It was a Saturday morning and I was standing naked in the bathroom. I called out to Mr Smaggle to bring me some underwear because I’d forgotten to grab a pair on my way to the bathroom.
He tossed a pair through the door.
‘Not those ones! Are there any of the grey ones in my drawer?’
He threw another pair through the door.
‘No, not these ones either! What about the ones with lace around the top?’
Another pair came flying through the door.
‘Not these lacy ones, the other lacy ones!’
He finally threw in a pair of my favourite soft, dark grey ones from Muji. As I was putting them on he marched into the bathroom and collected the three discarded pairs on the floor and said ‘I’m throwing these away. You never wear them, they’re clearly uncomfortable, we can’t donate them, so I’m throwing them away.’
I was going to stop him but the thing is, he was dead right. The three pairs of underwear he was throwing away were awful. Two of them were from the same multi-pack I bought when we extended a road trip unexpectedly by a week and there was nowhere to do our washing. The third pair was a very expensive pair I bought that a friend had recommended. She had converted at least a dozen people to wearing this particular brand and style of underwear but I just couldn’t get behind it. I wanted to, but it just wasn’t working. I was in this cycle of wearing these undies, regretting wearing them, stopping wearing them, forgetting why I stopped wearing them, wearing them again and then the avoidance circle continued.
The things is, it’s hard to admit you made a mistake. It’s also hard to admit you wasted money. So I threw the uncomfortable underwear away and vowed to never again buy cheap multi-packs of underwear again and stick to buying the underwear I know works for me – ModiBodi, Muji and Bonds.
Sometimes you just need permission to throw things away. This week on Straight & Curly, Kelly and are talking about being environmentally conscious whilst not allowing your house to turn into a total garbage heap.
If you’re in the decluttering frame of mind, here are few posts you might like to look at.
21 Things You Really Need To Throw Away
3 Tips For Becoming a Clutter-free Productivity Ninja
How To Throw Things Away Like a God Damn Grown Up
5 Simple De-Cluttering Tasks To Do This Weekend
What To Do With All The Crap Inside Your House
Do you need a serious declutter in your house? What area needs the most work?
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8 Comments
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Ooh – what a great topic! I’ll have to have a listen! I am excited because I’ve been working on decluttering and minimising the STUFF in our home for a while and my husband is finally on board (he can be a hoarder). Turns out he is enjoying indulging his Gumtree addiction and is using the small amounts of cash he gets from selling sell-able items to save for a future family holiday!
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Oh totally Mr Smaggle is the same! He’s a bit of a hoarder because he’s a designer and a photographer that requires a lot of ‘stuff’. He loves Gumtree though – he gets to sell stuff he’s not using and buy other stuff!
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In January I did the minimalist challenge. Basically, you get rid of (sell, donate, recycle, etc.) one thing on 1 Jan, two things on 2 Jan, three things on 3 Jan… etc etc. It eases you into it.
It was amazing. By 31 Jan I’d gotten rid of over 450 things. I should say, I live in a one bedroom apartment, and this challenge was a piece of cake. Some days I counted tonnes of duplicates of an item as one thing towards the number for that day (so I probably got rid of more than 700 things to be honest). I think I could easily do it again for another month. And maybe I should…
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We mention that in the podcast! In fact, I think we’re going to run the challenge as a group in the Straight and Curly group!
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I love that this post was more about getting rid of things you don’t use that cause clutter rather than pushing the minimalism trend, which is steeped in privilege and classism. So kudos to that!
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I definitely agree that minimalism has some issues but I know of lots of low income earners who embrace minimalism and it works really well for them. I agree it’s hard to swallow the jagged pill of ‘less is more’ from wealty people who can afford to spend $1000 on a pair of shoes that will ‘last them 10 years’ when that’s only available to a very small group of people.
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Great podcast this week – especially like the part about people being too scared to get rid of something because they spent money on it. My partner and I were having this conversation last night, about something different, but it’s a good point that applies to lots of life situations. Two things we decided were important were: ‘fail early’ and ‘don’t throw good money after bad’ trying to get your investment back.
I’m in the process (the mind-numbing process) of scanning in all my documents and ‘bits of paper’ from our garage so we’re as light as possible. I have until July – it’s slow but will be worth it.
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It’s SO HARD to get rid things you’ve spent money on. I had a $200 pair of shoes I couldn’t get rid of because I NEVER WORE THEM because they ate my feet. Finally ditched them last year. Best thing ever.
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