-888-382-1222. Registration is in effect for five years, unless you remove your number from the registry or your number is disconnected.
In Canada, register at the National Do Not Call List.
Mail order catalogs
It is estimated that US households receive a total of 19 billion catalogs by mail each year. An online service, Catalog Choice, allows you to compile a list of catalogs you do not wish to receive, and arranges to have your name removed from the corresponding mailing lists. This is a free service. www.catalogchoice.org
Simplify meals
Prepare dishes which will provide several meals. Stews, casseroles, and many recipes are just as easy to prepare in large portions. Make enough for two or three meals, and freeze the extra meals to cut your cooking chores in half. Become the master of “one-pot cooking” to simplify preparation and reduce clean-up time.
In Buddhist monasteries, it was the cook’s duty to make the most sumptuous meal possible out of whatever ingredients were available. Instead of thinking about dinner in terms of what you want to eat, try to be creative with what you have in the refrigerator and cupboards. Resist the urge to run out to the store for more cooking ingredients.
Cut screen time
Screen time is not as relaxing as it may appear. Our senses are being bombarded constantly, and the underlying commercial message is always the same: you need more and more to be happy. We’re at the mercy of the marketers.
Statistics have shown that children get very little time of direct interaction with their parents, especially with their fathers. In contrast, the average child spends hours each day in front of the TV, tablet, or computer screen, or phone, often with commercial messages flashing before them. All of this makes children and adults want “more” to feel good about themselves.
“Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.” – Katherine Gerould (1879 – 1944)
Try reducing screen time and replace it with books, music, or even commercial-free educational videos. If you have children, try replacing an hour of TV or computer games each evening with a parent/child activity. At first it may seem like more for you to do. After all, screens are a convenient babysitter. Having an on-going project is good, as it’s easier to start and stop the activity in short blocks of time.
Reduce housecleaning
Most of the dirt in your home is brought in on shoes. Save time and cleaning expenses by starting a no-shoes policy. Keep slippers at the door for guests to use.
Next time you’re at the library, look for “Confessions of an Organized Homemaker” by Denice Schofield. This book offers ways to simplify, organize and schedule household systems in order to help reduce the need for housecleaning.
Consolidate trips to the store
Approximately 50% of car use is for trips within three miles of the home. This distance is within the range for easy biking, so it makes sense to try to use your bike for some of these short hops. You’ll be saving fuel and reducing pollution, and you can also save on trips to the gym with this added exercise.
Whether you live in the heart of the city or have to drive to town or the mall to shop, try consolidating your trips. With a little organization, you can group your “town tasks” into fewer trips, saving you time and fuel expense. The environment also benefits from the fuel and energy savings.
Shop carefully online
Buying goods online can be an environmentally friendly and time-saving way to shop. Online shopping is also a nice contrast to the over-stimulation one often feels at the mall, providing you don’t spend hours down the rabbit holes that often open up as we search for the perfect item.
As more and more goods become available with a wider range of choices than you may find locally, it’s important to be cautious. Here are a few environmental tips to consider when shopping online:
Don't choose overnight delivery
Shipping by air freight generates up to five times the fuel emissions as ground delivery.
Combine orders
You can reduce packaging and deliveries by consolidating your orders when shopping online. Wait until you have a full list of items you’ll need from an online store, then put in just one order. You can also combine orders with a friend or co-worker shopping for similar products, as a way of further reducing the environmental (and actual) costs of shipping.
Ship orders to your workplace if permitted
If courier services regularly ship to your place of work, your order will be combined with others. This saves individual home deliveries.
Save order information digitally
Print-outs of order information use paper and ink, and require filing and storing. Save the information to a backup drive, email file, or cloud storage, and delete when you’ve received the products in good order.
Reduce lawn and yard maintenance
Yard maintenance takes up much of our valuable “free time.” Even hiring a lawn service intrudes on our quality time with noise, fumes and the presence of the workers. You can simplify and reduce the costs of yard maintenance by plantings of ground covers, shrubs, and perennials, and can easily design the remaining lawn to be simpler and faster to mow and maintain.
Yard maintenance takes up much of our valuable “free time.” Even hiring a lawn service intrudes on our quality time with noise, fumes and the presence of the workers. You can simplify and reduce the costs of yard maintenance by plantings of ground covers, shrubs, and perennials, and can easily design the remaining lawn to be simpler and faster to mow and maintain.
Visit our section on lawn alternatives for more information and energy saving ideas. Watering your lawn and plantings also consumes time and energy, so consider the advantages of installing a simple drip-irrigation system. You can achieve better results using half the water and a fraction of the time used for conventional watering.
Another option is to incorporate some of the principles of Xeriscaping to add interest to your yard while eliminating the maintenance needed for a lawn. Xeriscape was originally developed for drought-resistant landscaping, and has become popular for residential use in all climate zones. Replacing all or part of your lawn using xeriscape techniques will save up to 60% of the water required for equivalent lawn areas; it also frees you to be away from home for longer periods without having to arrange for lawn care.
Reduce cell phone use
The cell phone has become an integral part of our fast-paced culture. It is almost a symbol of self-importance; unless our schedules are as busy as the next person’s, then we’re less important or somehow not living up to the norm. As long as we carry along our cell phones, we are always “on task”.
There’s another side to ubiquitous cell phone use. It distracts our focus from other activities, at home, shopping, driving, and even during movies or meetings. It adds another level of complexity to our daily living and is often an unwelcome interruption to our time spent with others.
Get to know the “off” switch of your cell phone, especially when enjoying quality time with your family, friends or by yourself.
Seek out silence
“ … in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Try to put some silence into each day. Our ears are not designed for the constant stimulation of noise, which is an unfortunate by-product of modern life. There are very few loud sounds in nature. Studies have shown that stress hormones rise in response to noise. Concentration and energy levels are reduced, and the rates of hearing loss among young people has risen dramatically in recent years.
Simply being aware of the effects of noise is a good start. Small foam ear protectors cost just pennies apiece and screen out the high decibel aspects of noise. Wear ear protectors at home when operating loud equipment such as lawn mowers, leaf blowers, blenders, and vacuum cleaners. Turn off the TV and stereo if you’re not paying full attention to them.
Silence helps us stay focused and centered, and provides a welcome oasis in a sea of overstimulation.
