Instead of Asking "What If I Need It?", Ask "How Long Has It Been Taking Up My Space?"

I meant to write my thoughts on Avengers: Endgame today, but I spent the whole day moving. I hauled another four or five suitcases home, and looking at the crowded mess of stuff everywhere, I felt completely overwhelmed.

On top of that, I left for work at six this morning and didn't really get enough sleep last night. Since finishing the move I've felt exhausted. The good news is that everything's been moved now.

In the evening, my mom came back to Chengdu from our hometown of Rongchang, and I picked her up at the subway station. Since it was late and the house was such a mess, we ate at a restaurant tonight.

We ordered twice-cooked pork and tomato with scrambled eggs, just right for two.

While we ate, I said to my mom: Isn't there a rice cooker under that cabinet at home that hasn't been used in ages?

Mom said: Yes.

I said: Then when we get back, you can throw it out, because I brought another rice cooker home.

Why throw it out? I'll keep it there and take it back to our hometown to use later.

That rice cooker was too big. My mom and my younger brother didn't need one that size, so they switched to a small one, and it's been sitting unused ever since.

A few years ago, when I was living in Chongqing, I bought myself a rice cooker too, but I've hardly used it (a few times a year, still). So I figured mine could replace the old one.

I knew long ago that my mom would say that.

I said to her: Don't you find it annoying having so much stuff in the house?

My mom was quiet for a long while, then finally said: But what if we need it later and don't have it?

I smiled: You just answered the question a different way.

We didn't take the topic any further. I'd love for my mom to live a bit more minimally, but I know that most minimalists go through a painful stretch when they first start letting things go. Faced with so many kinds of things and so many of them, you always end up thinking: what if I need it someday?

I have to admit, a lot of things probably stay in our homes for years for exactly that reason. But think about it: by the time we're ready to throw something out, how long has it gone unused?

Take my mom saying she wants to bring the old rice cooker back to our hometown. She forgets every single time. That tells me the scenario she imagined for it is flimsy. If it really mattered that much back home, it would have been in the hometown kitchen long ago.

This time I've moved back home to live with my mom, the first time since I started working four years ago. Living alone, I never felt I had that much stuff. But once I came back to the family and put my things together with theirs, I realized how suffocating it was.

The good thing is that after a year of minimalism, even though I'm not truly minimal yet in how much I own, I've become sensitive to piles of cluttered stuff.

When I'm somewhere messy and crowded with things, I feel a little suffocated and don't know what to do with myself.

Especially when I found the wardrobe at home couldn't fit my clothes, I felt helpless, because I didn't know where else my clothes could go.

I threw out a lot of things during this move too, mostly odds and ends: a hot water bottle, a cycling water bottle, two pairs of cycling glasses I hadn't worn in ages, the five pairs of shoes I mentioned yesterday, and so on. It was all jumbled together, and it took me several trips downstairs to get rid of it.

Afterward, I didn't really feel lighter, because I still thought I had too much.

For example, a mirror, a small clothes rack, a desk lamp I hadn't used in ages, a printer, a water dispenser, two monitor stands, a helmet, the boxes for my phone and other electronics (I've already thrown out the ones for things no longer in use), and so on. All of these things are here, and every one of them is useful.

So it's hard for me to minimalize them.

When throwing things out, I roughly follow two rules:

1. Anything worth less than 50 yuan goes straight in the trash. 2. Anything I haven't used in over a year goes straight in the trash.

So with this move, I threw out quite a lot, and there were also some things I couldn't bring myself to throw out for other reasons.

Some I kept because they're worth a lot. Take a pair of shoes I don't want to wear anymore. I'm going to see if they fit my dad, and if not, I'll think about throwing them out or selling them.

Other things, like the desk lamp, a really good phone and tablet stand, a camera tripod, and a fan, I'm planning to sell on Xianyu.

I think worrying that "I might need it someday" makes life exhausting.

Life does call for "defensive driving,"¹ but from the standpoint of long-termism, what we should keep our eyes on over time is our physical and mental health, our energy, and our assets, not the things we already own, some of which we should have gotten rid of long ago.

Instead of asking: what if I need it?

Ask: how long has this thing been taking up my space for nothing?

Footnotes

1. Defensive driving means driving in a way that anticipates other people's mistakes and avoids risks ahead of time. Here it stands for leaving room in life for uncertainty. ↩