My wife and I are getting ready to move our family to a new rental this next month and so we have started packing up the house. This time we are trying to be even more relentless to get rid of stuff we really do not want, or need, and not just hang onto the "stuff" for the sake of having enough "stuff"...this reminded me of a comedy skit I saw when I was a teenager by George Carlin called "Stuff".
George Carlin was a pretty vulgar comedian, but I still remember seeing him on HBO performing his “stuff” routine, talking about all the "stuff" in our homes...here is a quote from his act:
"A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!" - George Carlin
So last night we... brewed some coffee, came up to the home office, had some music playing, kids were asleep, and started sorting paper/mail, packing, and getting organized for the move! ...I hate this kind of sorting, but it delights my wife's soul to no end...
We decided to get rid off all old bills, magazines, junk mail, credit card offers, papers, church bulletins...pretty much everything unless it was irreplaceable and/or sentimental. So at the end of the night we ended up with the following:
- 9 Stuffed full, legal sized file boxes for shredding
- 4 Trash bags full (tall kitchen size) for Garbage
- 1 full legal sized file box of items for keeping
- $21.75 in bills and change that we can use to go buy "More Stuff" ;)
This was a really great exercise to go through together and further enforced that we want to be a bit more organized with our home. We never want it to be a "show house" or a "Martha Stewart" house, but we do seriously want to reduce the amount of mail and paper that always seems to clog our household. We are "pretty" clean people, but we realized last night the reason our house is even a little unorganized is because of the sheer amount of paper and not knowing how to deal with it all!
Our plan from here is to follow some guidelines I found on the FTC website:
- We are both going to “opt-out” of having pre-approved credit offers sent to us for five years
- We are going to register our phone numbers with the National Do Not Call Registry
- We are going to opt out of receiving unsolicited commercial mail by contacting the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Mail Preference Service
- We are going to cancel all magazines except one we really like
- We are going to transfer dates and details from church bulletins and place them in recycle at church
- By drastically reducing our amount of mail...we believe we will be able to easily sort mail, shred items not need, file things that are...and live a more organized life because of it!
Here is the FTC LINK that outlines who to contact for each of the action, more information, etc
No comments:
Post a Comment