I’ve been dealing with a little bit of writer’s block this weekend.  I’m trying to get Monday’s posts done for both “Motivate Thyself” and Up-And-Coming-Blogger before my wife and I have to attend a wedding which will take up most of Sunday.  I’ve got other projects in the works as well as dealing with my consulting clients.  So my hands were a little full this weekend.  But I realized something that I’ve never seen so clearly until this moment.  “I have too much CRAP!”

I generally think of myself as a ‘man of simplicity’.  I went through my initial ‘cleansing’ phase around 1999.  It was then that I found eBay and decided to liquidate my junk.  I sold my entire G.I. Joe collection, my old Nintendo games and basically everything from my childhood.  Then I moved onto more adult things.  I got rid of a bunch of clothes I never wore, electronics equipment I never used, etc…  By the time I was done I was down to a t-shirt and a pair of socks.  Well, not really, but I had gotten rid of a bunch of stuff.

Over the years it’s been a game of back and forth.  Things accumulate for both my wife and I and then we have our yearly ‘clean sweep’ of the house.  Then everything’s nice and simple for about a month.  And thus continues the cycle of junk accumulation/junk disposal.  I can’t imagine how much time I waste on this stuff.  Think about it:

The time it takes to buy something, find a place for it, maintain it, accommodate for it’s existence and then finally get rid of it.  All the while you’re getting what from it?  Usually not much.

Our mail boxes have become the new trash can.

It drives me crazy when I open the mailbox only to find a pile of paper products that end up going strait into the recycling bin.  What a waste!  Not only of paper, but my stinking time! (Sorry, this is just a big pet peeve of mine.)

Our intentions create a lot of the clutter.

Much of what clutters up our homes are items that we ‘intend’ to use.  That piece of exercise equipment in the living room or the juicer in the kitchen.  Or the little things like magazines.  I’ve been receiving free subscriptions of Business Week without my requesting it.  I figured, what the heck, I have a business, I’ll read it at some point.  NOPE!  Not happening.  They just pile up, only to eventually go in the recycling bin.  What a waste of paper, time and energy.

Get rid of crap week!

So my goal all this week is to go through as much of my ‘stuff’ as I can and just get rid of anything I don’t need/use.  Normally I would call this ‘simplifying’, but it just feels better right now to call it ‘getting rid of crap’.  Simplifying sounds like a nice, gentle way of cutting down on the clutter in your life.  But I want to take a flame thrower to all this junk and never see it again! So we’ll stick with the latter.

Bailing out the water is futile if you don’t also plug the hole.

The fact is, you can get rid of stuff all day long, but if you don’t keep new junk from coming in you’ll just be stuck in the cycle I’m in right now.  You’ve got to stop those magazines from coming.  Stop buying stuff you don’t need.  Stop making decisions based on your intentions.  You need to be clear about what things you need/use and what things you have no use for.  Once you plug the hole, you’ll find that rest of the process to be much more rewarding.

Join me, all who have crap and want it no more!

So you’re welcome to join me this week and remove the dead weight in your life.  Unless you’re already a black belt in simplicity, you probably have some junk to get rid of.  And if you don’t, we’d love to hear what’s worked for you.  And if you make any progress, be sure to come back and share it with us.

I’ll be tweeting my progress throughout the week so you can follow me on twitter if you’re not already.